” “Following these rules, we’ve demonstrated that we can make all the universal logic gates used in electronics, simply by changing the layout of the bars on the chip,” said Katsikis. “The actual design space in our platform is incredibly rich. Give us any Boolean logic circuit in the world, and we can build it with these little magnetic droplets moving around.”
The current paper describes the fundamental operating regime of the system and demonstrates building blocks for synchronous logic gates, feedback and cascadability – hallmarks of scalable computation. A simple-state machine including 1-bit memory storage (known as “flip-flop”) is also demonstrated using the above basic building blocks. ”
Consider how many natural laws and constants—both physical and chemical—have been discovered since the time of the early Greeks. Hundreds of thousands of natural laws have been unveiled in man’s never ending quest to understand Earth and the universe.
I couldn’t name 1% of the laws of nature and physics. Here are just a few that come to mind from my high school science classes. I shall not offer a bulleted list, because that would suggest that these random references to laws and constants are organized or complete. It doesn’t even scratch the surface…
Newton’s Law of force (F=MA), Newton’s law of gravity, The electromagnetic force, strong force, weak force, Avogadro’s Constant, Boyle’s Law, the Lorentz Transformation, Maxwell’s equations, laws of thermodynamics, E=MC2, particles behave as waves, superpositioning of waves, universe inflation rate, for every action… etc, etc.
For some time, physicists, astronomers, chemists, and even theologians have pondered an interesting puzzle: Why is our universe so carefully tuned for our existence? And not just our existence—After all, it makes sense that our stature, our senses and things like muscle mass and speed have evolved to match our environment. But here’s the odd thing—If even one of a great many laws, properties or constants were off by even a smidgen, the whole universe could not exist—at least not in a form that could support life as we imagine it! Even the laws and numbers listed above. All of creation would not be here, if any of these were just a bit off…
Well, there might be something out there, but it is unlikely to have resulted in life—not even life very different than ours. Why? Because without the incredibly unique balance of physical and chemical properties that we observe, matter would not coalesce into stars, planets would not crunch into balls that hold an atmosphere, and they would not clear their path to produce a stable orbit for eons. Compounds and tissue would not bind together. In fact, none of the things that we can imagine could exist.
Of course, theologians have a pat answer. In one form or another, religions answer all of cosmology by stating a matter of faith: “The universe adheres to God’s design, and so it makes sense that everything works”. This is a very convenient explanation, because these same individuals forbid the obvious question: ‘Who created God?’ and ‘What existed before God?’ Just ask Bill Nye or Bill Maher. They have accepted offers to debate those who feel that God created Man instead of the other way around.
Scientists, on the other hand, take pains to distance themselves from theological implications. They deal in facts and observable phenomenon. Then, they form a hypotheses and begin testing. That’s what we call the scientific method.
If any being could evolve without the perfect balance of laws and constants that we observe, it would be a single intelligence distributed amongst a cold cloud of gas. In fact, a universe that is not based on many of the observed numbers (including the total mass of everything in existence) probably could not be stable for very long.
Does this mean that it’s all about you?! Are you, Dear reader, the only thing in existence?—a living testament to René Descartes?
Don’t discount that notion. Cosmologists acknowledge that your own existence is the only thing of which you can be absolutely sure. (“I think. Therefore, I am”). If you cannot completely trust your senses as s portal to reality, then no one else provably exists. But, most scientists (and the rest of us, too) are willing to assume that we come from a mother and father and that the person in front of us exists as a separate thinking entity. After all, if we can’t start with this assumption, then the rest of physics and reality hardly matters, because we are too far removed from the ‘other’ reality to even contemplate what is outside of our thoughts.
Two questions define the field of cosmology—How did it all begin and why does it work? Really big questions are difficult to test, and so we must rely heavily on tools and observation:
• Is the Big Bang a one-off event, or is it one in a cycle of recurring events? • Is there anything beyond the observable universe? (something apart from the Big Bang) • Does natural law observed in our region of the galaxy apply everywhere? • Is there intelligent life beyond Earth?
Having theories that are difficult to test does not mean that scientists aren’t making progress. Even in the absence of frequent testing, a lot can be learned from observation. Prior to 1992, no planet had ever been observed or detected outside of our solar system. For this reason, we had no idea of the likelihood that planets form and take orbit around stars.
Today, almost 2000 exoplanets have been discovered with 500 of them belonging to multiple planetary systems. All of these were detected by indirect evidence—either the periodic eclipsing of light from a star, which indicates that something is in orbit around it, or subtle wobbling of the star itself, which indicates that it is shifting around a shared center of gravity with a smaller object. But wait! Just this month, a planet close to our solar system (about 30 light years away) was directly observed. This is a major breakthrough, because it gives us an opportunity to perform spectral analysis of the planet and its atmosphere.
Is this important? That depends on goals and your point of view. For example, one cannot begin to speculate on the chances for intelligent life, if we have no idea how common or unusual it is for a star to be orbited by planets. It is a critical factor in the Drake Equation. (I am discounting the possibility of a life form living within a sun, not because it is impossible or because I am a human-chauvinist, but because it would not likely be a life form that we will communicate with in this millennium).
Of course, progress sometimes raises completely new questions. In the 1970s, Francis Drake and Carl Sagan began exploring the changing rate of expansion between galaxies. This created an entirely new question and field of study related to the search for dark matter.
Concerning the titular question: “Why is the universe fine-tuned for life?”, cosmologist Stephen Hawking offered an explanation last year that might help us to understand. At last, it offers a theory, even if it is difficult to test. The media did their best to make Professor Hawking’s explanation digestible, explaining it something like this [I am paraphrasing]:
There may be multiple universes. We observe only the one in which we exist. Since our observations are limited to a universe with physical constants and laws that resulted in us—along with Stars, planets, gravity and atmospheres, it seems that the conditions for life are all too coincidental. But if we imagine countless other universes outside of our realm (very few with life-supporting properties), then the coincidence can be dismissed. In effect, as observers, we are regionalized into a small corner.
The press picked up on this explanation with an unfortunate headline that blared the famous Professor had proven that God does not exist. Actually, Hawking said that miracles stemming out of religious beliefs are “not compatible with science”. Although he is an atheist, he said nothing about God not existing. He simply offered a theory to explain an improbable coincidence.
I am not a Cosmologist. I only recently have come to understand that it is the science of origin and is comprised of astronomy, particle physics, chemistry and philosophy. (But not religion—please don’t go there!). If my brief introduction piques your interest, a great place to spread your wings is with Tim Maudlin’s recent article in Aeon Magazine, The Calibrated Cosmos. Tim succinctly articulates the problem of a fine-tuned universe in the very first paragraph:
“Theories now suggest that the most general structural elements of the universe — the stars and planets, and the galaxies that contain them — are the products of finely calibrated laws and conditions that seem too good to be true.”
And: “Had the constants of nature taken slightly different values, we would not be here.”
The article delves into the question thoroughly, while still reading at a level commensurate with Sunday drivers like you and me. If you write to Tim, tell him I sent you. Tell him that his beautifully written article has added a whole new facet to my appreciation for being!
Philip Raymond is Co-Chair of The Cryptocurrency Standards Association and CEO of Vanquish Labs. This is his fourth article for Lifeboat Foundation and his first as an armchair cosmologist.
When I was a freshman at Cornell University some decades ago, I had a memorable teaching assistant for CS100, the entry level computer programming course taken by nearly every student in Engineering or Arts & Sciences. Gilles Brassard, a French Canadian, is now a chaired math professor at Université de Montréal and a preeminent cryptographer. He has also been inducted into the Royal Order of Canada. I am told that this is a bit like being knighted. In fact, this highest of civilian honors was established by Queen Elizabeth.
The author with Gilles Brassard in 2014
Gilles was a graduate student at Cornell in the mid ’70s. Back then, public key encryption was a radical concept. Named for three MIT professors who described it, RSA is now it is at the heart of every secure Internet transaction. Yet, the new generation of cryptographers refers to RSA as “classical cryptography”. The radicals have moved on to Quantum Cryptography. Gilles and his collaborator, Charles Bennett, are the pioneers and leaders in this burgeoning field. No one else is even pretender to the throne.
In its simplest terms, quantum cryptography achieves a secure communication channel because it relies on a stream of individual particles or “quanta” to convey information. If information is sent without any fat at all—just the minimum physics that can support the entropy—then any eavesdropping or rerouting of a message can be detected by the recipient. Voila! Perfect authentication, fidelity and security. Communication is secure because any attack can be detected.
But when you begin to experiment with gating individual quanta of anything, you are typically working within a world of minute, elementary particles—things like photons or electrons with properties that change as they are measured. And the issue of measurement doesn’t just invoke Heisenbeg (he demonstrated that measurements change a property being measured), but also superpositioning of states that resolve only when they are observed. Say, Whaaht?!
Perhaps, we are getting ahead of ourselves. The goal of this article is to share a strange, thoroughly unexpected, awe-inspiring, yet repeatable experimental results achieved by quantum physicists. I am no expert, but given a sufficiently lay explanation, marvel with me at a baffling outcome. It will shake your perception of reality. It suggests that science and math are not as black and white as you believed.
The EPR Paradox Albert Einstein worked for years to develop an understanding of entangled particles that was consistent with his earlier work in special relativity. By the mid 20th century, physicists were reasonably certain that information could never be conveyed faster than light. It’s not just the math that convinced them. It was the crazy things that would ensue if light speed was not a universal speed limit…
If information—mass or energy, particle or wave, substantive or pure thought—if any of these things travels faster light, then given the time dilation of things moving in relation to each other, very unlikely things would be possible. For example:
If information travels faster than light. it would be possible to deliver a reply to a message that had not yet been sent
If information travels faster than light, it would be possible to send a message back in time and prevent your parents from meeting each other
So the math that imposes a universal speed limit also preserves our concept of reality. Sure, we can accept that energy and mass are fungible. We can even accept that distance and time are malleable. But time paradoxes defy common sense and beg for a solution that prevents them, altogether.
When the most reasonable explanation of quantum entanglement collided with our understanding of special relativity, efforts to reconcile the two theories or arrive at a unifying model became known as the EPR Paradox, named after Einstein and his colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. Given assumptions considered axiomatic, the math suggests that information passes between entangled particles faster than light — in fact, instantaneously and at any distance. Near the end of his life, Einstein reluctantly acknowledged that there must be an error in math, or in basic assumptions, or that some undiscovered, rational explanation could resolve the paradox. Ultimately, he dismissed the notion of particles synchronously and instantly communicating with each other as “spooky action at a distance”. Just as his other memorable quote, “God doesn’t play dice with the world”, the two phrases are indelibly inscribed onto the great physicist’s epitaph.
Before humans could travel to the moon (about 1.3 light seconds from earth), researchers tried to test Einstein’s theory. But even with precise instruments to measure time and distance, it was too difficult in the 1930s and 40s to create, transport and measure characteristics of elementary particles and then discriminate their behavior in such close proximity.
Back then, Einstein assumed that we would measure wave collapse positions or particle momentum. But today, scientists are more keen on measuring another quantum phenomenon: particle spin or photon polarization—or particle destruction. These properties are more easily changed and measured. In the 1960s and 70s, the EPR paradox returned to popular inquiry when physicists John Stewart Bell—and later Lamehi-Rachti and Mittig, conducted experiments that supported Einstein’s original thesis. That is, faster-than-light communication seemed to take place.
So, given appropriate experimental methodology, could it actually be possible to receive a package before it was sent? This is, after all, the disturbing conclusion of faster-than-light communication.
Probably not. But the experimental result is more shocking than “Yes” and way more interesting than “No”. In fact, the outcome to recent experiments force us to confront our understanding of causality. It makes us wonder if reality is an illusion. It shatters our concept of time and space even more than Einstein’s more famous theory of relativity.
Since measurements made in nanoseconds are difficult to visualize, I shall illustrate the experiment and the surprising results by stretching the distance involved. But this is not a metaphor. Actual results actually play out as described here. Continue below image…
The Experiment
Suppose that I create a pair of entangled particles. It doesn’t matter what this means or how I accomplish the feat. I wish only to test if a change to one particle affects the other. But more specifically, I want to separate them by a great distance and determine if a change to the local particle influences the remote particle instantly, or at least faster than accounted for by a light-speed signal between the two of them.
If you could construct such an experiment, it seems reasonable to assume that you would observe one of four possible outcomes. The results should demonstrate that the remote particle is either:
not affected at all
affected – apparently instantly or nearly in synchrony with the first particle
affected – but only after a delay in which a light speed signal could reach it
uncorrelated or inconsistently correlated with it’s entangled mate
The actual result is none of these, and it is almost too stunning to contemplate. In fact, the particle is highly correlated, but the correlation is with the observer’s cognition. But again, I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s look at our experimental set up…
I send an astronaut into space with a box that contains an experimental apparatus. The astronaut travels a distance about as far away from Earth as the sun. It takes about 8 minutes for light (or any message) to reach the astronaut. The box contains the “twin” of many paired particles back on earth. Each particle is trapped in a small crystal and numbered. The box also contains an instrument that can measure the polarization of any photon and a noisy inkjet printer that can be heard from outside the box.
Back on the earth, I have the mate to each paired photon. All of my photons exhibit a polarity than can be measured and expressed as a 2-D angle with any value from 0 to 360 degrees. Our test uses polarized filters to measure the angle of polarity and is very accurate. We can record 4 digits of precision. For the purpose of this test, it doesn’t matter if our measurement affects a particle or even if it destroys it, because we can repeat the test many times.
Clocks on the earth and at the spaceship are synchronized, and the ship is not moving relative to the earth. It is effectively stationary. On earth, each numbered photon is disturbed exactly on the hour. At the spaceship, an astronaut measures the polarity of a paired photon one minute before and one minute after each hourly event.
We know that our photons all begin with a polarity of 15.48 degrees as measured relative some fixed and rigid orientation. The astronaut confirms this with each photon tested before the hourly chime. But at each hour (say 3PM in New York), we disturb a photon on earth (radiate it or pass it through a filter). This changes its polarity.
Suppose that the earth lab determines that a photon was changed at 3PM from a polarity of 15.48° to a polarity of 122.6°. (Any new polarization will do).
Recall that the spaceship is 8 light-minutes away. We wish to determine if photon pairs communicate more quickly than the speed of light. Question: If the astronaut tests the polarity of the paired photon at 3:01 PM (just after its mate on the earth has been altered), do you suppose that he will still detect the original spin of 15.48°? Or will he detect the new spin of 122.6°?
The answer is more startling than either outcome. In fact, it leaves most people in disbelief or outright denial. (Yes…You are being set up for a surprise. But what is it?!)
To make things more interesting, let’s say that you cannot see the results. The box is sealed during the experiment, but you can hear the printer within the box as it prints the polarity after each test. Each time you run the experiment, you unplug the printer right after you hear it print a result. Then, you open the box and read the results.
Spookiness at a Distance
If you open the box less than 8 minutes after the hour (that is, less than the time that it takes light to travel from earth to the astronaut), the printout will always show a polarity of 15.48°. If you open the box after 8 minutes, you will always see a polarity of 122.6°. In both cases, the test was completed and the result was printed in the first minute after the photon on earth was shifted to a new polarization.
Wait! It gets better! If you eventually learn to distinguish the different sounds that the printer makes when it records either result, it will always print 15.48°, even if you wait 8 minutes before actually looking at the print out. The fact that you found a way to ‘cheat’ apparently changes the outcome. Or at least, that is the conclusion that a reasonable person would make when presented with knowledge-induced causality. It’s either that—or we are all crazy.
But quantum physicists (and cryptographers like Gilles) have another explanation. They point out that Einstein’s theory of special relativity doesn’t actually prohibit faster than light phenomena. It only prohibits faster than light communication. If the thing that happens instantaneously cannot be pressed into conveying useful information, then it doesn’t violate special relativity! That is, perturbations applied to one part of a quantum entangled pair are apparently instantaneous, but an observation or experiment on the remote twin will not produce a result that allows you to determine the new state until sufficient time for a light beam to pass from one to the other.
Alternate explanation: This one is known as “Schrödinger’s cat”. In my opinion it was contrived to support both quantum mechanics and the EPR paradox. It states that the paired photon simultaneously existed at both polarities until someone opened the box or otherwise learned its state. That is, the observed result was not a real thing, until the observation forced it to collapse into reality. Common sense says that this explanation makes no sense! And yet, it neatly resolves a lot of mathematics. Go figure!
Here is another explanation. I like this one better… Perhaps time is not an arrow that always moves in one direction and one speed. In contradiction to our intuition (based on a limited set of human senses), perhaps we are not continuously pushed forward at the tip of that arrow. –What if the science fiction about space and time being folded is true? –Or perhaps… Oh Heck! I’ll go with the first explanation: From our perspective, entangled particles change simultaneously, but mysterious forces of nature don’t allow us to observe the change until the laws of special relativity allow it. Why is that?… Because if we could observe information before it was ‘legal’ to do so, then we could change the past.
The take away to this experiment is that just like wave velocity, some things move faster than the speed of light, but useful information cannot do so. For useful information, light is still the speed limit.
Quantum physicists do not typically use my thought experiment, which I call Hidden Printer Result. Instead, they explain that Bell’s experiments prove that the spin measurement distant, entangled particles demonstrates they are connected in a spooky way (because the detected spin is provably opposite for each measurement)—but that Einsteien’s theory is preserved, because individuals measuring particles cannot know that their measurements are correlated until they communicate or meet. That communication is still restricted to light-speed limits, and therefore, useful information did not violate special relativity.
The Hidden Printer Result is a way in which we laypeople could observe and marvel at the transmission of unbelievably fast, but ‘useless’ information. It is a valid experimental setup that allows us to better comprehend that which defies common sense.
This Youtube video provides a more conventional, but more complex explanation of quantum entanglement and the EPR P
Gilles Brassard is not a physicist, but a computer scientist and cryptographer. Yet he has received awards that are typically given to physicists. His experiments and those by scientists around the world render a layperson like me dumbstruck.
Of course, Gilles didn’t ship an inkjet printer into space with half of an entangled pair (my experimental construct). Instead, he measured and recorded a particle state in a way that is self-encrypted. He then he sent the encryption key from the distant particle that had been disturbed. Even though the key is just two bits (too little to contain a measurement of photon spin), the old spin was observed if the key was applied before the time it would have taken to classically transmit and receive the information.
Just as with my experimental setup, results are almost too much to wrap a proverbial brain around. But truths that are hard to believe make great fodder for Lifeboat members. If my non-scientific, jargon free explanation gets across the results of the EPR experiment (actually, it is at the leading edge of my own understanding), then you are now as puzzled and amazed as me.
Traditionally, we’ve done science by observing nature in person or setting up experiments in the lab. Now, a relatively new scientific technique is proving a powerful tool—simulating nature on supercomputers.
A few years ago, Caltech astrophysicists released a supercomputer simulation of a supergiant star’s core collapsing just prior to going supernova. Apart from a stunning visual, simulations like this hinted that Type II supernova explosions were asymmetrical—a guess just recently backed by empirical observation.
What would you have done to stop catastrophic events if you knew in advance what you know now.
We have the moral obligation to take action in every way we can.
The future is in our hands. The stakes are the highest they have ever been. The Large Hadron Collider developed by the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) is a dangerous instrument. The start-up April 5 has initiated a more reckless use of LHC’s capabilities.
CERN-Critics: LHC restart is a sad day for science and humanity!
These days, CERN has restarted the world’s biggest particle collider, the so-called “Big Bang Machine” LHC at CERN. After a hundreds of Million Euros upgrade of the world’s biggest machine, CERN plans to smash particles at double the energies of before. This poses, one would hope, certain eventually small (?), but fundamentally unpredictable catastrophic risks to planet Earth.
Basically the same group of critics, including Professors and Doctors, that had previously filed a law suit against CERN in the US and Europe, still opposes the restart for basically the same reasons. Dangers of: (“Micro”-)Black Holes, Strangelets, Vacuum Bubbles, etc., etc. are of course and maybe will forever be — still in discussion. No specific improvements concerning the safety assessment of the LHC have been conducted by CERN or anybody meanwhile. There is still no proper and really independent risk assessment (the ‘LSAG-report’ has been done by CERN itself) — and the science of risk research is still not really involved in the issue. This is a scientific and political scandal and that’s why the restart is a sad day for science and humanity.
The scientific network “LHC-Critique” speaks for a stop of any public sponsorship of gigantomanic particle colliders.
Just to demonstrate how speculative this research is: Even CERN has to admit, that the so called “Higgs Boson” was discovered — only “probably”. Very probably, mankind will never find any use for the “Higgs Boson”. Here we are not talking about the use of collider technology in medical concerns. It could be a minor, but very improbable advantage for mankind to comprehend the Big Bang one day. But it would surely be fatal – how the Atomic Age has already demonstrated — to know how to handle this or other extreme phenomena in the universe.
Within the next Billions of years, mankind would have enough problems without CERN.
Title: Super Physics for Super Technologies Sub Title: Replacing Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger & Einstein Author: Benjamin T Solomon Paperback: 154 pages Publisher: Propulsion Physics, Inc. (March 19, 2015) ISBN-10: 1508948011 ISBN-13: 978–1508948018 Language: English
Reviewer’s comments: “Benjamin is the second researcher I have met who has tried to consider a nonsingular cosmology. The first was Christi Stoica, which I met in 2010″. Andrew Beckwith PhD
The Objective: This book, Super Physics for Super Technologies, proposes that a new physics exists. The findings are based on 16 years of extensive numerical modeling with empirical data, and therefore, both testable and irrefutable.
The Need: In 2012 Prof. Nemiroff, using Hubble photographs, showed that quantum foam cannot exists. In 2013, Solomon showed that both exotic matter and strings could not exists. In 2015 the Kavli Foundation, with Prof. Efstathiou, Prof. Pryke, Prof. Steinhard discussed the issues with the Planck Space Telescope findings of a Universe that is significantly simpler than our theories. Therefore the need for new physics.
The Benefits: The replacement of the Schrödinger wave function with a simpler probabilistic wave function, results in a new electron shell model based on the Rydberg equation, giving exact results with quantum mechanics; leading to a new Standard Model and the unification of photon shielding, transmission and invisibility as the same phenomenon. Solomon’s inference is that any current or future stealth technology can be neutralized.
The Possibilities: Is it possible to rewrite physics and the old great cherished masters? This work is based on extensive numerical modeling of known empirical data and theorizing. Therefore, the answer must be YES.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Lockheed for nominating me to the position of Committee Member, Nuclear and Future Flight Propulsion Technical Committee, American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA)
I have two examples to offer: c-global and cryodynamics.
c-global is based on overcoming an oversight Einstein had made in December of 1907. He assumed c to be reduced in proportion to his newly discovered gravitational redshift valid downstairs, while in reality an optically masked size increase occurs down there. The newly reconstituted c-global rules out cosmic expansion.
Cryodynamics is the new sister discipline to thermodynamics. It governs gases made up from mutually attractive particles. It explains the observed cosmological redshift without expansion.
Although both findings are in the literature for years, it is impossible to evoke any response. This despite the fact that cryodynamics promises limitless free energy. There is no support for its aficionados anywhere.
Since all projects in the field are controlled by the single Western school left on the planet, no young physicist is allowed to contribute to the big progress of CC.
Fortunately, there exists a new branch of physics called “original highschool physics” (OHP). In it, highschool students and their teachers contribute technically low-level but theoretically fundamental results. Here c-global and cryodynamics have their new home.
The young generation does not approve of CERN’s open neglect of c-global and cryodynamics. If physics is unable to absorb progress, the planet’s youth is put-off by physics. Dishonesty displayed by the establishment through letting CERN refuse to upgrade their Safety Report for 7 years is – if not killing the planet – killing physics.
Please, my friends: restore the link to the young generation and allow the CERN Young Scientists to come back on their 5 years old invitation for a talk on c-global and cryodynamics.
The Super Bowl isn’t just a football game. It’s an opportunity to discuss physics. Let’s look at some of the interesting physics concepts that go with the game.
Deflategate and Ball Pressure
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little weary of the whole “deflategate” thing. In case you missed the controversy, it appears that some of the footballs in the playoff game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots had below-acceptable inflation pressure. Now, it’s true that if you put a balloon outside on a cold day, the balloon deflates with the colder temperature. Could something like this have happened to the deflategate balls? The answer is: probably not. If you want more details, Chad Orzel has an excellent piece that looks at the physics of pressurized football. He shows experimentally that a ball in a 50°F football game wouldn’t drop 2 PSI due solely to the temperature change.
The Experiment
By 
