World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine? | ASTOUNDE.com Can this machine operate forever? Since at least the 12th century, man has sought to create a perpetual motion machine; a device that would continue working indefinitely without any external source of energy. A large scientific contingent thinks such a device would violate the laws of thermodynamics, and is thus impossible. Could it be that as a race, we don’t fully understand the laws of physics and such a device may indeed be possible? Norwegian artist and mathematician Reidar Finsrud is an outside the box thinker that has devised a machine that he believes achieves true perpetual motion. The dream is that if we’re able to produce perpetual motion machines, that we’d have tapped into the holy grail of sustainability: an infinite energy source. A device that requires no input to run that could be affixed to a generator would harvest free energy to power whatever we so pleased. What are your thoughts? Source: Finsrud Comments comments
This Will Mindfuck You: The Double-Slit Experiment The video below shows scientific proof that there is something NOT quite logical or scientific about this universe. The mere act of observation can completely change the outcome of an event! Before I get too ahead of myself, you need to watch the video below to understand: (Forgive the corny cartoon character explaining the concept — at least he knows his stuff) Recap: When a camera observed the electrons, they acted as particles. So what’s the reason for this? Want even further proof? Then in 2002, a group of researchers set up the experiment in a way that the electron could not possibly receive information about the existence of an observing instrument. Here’s the kicker: The insertion of the interferometer took only 40 nanoseconds (ns) while it would take 160 ns for the information about the configuration to travel from the interferometer to reach the photon before it entered the slits. The Results: The photons acted like particles 93% of the time that they were observed. 1. 2. 3.
Welcome to 2035…the Age of Surprise (Credit: USAF) The U.S. Air Force just released today a jaw-droppingly impressive, fast-paced video on accelerating change, “Welcome to 2035…the Age of Surprise” (see video below). Produced by the U.S. “We can predict broad outlines, but we don’t know the ramifications,” the video says. Blue Horizons: air, space, and cyberspace in 20 years The last major internal study of the future, Air Force 2025 , was done at Air University in 1996 where over 260 officers worked through the research that led to a multi-volume report outlining alternative futures and technologies required for those complicated and dangerous worlds. The Blue Horizons study is designed to answer questions similar to those addressed in the Air Force 2025 study. Blue Horizons 2007 was only the beginning of a series of annual long range vision studies which are known collectively as “Blue Horizons.” (Watch for our forthcoming blog post, “Billion Year Plan,” by one of the originators of the Blue Horizons project, USAF Lt.
Physicists Achieve Quantum Teleportation of Photon Over 25 Kilometers For the first time, a team of physicists have successfully teleported a quantum state of a photon to a crystal over 25 kilometers away through a fiber optic cable. This effectively showed that the photon’s quantum state, not its composition, is important to the teleportation process. The team was led by Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva and the results were published in the journal Nature Photonics. The quantum state of the photon is able to preserve information under extreme conditions, including the difference between traveling as light or becoming stored in the crystal like matter. To test this and ensure what they were observing was actually happening, one photon was stored in a crystal while the other was sent along optical fiber, over a distance of 25 kilometers. The photon did not physically “teleport” as we are used to hearing about in science fiction, where someone’s body can moved from place to place in a matter of seconds.
Hawking Radiation Recreated In A Laboratory A researcher claims to have produced a simulation of Hawking radiation, which if true will give physicists the chance to test one of Stephen Hawking's most significant predictions. In 1974, Hawking upended ideas about black holes with his theory that just outside the event horizon, particle-antiparticle pairs should appear as a result of the black hole's gravitational field. One of these would be drawn into the hole, but the other escape. Hawking's equations have won widespread support from physicists, and are a major contributor to his reputation. Now Professor Jeff Steinhauer of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology claims to be getting close. The fluctuations occur in pairs, modelling the particle-antiparticle pairs appearing around a black hole. In Nature, Steinhauer reported, “the observation of Hawking radiation emitted by this black-hole analogue.” Cowen notes that it is still unclear how well Steinhauer's creation models a real black hole. Image CC BY-SA 2.5
When Parallel Worlds Collide . . . Quantum Mechanics Is Born Parallel universes – worlds where the dinosaur-killing asteroid never hit, or where Australia was colonised by the Portuguese – are a staple of science fiction. But are they real? In a radical paper published this week in Physical Review X, we (Dr Michael Hall and I from Griffith University and Dr Dirk-André Deckert from the University of California) propose not only that parallel universes are real, but that they are not quite parallel – they can “collide”. In our theory, the interaction between nearby worlds is the source of all of the bizarre features of quantum mechanics that are revealed by experiment. Many worlds in existing interpretations The existence of parallel worlds in quantum mechanics is not a new idea in itself – they are a feature of one of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics, the 1957 “many worlds interpretation” (MWI). First, its formalism is extremely remote from everyday experience. Heads or tails? Many interacting worlds Implications and applications
Researchers at Brown University shattered an electron wave function A team of physicists based at Brown University has succeeded in shattering a quantum wave function. That near-mythical representation of indeterminate reality, in which an unmeasured particle is able to occupy many states simultaneously, can be dissected into many parts. This dissection, which is described this week in the Journal of Low Temperature Physics, has the potential to turn how we view the quantum world on its head. When we say some element of the quantum world occupies many states at once, what’s really being referred to is the element’s wave function. A wave function can be viewed as a space occupied simultaneously by many different possibilities or degrees of freedom. If a particle could be in position (x,y,z) in three-dimensional space, there are probabilities that it could specifically be at (x1,y1,z1) or (x2,y2,z2) and so forth, and this is represented in the wave function, which is all of these possibilities added together.
Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics Physicists reported this week the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality. “This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work. The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. “The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling,” said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and an author of the first of two papers detailing the new idea. Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time.
Quantum Effects in Biology | Controlled Quantum Dynamics Group Biologists do not take a quantum physics course during their studies because so far they were able to make sense of biological phenomena without using the counterintuitive laws of physics that govern the atomic scale. However, in recent years progress in experimental technology has revealed that quantum phenomena are relevant for fundamental biological processes such as photosynthesis, magneto-reception and olfaction. We have helped to initiate the development of this research field and are now working to discover how nature is harnessing quantum dynamics to optimize biological function. S.F. Environment assisted quantum bio-dynamics: It is remarkable that quantum phenomena can play a role in warm, wet and noisy biological systems. Environment assisted quantum bio-dynamics: Biological environments are not creating white noise but do actually possess considerable structure. J.M.
Discovery of Time Crystals Could Radically Change Our Understanding of the Space-Time Continuum Consider a structure that moves not in space but time, crystals that change shape and move perpetually without energy, and always return to their original state. Such a structure would break the second law of thermodynamics, a cardinal rule of physics. Yet, in 2012, Nobel Laurette and theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek imagined them, what he called time crystals. Their movement isn’t of their own accord. Why crystals? Space and time being related, Wilczek wondered if there were crystals who broke the temporal symmetry of nature as well. Time crystals move continually due to a “break in the symmetry of time.” The late theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek. A recent paper showed that they might in fact be possible. In the University of Maryland experiment, researchers took 10 ytterbium ions whose electron spins were entangled, and used a laser to create a magnetic field around them. Consider a Jell-O mold resting on a plate. To learn more about time crystals, click here:
Quantum batteries could allow for super-fast charging thanks to entanglement This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use. As mobile devices get more powerful, they also burn through batteries at an ever increasing rate. Capacities have been inching upward over the years, but one of the biggest improvements has been fast-charging technologies like Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 and Oppo’s VOOC. However, physicists have discovered a way that future batteries could charge at warp speed by leveraging quantum entanglement. You’re probably familiar with quantum bits (qubits) to some degree from all the news about quantum computing in recent years. The trick to getting super-fast charging times out of a quantum battery is that all of these wits can (theoretically) be entangled during the charging process. This is still only a theoretical model of a battery, though. It’s going to take a lot more research to make quantum batteries that utilize entanglement to speed up charging a reality.
Quantum Breakthrough: Physicists Have Once More Created Time Crystals Out of Balance Time crystals are strange. At the very least, they are a contradiction. A time crystal is quantum phenomenon that demonstrates movement while remaining in its ground, or lowest energy, state. When the idea of a time crystal was proposed in 2012 by physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, it was only a theoretical possibility that would challenge many of the laws of physics. Now, two separate teams of researchers from the University of Maryland and Harvard University have reported their success at making time crystals. A New State of Matter The University of Maryland’s time crystal research team was led by Chris Monroe. To maintain this movement, the team alternately hit the ytterbium ions with one laser to create a magnetic field and a second laser to flip the spins of the atoms partially. Meanwhile, the Harvard team, led by Mikhail Lukin, developed their time crystal using densely packed nitrogen vacancy centers found in diamonds.
Dark Energy May Be Incompatible With String Theory On June 25, Timm Wrase awoke in Vienna and groggily scrolled through an online repository of newly posted physics papers. One title startled him into full consciousness. The paper, by the prominent string theorist Cumrun Vafa of Harvard University and collaborators, conjectured a simple formula dictating which kinds of universes are allowed to exist and which are forbidden, according to string theory. But now, Vafa and his colleagues were conjecturing that in the string landscape, universes like ours — or what ours is thought to be like — don’t exist. After dropping his kindergartner off that morning, Wrase went to work at the Vienna University of Technology, where his colleagues were also buzzing about the paper. Researchers have set to work trying to test the conjecture and explore its implications. Dark Energy in Question In addition, it looks like the amount of dark energy infused in empty space stays constant over time (as best anyone can tell). Inflation Under Siege
Closed Loophole Confirms the Unreality of the Quantum World The theoretical physicist John Wheeler once used the phrase “great smoky dragon” to describe a particle of light going from a source to a photon counter. “The mouth of the dragon is sharp, where it bites the counter. The tail of the dragon is sharp, where the photon starts,” Wheeler wrote. Wheeler was espousing the view that elementary quantum phenomena are not real until observed, a philosophical position called anti-realism. But in May, Rafael Chaves and colleagues at the International Institute of Physics in Natal, Brazil, found a loophole. Chaves’s team then proposed a twist to Wheeler’s experiment to test the loophole. Dragon Trap Wheeler devised his experiment in 1983 to highlight one of the dominant conceptual conundrums in quantum mechanics: wave-particle duality. The phenomenon is underscored by a special case of the famous double-slit experiment called the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. In the experiment, a single photon is fired at a half-silvered mirror, or beam splitter.