Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Old News Can Still Be New Information

Getting a handle on Symmetries is an always work in progress for me, so as to keep abreast of the science and the theoretic involved.

Why has Physics Today's news coverage of string theory been so sparse?

Given string theory's high ambition to account for all nature's forces and particles, given the number of string theorists working to achieve that ambition, and given the general public's interest in string theory, two stories in seven years might seem low. But is it? (See above link)

So traveling back in time,  one can move forward.


Nambu - Credit: Univeristy of Chicago
Kobayashi - Credit: KEK
Maskawa - Credit: Yukawa Institute, Kyoto University
Nambu
Kobayashi
Maskawa

Spontaneous symmetry breaking

Introduced into particle physics by Nambu in 1960, spontaneous symmetry breaking was to become a pillar of the field’s standard model, which since its completion in the mid-1970s has survived every experimental challenge. When a physical state does not exhibit all the symmetries of the dynamical laws that govern it, the violated symmetries are said to be spontaneously broken.
The idea had been around for a long time in classical mechanics, fluid dynamics, and condensed-matter physics. An oft-cited example is ferromagne­tism. Its underlying laws of atomic physics are absolutely invariant under rotation. Nonetheless, below a critical temperature the atomic spins spontaneously line up in some arbitrary direction to create a state that is not rotationally symmetric. Similarly, the cylindrical symmetry of a state in which a pencil is perfectly poised on its tip is spontaneously broken when the pencil inevitably falls over. But such examples give little hint of the subtlety and power of the notion once Nambu began exploiting it in quantum field theory.
It began with a paper Nambu wrote in 1959 about gauge invariance in superconductivity.1 The paper exhibits his virtuosity in two disparate specialties—quantum field theory and condensed-matter theory. He became conversant with both as a graduate student at the University of Tokyo after he was mustered out of the army in 1945. Eventually he began working with the group around Sin-itiro Tomonaga, one of the creators of modern quantum electrodynamics (QED). Tomonaga was actually based at another university in Tokyo. But the University of Tokyo was strong in condensed-matter physics. So Nambu started out working on the Ising model of ferromagnetism.
After two years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Nambu came to the University of Chicago in 1954, just before the untimely death of Enrico Fermi. When John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer published their theory of superconductivity in 1957, Nambu and others noted that the BCS superconducting ground state lacked the gauge invariance of the underlying electromagnetic theory. In classical electrodynamics, gauge invariance refers to the freedom one has in choosing the vector and scalar potentials. In QED that freedom is linked to the freedom to change the phase of the electron wavefunction arbitrarily from point to point in space. Did the gauge-symmetry violation mean that the BCS theory was simply wrong? Or perhaps superconductivity was a manifestation of some yet unknown force beyond electromagnetism and atomic physics.
Having heard Schrieffer give a talk about the new theory in 1957 without mentioning gauge invariance, Nambu spent the next two years thinking about its role in the theory. He recast the BCS theory into the perturbative quantum-field-theoretic formalism with which Richard Feynman had solved—independently of Tomonaga—the problem of the intractable infinities in QED. From that reformulation, Nambu concluded that the superconducting ground state results from the spontaneous breaking of the underlying gauge symmetry. He showed that all the characteristic manifestations of superconductivity—including the expulsion of magnetic flux and the energy gap that assures lossless current flow—follow simply from that spontaneous symmetry breaking.
See:Physics Nobel Prize to Nambu, Kobayashi, and Maskawa for theories of symmetry breaking by Bertram Schwarzschild Physics Today and references cited in article below.

  1. 1. Y. Nambu, Phys. Rev. 117, 648 (1960) [SPIN].
  2. 2. Y. Nambu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 4, 380 (1960) [SPIN].
  3. 3. Y. Nambu, G. Jona-Lasinio, Phys. Rev. 122, 345 (1961) [SPIN]; 124, 246 (1961) [SPIN].
  4. 4. P. W. Anderson, Phys. Rev. 130, 439 (1963) [SPIN].
  5. 5. F. Englert, R. Brout, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 321 (1964) [SPIN]; P. W. Higgs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 508 (1964) [SPIN]; G. S. Guralelnik, C. R. Hagen, T. W. B. Kibble, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 585 (1964) [SPIN].
  6. 6. S. Weinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 19, 1264 (1967) [SPIN].
  7. 7. M. Kobayashi, T. Maskawa, Prog. Theor. Phys. 49, 652 (1973) .
  8. 8. S. L. Glashow, J. Iliopoulos, L. Maiani, Phys. Rev. D 2, 1285 (1970) [SPIN].

Monday, September 06, 2010

Utopia

Woodcut by Ambrosius Holbein for a 1518 edition of Utopia. The lower left-hand corner shows the traveler Raphael Hythlodaeus, describing the island.
Utopia (pronounced /juːˈtoʊpiə/) is a name for an ideal community or society possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system.[1] The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempted to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. It has spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopia.
The word comes from the Greek: οὐ, "not", and τόπος, "place", indicating that More was utilizing the concept as allegory and did not consider such an ideal place to be realistically possible. The English homophone Eutopia, derived from the Greek εὖ, "good" or "well", and τόπος, "place", signifies a double meaning.
It got my historical dithers up so as to pin down points of views that may have inspired cultures to look for new lands beyond the realms of thought each society was used too, and "hoped for" in some better form.

Utopia (book)

Utopia  
Isola di Utopia Moro.jpg
Illustration for the 1516 first edition of Utopia.
Author Thomas More
Translator Ralph Robinson
Gilbert Burnet
Country Seventeen Provinces, Leuven
Language Latin
Publication date 1516
Published in
English
1551
Pages 134
ISBN 978-1-907727-28-3
Utopia (in full: Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia) is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516. English translations of the title include A Truly Golden Little Book, No Less Beneficial Than Entertaining, of the Best State of a Republic, and of the New Island Utopia (literal) and A Fruitful and Pleasant Work of the Best State of a Public Weal, and of the New Isle Called Utopia (traditional).[1] (See "title" below.) The book, written in Latin, is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs.
Despite modern connotations of the word "utopia," it is widely accepted that the society More describes in this work was not actually his own "perfect society." Rather he wished to use the contrast between the imaginary land's unusual political ideas and the chaotic politics of his own day as a platform from which to discuss social issues in Europe.

Why quest for new lands, planets for living?

Bacon's Utopia: The New Atlantis

Quote:
In 1623 Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideals in The New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" were the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of Bensalem. In this work, he portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organization of his ideal college, "Solomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science.

City of the Sun

Tommaso Campanella- See also:The City of the Sun

What contributions were idealistic set before those who signed the documents that one would have found reference from Raphael toward the Stanza's of the signatore's room in Rome?

The Room of the Segnatura contains Raphael's most famous frescoes. Besides being the first work executed by the great artist in the Vatican they mark the beginning of the high Renaissance. The room takes its name from the highest court of the Holy See, the "Segnatura Gratiae et Iustitiae", which was presided over by the pontiff and used to meet in this room around the middle of the 16th century. Originally the room was used by Julius II (pontiff from 1503 to 1513) as a library and private office. The iconographic programme of the frescoes, which were painted between 1508 and 1511, is related to this function. See Raphael Rooms

You had to understand the setting and the historical drama set forth?



School of Athens by Raphael


So to set this up some background was needed?

Quote:
Plato and Aristotle, Up and Down by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. 
Rafael has Plato pointing up and Aristotle gesturing down to indicate the difference in their metaphysics. For Plato, true existence is in the World of Forms, in relation to which this world (of Becoming) is a kind of shadow or image of the higher reality. Aristotle, on the other hand, regards individual objects in this world as "primary substance" and dismisses Plato's Forms -- except for God as a pure actuality, without matter.

However, when it comes to ethics and politics, the gestures should be reversed. Plato, like Socrates, believed that to do the good without error, one must know what the good is. Thus, we get the dramatic moment in the Republic where Plato says that philosophers, who have escaped from the Cave and come to understand the higher reality, must be forced to return to this world and rule, so that their wisdom can benefit the state. Aristotle, on the other hand, says that the "good" is simply the goal of various particular activities, without one meaning in Plato's sense. The particular activities of most human affairs involve phronésis, "practical wisdom." This is not sophía, true wisdom, for Aristotle, which involves the theoretical knowledge of the highest things, i.e. the gods, the heavens, and God.

Thus, for philosophy, Aristotle should point up and would represent a contemplative attitude that was certainly more congenial to religious practices in the Middle Ages. By the same token, Aristotle's contribution to what we now think of as science was hampered by his lack of interest in mathematics. Although Aristotle in general had a more empirical and experimental attitude than Plato, modern science did not come into its own until Plato's Pythagorean confidence in the mathematical nature of the world returned with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. For instance, Aristotle, relying on a theory of opposites that is now only of historical interest, rejected Plato's attempt to match the Platonic Solids with the elements -- while Plato's expectations are realized in mineralogy and crystallography, where the Platonic Solids occur naturally.

Therefore, caution is in order when comparing the meaning of the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle with its significance for their attitudes towards ethics, politics, and science. Indeed, if the opposite of wisdom is, not ignorance, but folly, then Socrates and Plato certainly started off with the better insight.


Hope I didn't bore you with precursors of "new thoughts of how differing societies were formed?  How one may of attained such insight by helping one to realize the choice we have about how those new societies may have inspired?

Of course, "a science" evolved from it all?

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The Universe Time Travel

The mystery of time travel is explored as we embark on an adventure to reveal if traveling into the future will one day be a reality. Next we examine if traveling into the past will have bizarre consequences. Finally, are scientists on the verge of discovering an Earth-like planet within the next few years?


The Universe: Time Travel

Clifford gives a heads up, as well some appearances in the production of.

I have always been fascinated by the Time travel scenarios as they have been presented in story form. I do appreciate the subtleties of the proper interpretations as sciences knows it in context of it's proper form.

I just noticed that last week’s episode of The Universe on Time Travel, which I told you about here and here, is available online on their website. Click here to learn more about the ins and outs of it, and I show you how to make one too! Kind of.Clifford of Asymptotia
***
See Also

Gott Time?

TimeSpeak

Time is Like a River

Monday, August 23, 2010

Quantum Computing

Towards quantum chemistry on a quantum computer

B. P. Lanyon1,2, J. D. Whitfield4, G. G. Gillett1,2, M. E. Goggin1,5, M. P. Almeida1,2, I. Kassal4, J. D. Biamonte4,6, M. Mohseni4,6, B. J. Powell1,3, M. Barbieri1,2,6, A. Aspuru-Guzik4 & A. G. White1,2

Abstract

Exact first-principles calculations of molecular properties are currently intractable because their computational cost grows exponentially with both the number of atoms and basis set size. A solution is to move to a radically different model of computing by building a quantum computer, which is a device that uses quantum systems themselves to store and process data. Here we report the application of the latest photonic quantum computer technology to calculate properties of the smallest molecular system: the hydrogen molecule in a minimal basis. We calculate the complete energy spectrum to 20 bits of precision and discuss how the technique can be expanded to solve large-scale chemical problems that lie beyond the reach of modern supercomputers. These results represent an early practical step toward a powerful tool with a broad range of quantum-chemical applications.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Cymatics and the Heart Song

I think one has to wonder with such diversities of souls who have entered this world, such distinctions of being identified as a "emergent product of all souls" might have a distinctive element with which lives could have been choreographed. Each soul, manifests according to their Heart Song? :)Each Heart Song is carried through a series of many lives? Each Heart Song,manifests according the conceptual acceptances and digestibility of our grokking, according to each circumstance that surrounds that life?



I just finish spending the last 8 days with two of my seven grandchildren. One had passed just a couple of days after being born.

Yes "Happy feet" has become a intricate part of my days visiting as these children are mesmerized by the hearts songs and uniqueness of being borne learning to tap instead of singing. It's trials and tribulations of being different.
See:It's a Penquin?
Biology sees no possible reduction to the physics of thinking,  that I have to wonder if they might of thought of the correlation here, as distinctive elements have distinctive sounds?

It's an anologistical way of looking at the space of thinking(mind /body) to have it coincide with somethng inherent in our make up.  Some thing that is correlative to what strides the thinking mind makes and what resonances in the world are set up for each soul distinctive?  Each soul's cause and effect,  bringing home to roost the conceptually formed resonances that have been formed " by grokking and digestibility.

For example, in 1704 Sir Isaac Newton struggled to devise mathematical formulas to equate the vibrational frequency of sound waves with a corresponding wavelength of light. He failed to find his hoped-for translation algorithm, but the idea of correspondence took root, and the first practical application of it appears to be the clavecin oculaire, an instrument that played sound and light simultaneously. It was invented in 1725. Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus, achieved the same effect with a harpsichord and lanterns in 1790, although many others were built in the intervening years, on the same principle, where by a keyboard controlled mechanical shutters from behind which colored lights shne. By 1810 even Goethe was expounding correspondences between color and other senses in his book, Theory of Color. Pg 53, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, by Richard E. Cytowic, M.D.

So to then in my thinking that before each soul crystallizes it's hold on the reality of being in this world,  that each soul was in a much different state. A state that the senses held no distinctions other then too, sense "all things" as connected to each other.  The differentiations were our attempts to acceptance of living within this world that it should have it;s compartments for sensory outputs distinctive themselves. See:Soul Food

***



 ***

Cymatics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Resonance made visible with black seeds on a harpsichord sounboard
Cornstarch and water solution under the influence of sine wave vibration
Amplified sine wave's effects on cornstarch & water solution
Cymatics (from Greek: κῦμα "wave") is the study of visible sound and vibration, a subset of modal phenomena. Typically the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane is vibrated, and regions of maximum and minimum displacement are made visible in a thin coating of particles, paste, or liquid.[1] Different patterns emerge in the exitatory medium depending on the geometry of the plate and the driving frequency.
The apparatus employed can be simple, such as a Chladni Plate[2] or advanced such as the CymaScope, a laboratory instrument that makes visible the inherent geometries within sound and music.[clarification needed]

Contents


Etymology

The generic term for this field of science is the study of modal phenomena, retitled Cymatics by Hans Jenny, a Swiss medical doctor and a pioneer in this field. The word Cymatics derives from the Greek 'kuma' meaning 'billow' or 'wave,' to describe the periodic effects that sound and vibration has on matter.

History

The study of the patterns produced by vibrating bodies has a venerable history. One of the earliest to notice that an oscillating body displayed regular patterns was Galileo Galilei. In Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), he wrote:
As I was scraping a brass plate with a sharp iron chisel in order to remove some spots from it and was running the chisel rather rapidly over it, I once or twice, during many strokes, heard the plate emit a rather strong and clear whistling sound: on looking at the plate more carefully, I noticed a long row of fine streaks parallel and equidistant from one another. Scraping with the chisel over and over again, I noticed that it was only when the plate emitted this hissing noise that any marks were left upon it; when the scraping was not accompanied by this sibilant note there was not the least trace of such marks.[3]
On July 8, 1680, Robert Hooke was able to see the nodal patterns associated with the modes of vibration of glass plates. Hooke ran a bow along the edge of a glass plate covered with flour, and saw the nodal patterns emerge.[4][5]

In 1787, Ernst Chladni repeated the work of Robert Hooke and published "Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges" ("Discoveries in the Theory of Sound"). In this book, Chladni describes the patterns seen by placing sand on metal plates which are made to vibrate by stroking the edge of the plate with a bow.
Cymatics was explored by Hans Jenny in his 1967 book, Kymatik (translated Cymatics).[6] Inspired by systems theory and the work of Ernst Chladni, Jenny began an investigation of periodic phenomena but especially the visual display of sound. He used standing waves, piezoelectric amplifiers, and other methods and materials.

Influences in art

Hans Jenny's book influenced Alvin Lucier and, along with Chladni, helped lead to Lucier's composition Queen of the South. Jenny's work was also followed up by Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) founder Gyorgy Kepes at MIT. [7] His work in this area included an acoustically vibrated piece of sheet metal in which small holes had been drilled in a grid. Small flames of gas burned through these holes and thermodynamic patterns were made visible by this setup.

Based on work done in this field, photographer Alexander Lauterwasser captures imagery of water surfaces set into motion by sound sources ranging from pure sine waves, to music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Karlheinz Stockhausen, electroacoustic group Kymatik(who often record in surround sound ambisonics), and overtone singing.



Rosslyn Chapel's carvings are thought to contain references to Cymatics patterns and in 2005 composer Stuart Mitchell and his father T.J.Mitchell created a work realised by the use of matching Cymatics/Chladni patterns to the 13 geometric symbols carved onto the faces of 213 cubes emanating from 14 arches. They have named the completed work The Rosslyn Motet and has received a great deal of media publicity and acclaim from scientific and musicological sources.

See also

References

  1. ^ Jenny, Hans (July 2001). Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena & Vibration (3rd ed.). Macromedia Press. ISBN 1-8881-3807-6. 
  2. ^ "Instructional Research Lab: Chladni Plate". University of California, Los Angeles. http://www.physics.ucla.edu/demoweb/demomanual/acoustics/effects_of_sound/chladni_plate.html. Retrieved 3 September 2009. 
  3. ^ Good Vibrations, Joyce McLaughlin, American Scientist, July-August 1998, Volume: 86 Number: 4 Page: 342, DOI: 10.1511/1998.4.342
  4. ^ Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, Institute for Learning Technologies, Columbia University
  5. ^ Pg 101 Oxford Dictionary of Scientists- Oxford University Press- 1999
  6. ^ Jenny, Hans (1967). Kymatik. ISBN 1-888138-07-6
  7. ^ Gyorgy Kepes profile at MIT

 External links


Thursday, August 12, 2010

Dark Matter

(Click on Image)


Friedman Equation What is pdensity.

What are the three models of geometry? k=-1, K=0, k+1

Negative curvature

Omega=the actual density to the critical density
If we triangulate Omega, the universe in which we are in, Omegam(mass)+ Omega(a vacuum), what position geometrically, would our universe hold from the coordinates given?  

See Also:
***


I am not sure if it is proper to take such expressions of dark energy and dark matter as they are perceived in the universe and apply them to a "dynamical movement of a kind,"  as an expression of that Universe?

Part of that "Toposense" you might say?




***
IN their figure 2. Hyperbolic space, and their comparative relation to the M.C.Escher's Circle Limit woodcut, Klebanov and Maldacena write, " but we have replaced Escher's interlocking fish with cows to remind readers of the physics joke about the spherical cow as an idealization of a real one. In anti-de Sitter/conformal theory correspondence, theorists have really found a hyperbolic cow."

Click on image for larger version. See:Solving quantum field theories via curved spacetimes by Igor R. Klebanov and Juan M. Maldacena

See:

Sunday, August 08, 2010

She Returns


Most readers of this blog who have been around for sometime will recognize some of the pictures of Wildlife that have appeared around our property over the last couple of years.



Well the lady is back again this year, and what makes this little lady's visit a little extraordinary is that we had constructed a fence around our two acres, to stop the bears from coming in while we were outside, unaware.

If you count careful you will see three little ones


What also makes this unusual is two things. One, that the Mrs had left the front gate open for a satellite repair guy to help realign the dish to the proper coordinates, and that sometime during this,  momma and three of her cubs came to enter the area.



As our dog started to bark, and after the Mrs. had closed the front gate did she soon realize that the ruckus in the back was the mother bear and her three cubs. So while she had been outside, and while the satellite guy was working,  the trio and momma were in the vicinity without being noticed.








 I think two of the little ones take after Dad


See:

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Space Weather

3-day Solar-Geophysical Forecast issued Aug 07 22:00 UTC

Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be very low to low with C-class flares likely from Region 1093 and 1095 (S18E19). A chance of M-class activity is possible from Region 1093.
Geophysical Activity Forecast: Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be mostly quiet with an isolated chance of unsettled levels during the next three days (08 - 10 August). See: Today's Space Weather
 ***

Solar flares are classified as A, B, C, M or X according to the peak flux (in watts per square meter, W/m2) of 100 to 800 picometer X-rays near Earth, as measured on the GOES−4 W/m2. Within a class there is a linear scale from 1 to 9, so an X2 flare is twice as powerful as an X1 flare, and is four times more powerful than an M5 flare. The more powerful M and X class flares are often associated with a variety of effects on the near-Earth space environment. Although the GOES classification is commonly used to indicate the size of a flare, it is only one measure. This extended logarithmic earthquakes show similar power-law[3]
 ***


Michel Tournay,
Chisasibi, Quebec, Canada
Aug. 4, 2010
 
The whole sky was green, purple, I had a hard time deciding where to aim my cameras! Here are 3 pictures taken from a long series to make an animation of the movement. Nikon D3s , 10 000 ASA, 10.5 mm f2.8 set at full frame to get wider than the Dx format ! the last one was taken with a Nikon D3 with a 28mm f1.4 at 3200 ASA See: Aurora Photo Gallery 2010

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Lighting up the dark universe


Image ...
The CHASE detector. The end of the magnet (orange) can be seen on the right.

Exploring our dark universe is often the domain of extreme physics. Traces of dark matter particles are searched for by huge neutrino telescopes located underwater or under Antarctic ice, by scientists at powerful particle colliders, and deep underground.  Clues to mysterious dark energy will be investigated using big telescopes on Earth and experiments that will be launched into space.
But an experiment doesn’t have to be exotic to explore the unexplained. At the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which ended today in Paris, scientists unveiled the first results from the GammeV-CHASE experiment, which used 30 hours’ worth of data from a 10-meter-long experiment to place the world’s best limits on the existence of dark energy particles.
CHASE, which stands for Chameleon Afterglow Search, was constructed at Fermilab to search for hypothetical particles called chameleons. Physicists theorize that these particles may be responsible for the dark energy that is causing the accelerating expansion of our universe.

“One of the reasons I felt strongly about doing this experiment is that it was a good example of a laboratory experiment to test dark energy models,” says CHASE scientist Jason Steffen, who presented the results at ICHEP. “Astronomical surveys are important as well, but they’re not going to tell us everything.” CHASE was a successor to Fermilab’s GammeV experiment, which searched for chameleon particles and another hypothetical particle called the axion.

See: Lighting up the dark universe by Katie Yurkewicz Posted in ICHEP 2010

See Also:Backreaction: Detection of Dark Energy on Earth? - Improbable

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Probing the early and present Universe with Planck



Date: 05 Jul 2010
Satellite: Planck
Copyright: ESA, HFI and LFI consortia 


This multi-colour all-sky image of the microwave sky has been synthesized using data spanning the full frequency range of Planck, which covers the electromagnetic spectrum from 30 to 857 GHz.

The grainy structure of the CMB, with its tiny temperature fluctuations reflecting the primordial density variations from which the cosmic web originated, is clearly visible in the high-latitude regions of the map, where the foreground contribution is not predominant - this is highlighted in the top inset, from the 'first light' survey.See: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=47343

***