Quantum paradox directly observed -- a milestone in quantum mechanics

In quantum mechanics, a vanguard of physics where science often merges into philosophy, much of our understanding is based on conjecture and probabilities, but a group of researchers in Japan has moved one of the fundamental paradoxes in quantum mechanics into the lab for experimentation and observed some of the 'spooky action of quantum mechanics' directly.

Hardy's Paradox, the axiom that we cannot make inferences about past events that haven't been directly observed while also acknowledging that the very act of observation affects the reality we seek to unearth, poses a conundrum that quantum physicists have sought to overcome for decades.

How do you observe quantum mechanics, atomic and sub-atomic systems that are so small-scale they cannot be described in classical terms, when the act of looking at them changes them permanently?

References

Kazuhiro Yokota, Takashi Yamamoto, Masato Koashi and Nobuyuki Imoto.

Direct observation of Hardy's paradox by joint weak measurement with an entangled photon pair.

2009 New J. Phys. 11 033011

Hope Launches World's First Beatles MA

Liverpool Hope University has launched a brand new MA in The Beatles, Popular Music and Society, the first of its kind in the world.

Why Skilled Immigrants Are Leaving the U.S. ?

As the debate over H-1B workers and skilled immigrants intensifies, we are losing sight of one important fact: The U.S. is no longer the only land of opportunity. If we don't want the immigrants who have fueled our innovation and economic growth, they now have options elsewhere. Immigrants are returning home in greater numbers. And new research shows they are returning to enjoy a better quality of life, better career prospects, and the comfort of being close to family and friends.

Eastwood da gracias a Francia mientras Cannes le rinde tributo

Clint Eastwood dio las gracias al cine francés después de que el Festival de Cine de Cannes le diera el premio a toda su carrera a la leyenda de Hollywood, quien presenta a los 78 años su nueva película.

Quantum Darwinism ( by Wojciech Hubert Zurek )

Quantum Darwinism describes the proliferation, in the environment, of multiple records of selected states of a quantum system. It explains how the quantum fragility of a state of a single quantum system can lead to the classical robustness of states in their correlated multitude; shows how effective 'wave-packet collapse' arises as a result of the proliferation throughout the environment of imprints of the state of the system; and provides a framework for the derivation of Born's rule, which relates the probabilities of detecting states to their amplitudes. Taken together, these three advances mark considerable progress towards settling the quantum measurement problem.

Darwin and Physics ?

Darwin and physics ?: The relevance of Darwin's ideas in physics, the wider context of Darwin's legacy and the controversy that rumbles on are explored in a special collection of articles marking the anniversary of the theory of evolution.

It is not obviously the business of a physics journal to mark the anniversary of a major development in biology. But the repercussions of Darwin's theory of evolution are relevant to all.

Why Doctors Hate Science ?

Thank God doctors in the United States are free to treat patients as they deem best, free from interference by faceless bureaucrats.

If bureaucrats were in charge, physicians might have to prescribe the newest hypertension drugs as a first-line therapy,

do MRIs to diagnose back pain and give regular Pap tests to women who have had total hysterectomies. Oh, wait—they do. All these medical practices are common, despite rigorous studies showing how useless or wrongheaded they are. Definitive studies over many years have shown that old-line diuretics are safer and equally effective for high blood pressure compared with newer drugs, for instance, and that MRIs for back pain lead to unnecessary surgery. And those Pap tests? Total hysterectomy removes the uterus and cervix. A Pap test screens for cervical cancer. No cervix, no cancer. Yet a 2004 study found that some 10 million women lacking a cervix were still getting Pap tests.

Centro Virtual de la Divulgación de las Matemáticas

Best Home Server Software

Media files, data synchronization, and remote backups, oh my! Home computing has advanced to a point where it's practical to run your own home server, and we're running down the five best tools for the job

Trillion Dollar Bailout (an interactive game)

Punish greedy fat cats and save honest peoples! Hand out moneys to homeowners. Put the hurt on dudes in suits! Do it right and save the world!

Getting a handle on spin

The response of quantum dots to an electric field can be greatly enhanced by forming quantum dot molecules: two InAs quantum dots are stacked on top of each other, separated by a GaAs barrier a few nanometers thick. The pair of dots can be controlled by applied voltage such that they share a single hole [4]. Normally the hole energy levels of the two dots are much different (because of differences in structure), tunneling between dots is negligible, and the dot states are atomiclike. However, when the two dots are tuned by an applied electric field to have the same hole energy, resonant tunneling of the hole becomes significant, and the state of the hole becomes molecularlike. The two atomiclike states combine to form a molecular “bonding” orbital with enhanced wave function in the barrier, and a molecular “antibonding” orbital with suppressed amplitude in the barrier.

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius by Graham Farmelo

Dirac's achievements as a theoretical physicist were clearly remarkable. However, his personality, as the title of Graham Farmelo's book implies, was very odd indeed. Upon meeting him one soon discovered (if one had not been forewarned) that he had no small talk and little appreciation of other people's. Irony was foreign to him. His utterances were few and far between, and their main function was to communicate information about matters that were important to him, such as theoretical physics. The many mismatches between his style of communication and that of most other people gave rise to a large number of humorous anecdotes, many of which are quoted in this book.

Linux for Busy People

For people who always wanted to try out Linux but never had the time or the energy ( or courage to risk moving to a Linux only environment) here is a great application which allows you to keep Linux as well as Windows for double booting environment. You need 256 mb ram and 5 gb hard disk and you are good to go. It is a single click download and install to try out Ubuntu Linux and it preserves your Windows too. If you wanted to try out R with Linux , then it is an easy way out for you ( and me). Saves quite a lot of money per desktop per OS and per office productivity software. Sounds good to be true – well the site is http://wubi-installer.org/.

Bizarre bird behavior predicted by game theory

A team of scientists, led by the University of Exeter, has used game theory to explain the bizarre behaviour of a group of ravens. Juvenile birds from a roost in North Wales have been observed adopting the unusual strategy of foraging for food in 'gangs'. New research, published in the journal PLoS One (on Wednesday 25 February 2009), explains how this curious behaviour can be predicted by adapting models more commonly used by economists to analyse financial trends.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis

Liz Smith Leaves the NY Post for wowOwow!

Beginning next week Liz Smith will be posting more news, hot gossip and opinions all the time on wowOwow — free from the constraints of newspaper deadlines. Thursday will be the last Liz Smith column for The New York Post — the first time in 33 years that Liz Smith’s column will not be in a New York newspaper. This sad news for the New York print business is spectacular news for us. Our fabulous and beloved Diva of Dish will be here on wowOwow, posting exclusive-to-Liz breaking celebrity news as it happens. It will, occasionally, be highlighted with audio and film and all the tools of an internet-entrepreneur.

Google’s Gmail service crashes across world

The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India. It appears that only web-based Gmail access is affected, and users can continue to send and receive messages using other devices, such as mobile phones and third-party mail clients. Google could not confirm what had caused the outage. “A number of users are having difficulty accessing Gmail,” said the company in a statement. “We are working to resolve the problem. We know how important Gmail is to users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologise for the inconvenience.

Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist

But while the sites are popular - and extremely profitable - a growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists believe they may be doing more harm than good. Baroness Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, believes repeated exposure could effectively 'rewire' the brain. Psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think. They point out that students no longer need to plan essays before starting to write - thanks to word processors they can edit as they go along. Satellite navigation systems have negated the need to decipher maps.

See A Fish With A Transparent Head

Today there's a new addition to the "real life is stranger than fiction" category. Check out the fish Macropinna microstoma. It has tubular eyes and a see-through head.

The Anderson-Higgs mechanism

To understand the Higgs mechanism, imagine that a room full of physicists quietly chattering is like space filled only with the Higgs field....

... a well known scientist walks in, creating a disturbance as he moves across the room, and attracting a cluster of admirers with each step ...

... this increases his resistance to movement, in other words, he acquires mass, just like a particle moving through the Higgs field ...

... if a rumour crosses the room ...

... it creates the same kind of clustering, but this time among the scientists themselves. In this analogy, these clusters are the Higgs particles.

References

P. W. Anderson. Plasmons, Gauge Invariance, and Mass.
Phys. Rev. 130, 439 (1963)
 
Peter Higgs. Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons.
Phys. Rev. Letters 13, 508 (1964)