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Jun 3, 2023

Another Way for Black Holes to Evaporate

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics, quantum physics

The quantum fluctuations that pervade empty space spontaneously give birth to pairs of particles and antiparticles. Ordinarily, these pairs annihilate so promptly that their existence is virtual. But a powerful field can pull a pair’s members apart for long enough that their existence becomes real. In 1951 Julian Schwinger calculated how strong an electric field needs to be to beget electron–positron pairs. Now Michael Wondrak and his colleagues of Radboud University in the Netherlands have proposed that particle pairs can be brought into existence by the immense gravitational tidal forces around a black hole [1].

Wondrak and his colleagues considered all the paths a pair of virtual particles could take during their brief existence. If the vacuum is stable, all pairs that are created are also destroyed. But a strong field destabilizes the vacuum, makes some paths more likely than others, and leads to a deficit of pairs that recombine. The deficit is balanced by a net outflow of real particles, which, in the case of a black hole’s gravitational field, leads to the black hole’s eventual evaporation.

The theorists’ approach is sufficiently general that it could reproduce not only Schwinger’s effect but also Stephen Hawking’s 1974 proposal that if a particle–antiparticle pair springs into virtual existence near a black hole’s event horizon, one member could fall in while the other escapes. What’s more, the researchers found that Hawking’s effect is a special case of a more general phenomenon. Pulling virtual particles into existence depends only on the stretching of spacetime wrought by a curved gravitational field and does not require an event horizon as Hawking originally suggested. One intriguing implication is that a neutron star, whose Schwarzschild radius lies beneath the stellar surface, can also beget particle pairs and decay.

Jun 3, 2023

Revolution in Physics: First-Ever X-Ray of a Single Atom Captured

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, quantum physics

Atom for the first time. Using a pioneering technique known as synchrotron X-ray scanning tunneling microscopy (SX-STM), the team was able to identify and characterize individual atoms, opening new possibilities in environmental, medical, and quantum research.

A team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and others, led by Ohio University Professor of Physics, and Argonne National Laboratory scientist, Saw Wai Hla, has taken the world’s first X-ray SIGNAL (or SIGNATURE) of just one atom. This groundbreaking achievement was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and could revolutionize the way scientists detect materials.

Jun 3, 2023

The highest paid tech CEOs, and how much more they make than median employees

Posted by in category: innovation

A breakdown of tech salaries shows the disparity in compensation between CEO and median employee pay.

Jun 3, 2023

It’s becoming clear that AI is going to whack the mediocre middle of office workers

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

AI is going to have a huge impact on the workforce. And while there will be winners in the workplace, there will also be losers.

Jun 3, 2023

Scientists Working to Generate Electricity From Thin Air Make Breakthrough

Posted by in categories: innovation, materials

Scientists making the “Air-gen” device have discovered that any material can be used to generate electricity from the air.

Jun 3, 2023

An 18th SDG: Space for All, on Earth and Beyond

Posted by in category: space travel

Since 2015, reusable rockets have dramatically decreased the cost of transportation from Earth to orbit. Such process is paving the path toward a civilian sp…

Jun 3, 2023

Ultra-Processed Foods: AI’s New Contribution to Nutrition Science

Posted by in categories: food, health, information science, robotics/AI, science

Summary: Researchers developed a machine learning algorithm, FoodProX, capable of predicting the degree of processing in food products.

The tool scores foods on a scale from zero (minimally or unprocessed) to 100 (highly ultra-processed). FoodProX bridges gaps in existing nutrient databases, providing higher resolution analysis of processed foods.

This development is a significant advancement for researchers examining the health impacts of processed foods.

Jun 3, 2023

Dr. Rita Baranwal, Ph.D. — Senior Vice President, Energy Systems, Westinghouse Electric Company

Posted by in categories: business, engineering, government, nuclear energy

Is Senior Vice President of the Energy Systems business unit of Westinghouse Electric Company, which is the nuclear power unit of.
Westinghouse, where her core focus is in leading the team developing and.
deploying their AP300 Small Modular Nuclear Reactor (https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Portals/0/about-2020/lea…UL22.pdf).

Dr. Baranwal recently served Chief Technology Officer of the organization, where she led the company’s global research and development investments, spearheading their technology strategy to advance the company’s nuclear innovation, and drove next-generation solutions for existing and new markets.

Continue reading “Dr. Rita Baranwal, Ph.D. — Senior Vice President, Energy Systems, Westinghouse Electric Company” »

Jun 3, 2023

AI-Descartes: A Scientific Renaissance in the World of Artificial Intelligence

Posted by in categories: information science, robotics/AI

The system demonstrated its chops on Kepler’s third law of planetary motion, Einstein’s relativistic time-dilation law, and Langmuir’s equation of gas adsorption.

AI-Descartes, a new AI scientist, has successfully reproduced Nobel Prize-winning work using logical reasoning and symbolic regression to find accurate equations. The system is effective with real-world data and small datasets, with future goals including automating the construction of background theories.

In 1918, the American chemist Irving Langmuir published a paper examining the behavior of gas molecules sticking to a solid surface. Guided by the results of careful experiments, as well as his theory that solids offer discrete sites for the gas molecules to fill, he worked out a series of equations that describe how much gas will stick, given the pressure.

Jun 3, 2023

Quantum teleportation achieved as Chinese researchers send data across a lake

Posted by in categories: computing, encryption, quantum physics

Finding practical applications for quantum entanglement is a formidable endeavor to say the least, but a group of Chinese researchers overcame some of the fundamental challenges of open-air quantum teleportation by developing a highly accurate laser pointing and tracking system, as reported by Ars Technica. The team was able to teleport a qubit (a standard unit of data in quantum computing) 97 kilometers across a lake using a small set of photons without fiberoptic cables or other intermediaries.

The laser targeting device developed by Juan Yin and his team was necessary to counteract the minute seismic and atmosphere shifts that would otherwise break the link between the two remote locations. While the use of fiberoptic cables solves the point-to-point accuracy problems faced by open-air systems, using the cables to carry entangled photons — which in turn carry the data needed for quantum teleportation — can cause what’s known as “quantum decoherence,” or rather a corruption in the photon’s entanglement data.

In the grand spectrum of scientific achievement, Yin’s research is a small but crucial stepping stone on the path to a global quantum network, allowing for super-fast data transmission with high levels of encryption to take place. Yin and his team think that quantum repeater satellites could be used to build this network, but until scientists figure out a way to give qubits a few more microseconds of staying power, such a network is probably many years off.