| Website | https://physicsworld.com/ |
I love it when apparently simple scientific questions like "How hot can you make a solid before it melts?" turn out to have really complicated answers. If you thought it was just about empirically-determined melting points for a given pressure, you should read this article. #science #physics
https://physicsworld.com/a/how-hot-can-you-make-a-solid-before-it-melts/
Two new types of photonic computer chips have been developed that match purely electronic chips in their raw performance. The new chips can be integrated with conventional silicon electronics and could find use in energy-hungry technologies such as #AI.
How does the simple act of measuring a quantum system have such a profound effect on its behaviour? It's like the old proverb "a watched pot never boils", except a watched *quantum* pot really *doesn't* boil. It's not just an illusion!
Anyway, I wrote a piece about the quantum Zeno effect in honour of World Quantum Day today, so if you'd like to learn more about this weird quantum phenomenon and why it could be useful (really!), here you go:
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And because it keeps happening faster than you can fall asleep, you remain awake, diverted from slumber by a stream of interruptions.
In quantum terms, you're being *measured*, and this phenomenon of repeated measurements “freezing” an unstable quantum system into a particular state is known as the quantum Zeno effect.
It's been observed in trapped ions, superconducting flux qubits and atoms in optical cavities. But its apparent ubiquity can't hide its strangeness.
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Imagine, if you will, that you're an unstable #quantum system – one that would, if left to its own devices, rapidly decay from one state (let's call it “awake”) into another (“asleep”). Except whenever you start to drift into the “asleep” state, something gets in your way. Maybe it’s a message pinging on your phone. Maybe it’s a curious child peppering you with questions. Whatever it is, it jolts you out of your awake–asleep superposition and projects you back into wakefulness.
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Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen takes more energy than it theoretically should, which is partly why it's not used on a large scale to generate hydrogen fuel.
Now scientists know why – and it's all down to a feat of nanoscale gymnastics.
Back in 2021, Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment found a discrepancy between their measurements and the theoretically predicted anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. More recently, a different prediction suggested that the measurements are, in fact, consistent with the Standard Model.
So who's right?
I love three things about this story on the #physics of bacteria in mucus. The first is that we don't actually know whether these cable-like structures are GOOD for the bacteria (and BAD for their host) or vice versa. The second is that finding out could help CF patients.
And the third?
"The [mucus] samples were provided by colleagues at MIT and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine."
Nothing but the most erudite mucus for this research!
https://physicsworld.com/a/bacterial-cables-form-a-living-gel-in-mucus/
The origins of fast radio bursts are not fully understood, but scientists at MIT have identified a fresh clue: at least one FRB originated very close to the object that emitted it, rather than in shock waves propagating far from the source.
https://physicsworld.com/a/fast-radio-burst-came-from-a-neutron-stars-magnetosphere-say-astronomers/
