Quantum Physics - It's Elementary!

Possible expansion/revision on QED theory needed?...

scikc — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:50:00 -0500

Possible expansion/revision on QED theory needed? …

“Observations made with NIST’s Electron Beam Ion Trap indicate that, in ions with a strongly positive charge, electrons can behave in ways inconsistent with quantum electrodynamics (QED) theory, which describes electromagnetism. While more experiments are needed,the data could imply that some aspects of QED theory require revision. “

…read more

Imprisoned Molecules ‘Quantum Rattle’ in Their...

scikc — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:05:00 -0400

Imprisoned Molecules ‘Quantum Rattle’ in Their Cages

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2012) — Scientists have discovered that a space inside a special type of carbon molecule can be used to imprison other smaller molecules such as hydrogen or water…. (read more)

Big Bang Theory Challenged by Big Chill

scikc — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:59:41 -0400

Big Bang Theory Challenged by Big Chill:

Did the universe begin with a change in the state of matter?

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2012) — The start of the Universe should be modeled not as a Big Bang but more like water freezing into ice, according to a team of theoretical physicists at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University… (read more)

First Photo of Shadow of a Single Atom ScienceDaily (July 3,...

scikc — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:21:00 -0400

First Photo of Shadow of a Single Atom

ScienceDaily (July 3, 2012) — In an international scientific breakthrough, a Griffith University research team has been able to photograph the shadow of a single atom for the first time.

“We have reached the extreme limit of microscopy; you can not see anything smaller than an atom using visible light,” Professor Dave Kielpinski of Griffith University’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics in Brisbane, Australia.

“We wanted to investigate how few atoms are required to cast a shadow and we proved it takes just one,” Professor Kielpinski said.

Published this week in Nature Communications, “Absorption imaging of a single atom “is the result of work over the last 5 years by the Kielpinski/Streed research team….read more

kcool1: hwilsonart: Quick portrait of Richard Feynman, the...

scikc — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:31:26 -0500

kcool1:

hwilsonart:

Quick portrait of Richard Feynman, the Quantum man, and his feynman diagrams.

fuckyeahfeynman: Bit slow on the uptake with this one.. Feynman...

scikc — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:45:00 -0500

fuckyeahfeynman:

Bit slow on the uptake with this one..

Feynman diagrams of academic interaction. Link under image.

Physicists wary of junking light speed limit yet

scikc — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:09:00 -0400

Physicists wary of junking light speed limit yet:

Associated Press

GENEVA — Physicists on the team that measured particles traveling faster than light said Friday they were as surprised as their skeptics about the results, which appear to violate the laws of nature as we know them.

Hundreds of scientists packed an auditorium at one of the world’s foremost laboratories on the Swiss-French border to hear how a subatomic particle, the neutrino, was found to have outrun light and confounded the theories of Albert Einstein.

“To our great surprise we found an anomaly,” said Antonio Ereditato, who participated in the experiment and speaks on behalf of the team.

An anomaly is a mild way of putting it.

Going faster than light is something that is just not supposed to happen, according to Einstein’s 1905 special theory of relativity. The speed of light — 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) — has long been considered a cosmic speed limit.

The team — a collaboration between France’s National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research and Italy’s Gran Sasso National Laboratory — fired a neutrino beam 454 miles (730 kilometers) underground from Geneva to Italy.

They found it traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than light. That’s sixty billionth of a second, a time no human brain could register.

“You could say it’s peanuts, but it’s not. It’s something that we can measure rather accurately with a small uncertainty,” Ereditato told The Associated Press.

If the experiment is independently repeated — most likely by teams in the United States or Japan — then it would require a fundamental rethink of modern physics.

“Everybody knows that the speed limit is c, the speed of light. And if you find some matter particle such as the neutrino going faster than light, this is something which immediately shocks everybody, including us,” said Ereditato, a researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Physicists not involved in the experiment have been understandably skeptical.

Alvaro De Rujula, a theoretical physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside Geneva from where the neutron beam was fired, said he blamed the readings on a so-far undetected human error.

If not, and it’s a big if, the door would be opened to some wild possibilities.

The average person, said De Rujula, “could, in principle, travel to the past and kill their mother before they were born.”

But Ereditato and his team are wary of letting such science fiction story lines keep them up at night.

“We will continue our studies and we will wait patiently for the confirmation,” he told the AP. “Everybody is free to do what they want: to think, to claim, to dream.”

He added: “I’m not going to tell you my dreams.”

CERN: Light Speed May Have Been Exceeded By Subatomic...

scikc — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:59:00 -0400

CERN: Light Speed May Have Been Exceeded By Subatomic Particle

“GENEVA — One of the very pillars of physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity – that nothing can go faster than the speed of light – was rocked Thursday by new findings from one of the world’s foremost laboratories.

European researchers said they clocked an oddball type of subatomic particle called a neutrino going faster than the 186,282 miles per second that has long been considered the cosmic speed limit….

CERN reported that a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds. (A nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.)”

HOLY SHIT GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (click thru image for article)

Symphony of Science - The Quantum World! by melodysheep

scikc — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:00:05 -0400

Symphony of Science -

The Quantum World! by melodysheep

A High-Bandwidth Interplanetary Connection (click picture for...

scikc — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:04:00 -0400

A High-Bandwidth Interplanetary Connection

(click picture for link)

“A new study suggests that by twisting laser light, scientists could pack enough information into interplanetary beams to speed up extraterrestrial communications to the multi-gigabit level.…”

In an experiment reported in Science, researchers have observed...

scikc — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 09:22:58 -0400

In an experiment reported in Science, researchers have observed light behaving as both a wave and a particle (click through for article)…..

The Atom and Its Quantum Mirror Image: Physicists Experimentally...

scikc — Thu, 19 May 2011 12:09:00 -0400

The Atom and Its Quantum Mirror Image: Physicists Experimentally Produces Quantum-Superpositions, Simply Using a Mirror (click thru for ScienceDaily article)

_________

“This uncertainty about the state of the atom does not mean that the measurement lacks precision,” Jörg Schmiedmayer (TU Vienna) emphasizes. “It is a fundamental property of quantum physics: The particle is in both of the two possible states simultaneousely, it is in a superposition.” In the experiment the two motional states of the atom — one moving towards the mirror and the other moving away from the mirror — are then combined using Bragg diffraction from a grating made of laser light. Observing interference it can be directly shown that the atom has indeed been traveling both paths at once…”

freshphotons: “Dark Matters” by Jorge Cham.

scikc — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:34:12 -0400

freshphotons:

“Dark Matters” by Jorge Cham.

Holy snap, this is amazing.

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 09:23:30 -0400

:) Thanks!

‘The God Particle’: The Higgs Boson

scikc — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 11:24:00 -0400

‘The God Particle’: The Higgs Boson

Higgs Boson: One page explanation

scikc — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:06:45 -0400

Higgs Boson: One page explanation:

In 1993, the UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, challenged physicists to produce an answer that would fit on one page to the question ‘What is the Higgs boson, and why do we want to find it?’

The winning entries taken from Physics World Volume 6 Number 9, were by:

Mysterious 'Bump' in Data May Be New Elementary Particle

scikc — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:57:51 -0400

Mysterious 'Bump' in Data May Be New Elementary Particle:

Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are planning to announce Wednesday that they have found a suspicious bump in their data that could be evidence of a new elementary particle or even, some say, a new force of nature….

The key phrase, everyone agrees, is “if it holds up.” The experimenters estimate that there is a less than a quarter of 1 percent chance their bump is a statistical fluctuation, making it what physicists call a three-sigma result, enough to attract attention but not enough to claim an actual discovery. Three-sigma bumps, as every physicist knows, can come and go.

This diagram shows three basic actions. The first, a photon...

scikc — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:43:00 -0400

This diagram shows three basic actions. The first, a photon goes from place to place, is illustrated by the line from 5 to 6. The second, an electron goes from point A to point B in space-time, is illustrated by the lines from 1 to 5, 5 to 3, 2to 6, and 6 to 4. The third, an electron emits or absorbs a photon, is illustrated by the junctions at points 5 and 6.

So in simple terms, what does this diagram depict? It shows an electron, which starts out at 1 and moves through time-space to point 5, where it emits a photon, altering its path and moving along to point 3 where it goes off of the graph. Another electron starts out at point 2 where it travels through space-time to point 6 and absorbs the photon emitted by the first electron. Its path changes and it travels to point 4 where it leaves the graph.

A Feynman diagram of a positron and an electron annihilating...

scikc — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:03:00 -0500

A Feynman diagram of a positron and an electron annihilating into a virtual photon which then decays back into a positron and an electron via Pair Production.

Feynman Diagrams on Sixty Symbols ____ Assessing probabilities...

scikc — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:41:00 -0500

Feynman Diagrams on Sixty Symbols

____

Assessing probabilities of reactions between elementary particles.