Macroscopic Similarities in a Microscopic World

Berkeley Lab Technology Dramatically Speeds Up Searches of Large DatabasesJon Bashor

In the world of physics, one of the most elusive events is the creation and detection of “quark-gluon plasma,” the theorized atomic outcome of the “Big Bang” which could provide insight into the origins of the universe. By using experiments that involve millions of particle collisions, researchers hope to find unambiguous evidence of quark-gluon plasma.

It's not just about "mathematical abstraction" but of seeing what good it can be used for. One can be in denial about the prospects but while it gives perspective to current situations, in that it helps to direct thinking forward instead feeling as if "you are just floating in space without being able to move."

Helpless are we? Not considering flapping one's wings?

Imagine indeed then,  trying to orientate direction toward the spacecraft when "floating in space" seems like having to attempt to ride a bicycle for the first time, so one should  know we must balance ourselves while doing the appropriate movements directed to where we want to go. It's something that has to be learn in theoretical enterprise while still held to earth's environ?

There might be a middle way. String theory's mathematical tools were designed to unlock the most profound secrets of the cosmos, but they could have a far less esoteric purpose: to tease out the properties of some of the most complex yet useful types of material here on Earth.

Both string theorists and condensed matter physicists - those studying the properties of complex matter phases such as solids and liquids - are enthused by the development. "I am flabbergasted," says Jan Zaanen, a condensed matter theorist from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. "The theory is calculating precisely what we are seeing in experiments." See:What string theory is really good for

So how has this helped the idea of "minimum length?"

Using the anti–de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence to relate fermionic quantum critical fields to a gravitational problem, we computed the spectral functions of fermions in the field theory. By increasing the fermion density away from the relativistic quantum critical point, a state emerges with all the features of the Fermi liquid. See:String Theory, Quantum Phase Transitions, and the Emergent Fermi Liquid

So we have a beginning here for consideration within the frame work of Condense matter theorist state of existence? String theory is working along side of to direct the idea of matter formation?






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Our work is about comparing the data we collect in the STAR detector with modern calculations, so that we can write down equations on paper that exactly describe how the quark-gluon plasma behaves," says Jerome Lauret from Brookhaven National Laboratory. "One of the most important assumptions we've made is that, for very intense collisions, the quark-gluon plasma behaves according to hydrodynamic calculations in which the matter is like a liquid that flows with no viscosity whatsoever."

Proving that under certain conditions the quark-gluon plasma behaves according to such calculations is an exciting discovery for physicists, as it brings them a little closer to understanding how matter behaves at very small scales. But the challenge remains to determine the properties of the plasma under other conditions.

"We want to measure when the quark-gluon plasma behaves like a perfect fluid with zero viscosity, and when it doesn't," says Lauret. "When it doesn't match our calculations, what parameters do we have to change? If we can put everything together, we might have a model that reproduces everything we see in our detector." See:Probing the Perfect Liquid with the STAR Grid

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Looking back in time toward the beginning of our universe has been one of the things that have been occupying my time as I look through experimental procedures that have been developed. While LHC  provides a template of all the historical drama of science put forward,  it is also a platform in my mind for pushing forward perspective from "a beginning of time scenario" that helps us identify what happens in that formation. Helps us to orientate space and what happens to it.

It provides for me a place where we can talk about a large scale situation in terms of the universe as to what it contains to help motivate this universe to become what it is.

Cycle of Birth, Life, and Death-Origin, Indentity, and Destiny by Gabriele Veneziano

In one form or another, the issue of the ultimate beginning has engaged philosophers and theologians in nearly every culture. It is entwined with a grand set of concerns, one famously encapsulated in an 1897 painting by Paul Gauguin: D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?"

See here for more information.

So how did this process help orientate the things that were brought forward under the idea that the universe is a "cosmological box" that people want to talk about, while in my mind ,it became much more flexible topic when Venezianno began to talk about what came before. What existed outside that box. Abstractly, the box had six faces, to which direction of possibilities became part of the depth of this situation. It was a matter indeed of thinking outside the box.

I know that for some,  why waste one's time, but for me it is the motivator( not God as a creator, but of what actually propels this universe) and to what can exist now that draws my attention. It has been ever so slightly pushed "back in time" to see that the universe began with "microscopic processes that defines the state of the state of the universe in the way it is now." The LHC should be able to answer this although it is still restricted by the energy valuation given to this process.

A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor, cooled with liquid nitrogen. Theoretical physicists have now used string theory to describe the quantum-critical state of electrons that can lead to high-temperature superconductivity. (Credit: Mai-Linh Doan / Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) See:

Physical Reality Of String Theory Shown In Quantum-critical State Of Electrons

Quantum soup

But now, Zaanen, together with his colleagues Cubrovic and Schalm, are trying to change this situation, by applying string theory to a phenomenon that physicists, including Zaanen, have for the past fifteen years been unable to explain: the quantum-critical state of electrons. This special state occurs in a material just before it becomes superconductive at high temperature. Zaanen describes the quantum-critical state as a 'quantum soup', whereby the electrons form a collective independent of distances, where the electrons exhibit the same behaviour at small quantum mechanical scale or at macroscopic human scale.

See  Also:

Fermions and the AdS/CFT correspondence: quantum phase transitions and the emergent Fermi-liquid

A central mystery in quantum condensed matter physics is the zero temperature quantum phase transition between strongly renormalized Fermi-liquids as found in heavy fermion intermetallics and possibly high Tc superconductors. Field theoretical statistical techniques are useless because of the fermion sign problem, but we will present here results showing that the mathematics of string theory is capable of describing fermionic quantum critical states. Using the Anti-de-Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence to relate fermionic quantum critical fields to a gravitational problem, we compute the spectral functions of fermions in the field theory. Deforming away from the relativistic quantum critical point by increasing the fermion density we show that a state emerges with all the features of the Fermi-liquid. Tuning the scaling dimensions of the critical fermion fields we find that the quasiparticle disappears at a quantum phase transition of a purely statistical nature, not involving any symmetry change. These results are obtained by computing the solutions of a classical Dirac equation in an AdS space time containing a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole, where the information regarding Fermi-Dirac statistics in the field theory is processed by quasi-normal Dirac modes at the outer horizon.