The piano keyboard analogy is actually kind of brilliant.

Where Karl gets it wrong is his estimate that all noises have been used five times. More likely there are many that have never been heard and never will be heard. But that doesn’t mean that sounds can’t recur — some things do sound very similar to other things.

Some birds imitate other birds. Humans imitate each other — and other sounds. And then there’s recording and digital reproduction of sounds. In point of fact, we do end up hearing a lot of the same stuff over and over and over. It’s probably not all that common that you hear a completely novel sound.

Advantage: Karl.

Time crystals could behave almost like perpetual motion machines

As every young science student knows, moving objects have kinetic energy. But just how much energy does something need to move? In a new study, a pair of physicists has shown that it’s theoretically possible for a system in its lowest energy state, or ground state, to exhibit periodic motion. This periodically moving system can be thought of as the temporal equivalent of a crystal, which is defined by its spatial periodicity. What’s even more intriguing about these “time crystals” is that, by exhibiting motion at their state of lowest energy, they break a fundamental symmetry called time translation symmetry and become “perilously close” to looking like perpetual motion machines.

Sadly, we’ll have to file this either under “nothing to see here” or “not much to see here.”

First off, we don’t know that any of these systems existing in their lowest energy state and yet demonstrating periodic motion actually exist. It seems they could exist. And (this is potentially the most interesting part) we might be able to create them.

Secondly, even if we found one or created it, it would have to be a completely closed system. No energy going in, but none coming out, either — meaning our perputaul motion machine would not be able to do any work or produce any energy. It would just be a very interesting system.

Specifically, are these particles actually traveling backward in time? I mean, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you exceed the speed of light?

One possibility: (as mentioned in the linked article) the particles are engaged in some kind of quantum tunneling which allows them to get from point A to point B at faster than light speed without ever actually going faster than light. This is a cool possibility because it does away with worries about time travel and (more importantly) because  it’s in line with warp drive and hyperspace and other science fiction methodologies for achieving FTL travel.

Another possibility: these particles are tachyons. If so,they must be in a highly energized state to be moving so slowly. There is no evidence that tachyons actually exist — unless this discovery is the first such evidence. But if they were tachyons, we would have to contend with living in a universe that contains particles that can never go slower than the speed of light and that have an imaginary number for their mass.

Now that’s a weird universe, folks.

Again, the smart money says that this is an observational or measurement error,and at the end of the day the speed of light will be upheld.

But sometimes the smart money is wrong. Sometimes our well-established assumptions falter. Sometimes the universe throws a genuine surprise our way, and we become momentarily aware of how little we truly know.

Moments such as these — right now, when we don’t know for sure what the facts are  – present a tremendous opportunity. Either we will get a glimpse of how different the world is than we thought it was, or (I’m betting) we realize that we were right all along.

It’s a good lesson either way.

(Hat-tip: Chris Twyman.)

Specifically, are these particles actually traveling backward in time? I mean, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you exceed the speed of light?

One possibility: (as mentioned in the linked article) the particles are engaged in some kind of quantum tunneling which allows them to get from point A to point B at faster than light speed without ever actually going faster than light. This is a cool possibility because it does away with worries about time travel and (more importantly) because  it’s in line with warp drive and hyperspace and other science fiction methodologies for achieving FTL travel.

Another possibility: these particles are tachyons. If so,they must be in a highly energized state to be moving so slowly. There is no evidence that tachyons actually exist — unless this discovery is the first such evidence. But if they were tachyons, we would have to contend with living in a universe that contains particles that can never go slower than the speed of light and that have an imaginary number for their mass.

Now that’s a weird universe, folks.

Again, the smart money says that this is an observational or measurement error,and at the end of the day the speed of light will be upheld.

But sometimes the smart money is wrong. Sometimes our well-established assumptions falter. Sometimes the universe throws a genuine surprise our way, and we become momentarily aware of how little we truly know.

Moments such as these — right now, when we don’t know for sure what the facts are  – present a tremendous opportunity. Either we will get a glimpse of how different the world is than we thought it was, or (I’m betting) we realize that we were right all along.

It’s a good lesson either way.

(Hat-tip: Chris Twyman.)

The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics holds that before a measurement is made, identical copies of the observer exist in parallel universes and that all possible results of a measurement actually take place in these universes.

Until now there has been no way to distinguish between this and the Born interpretation. This holds that each outcome of a measurement has a specific probability and that, while an ensemble of measurements will match that distribution, there is no way to determine the outcome of specific measurement.

Now Frank Tipler, a physicist at Tulane University in New Orleans says he has hit upon a way in which these interpretations must produce different experimental results.

His idea is to measure how quickly individual photons hitting a screen build into a pattern. According to the many worlds interpretation, this pattern should build more quickly, says Tipler.

And he points out that an experiment to test this idea would be easy to perform. Simply send photons through a double slit, onto a screen and measure where each one hits. Once the experiment is over, a simple mathematical test of the data tells you how quickly the pattern formed.

The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics asserts that everything that could ever happen has happened and is happening and will happen across a vast — possibly infinite — number of parallel universes. If this idea were to be confirmed, it would arguably be the greatest scientific discovery of all time, even though it wouldn’t have any practical consequences. That is, we will continue to experience the world the same way whether we believe it’s the one and only world or we know that it is one of many.

Still, from a philosophical standpoint, it would be a pretty signfifcant development. It’s been suggested that we might one day prove the existence of parallel universes using qunatum computers or via elaborate experiments using the Large Hadron Collider. How interesting if it can be proved by simply performing measurements on an experiment that’s been around for years.

Anyhow, her she is with some thoughts on the Large Hadron Collider.

A shot was heard around the world on Wednesday. But no bullets or guns were used. The projectile was a beam of photons fired through the Large Hadron Collider’s 17-mile ring of tunnel. And the only noise involved was the cheering of elated scientists, including two graduate students from Iowa State University, celebrating how well the complicated systems worked for the first firing of the most powerful particle accelerator ever built.

Kathy reports that her current gig has her focusing a lot on hard science stories, so we’re looking forward to more of these.

In the latest issue of Nature News, Postdoctoral Fellow Nadav Katz explains how his team [took] a “weak” measurement of a quantum particle, which triggered a partial collapse. Katz then “undid the damage we’d done,” altering certain properties of the particle and performing the same weak measurement again. The particle was returned to its original quantum state just as if no measurement had ever been taken.

Because theorists had believed since 1926 that a measurement of a quantum particle inevitably forced a collapse, it was said that in a way, measurements created reality as we understand it. Katz, however, says being able to reverse the collapse “tells us that we really can’t assume that measurements create reality because it is possible to erase the effects of a measurement and start again.”

Because quantum stuff always sounds so goofy anyway, it’s hard to get a handle on just how significant this discovery may be. What we think of as “reality” * is the realization of trillions upon trillions of quantum events. Quantum particles exist in this extended, smeared out, many-places-and-states-at-the-same-time wave-form hyper-reality until they get observed or measured and then it turns out that — Hey! It wasn’t really in lots of different states, after all. It was there and it did that. Reality as we know it is the sum of all those there’s and that’s produced by all those collapsing waveforms.

We don’t actually know much about how or why this is the case. The idea that observation or measurement can be interacting with physical reality to produce results is so patently bizarre that there’s a tendency either to:

1. Conveniently ignore that that’s what’s going on

or

2. Turn it into some kind of spooky mystical thing

The first option is the path of cowards. The universe is weird. Let’s deal with it. The second option is a dead end. As soon as we declare the strangeness to be magical, we’re finished having a rational conversation about it (which we might not have been having anyway, but at least we were trying.)

So here’s the thing. Let’s analogize what’s happening when a particle goes from an uncollapsed state to a collapsed state. Think of your iTunes when you’re doing a random shuffle. A song sitting there on the disk is one of the many possible states of the Song I Am Currently Listening To. When a particular song is picked, the waveform of the entire music library gets collapsed down to just that one song. (It’s just an analogy, okay? Stick with me.)

So the iPod plays me a Muddy Waters tune and then starts throwing some Blue Man Group my way. The transition is just a little too jarring, so I take the controls, find some Van Morrison, and (for now) put BMG back into the uncollapsed state. Everybody with me so far? Good.

Here’s the problem with that analogy. Tunes playing on an iPod lack a characteristic that we normally associate with quantum waves in the process of collapse. Quantum collapse takes place along something we call the arrow of time — or may in fact the the thing that defines it. Observation or measurement of quantum states helps push time along. Once we seal the deal as to what a particular outcome was, it’s finished. Or at least it’s supposed to be. But now Katz is showing us something else.

In other words, what Katz has done — if I grasp the thing correctly, and I’m sure someone will tell me at great length why I don’t — is not to shut down Blue Man Group and play some other song. He is setting things up so that Blue Man Group never played.

It’s not exactly time travel, nor is it even precisely time reversal, but those two concepts come as close as anything I can think of to what this experiment implies. This may be more weirdness of the universe that we’re just going to have to get used to, or it may have implications about some very powerful technologies that we will someday have access to. It’s hard to say right now.

But I’ll tell you one thing. If we really are living in a computer simulation, Nadav Katz has stumbled across an intriguing snippet of source code.

* What a concept.

[Bumped on account of the Instalanche.]

Well, now thanks to Scientific American, we can:

Do-It-Yourself Quantum Eraser

Using readily available equipment, you can carry out a home experiment that illustrates one of the weirdest effects in quantum mechanics

Notoriously, the theory of quantum mechanics reveals a fundamental weirdness in the way the world works. Commonsense notions at the very heart of our everyday perceptions of reality turn out to be violated: contradictory alternatives can coexist, such as an object following two different paths at the same time; objects do not simultaneously have precise positions and velocities; and the properties of objects and events we observe can be subject to an ineradicable randomness that has nothing to do with the imperfection of our tools or our eyesight.

Gone is the reliable world in which atoms and other particles travel around like well-behaved billiard balls on the green baize of reality. Instead they behave (sometimes) like waves, becoming dispersed over a region and capable of crisscrossing to form interference patterns.

Yet all this strangeness still seems remote from ordinary life. Quantum effects are most evident when tiny systems are involved, such as electrons held within the confines of an atom. You might know in the abstract that quantum phenomena underlie most modern technologies and that various quantum oddities can be demonstrated in laboratories, but the only way to see them in the home is on science shows on television. Right? Not quite.

We will show you how to set up an experiment that illustrates what is known as quantum erasure. This effect involves one of the oddest features of quantum mechanics–the ability to take actions that change our basic interpretation of what happened in past events.

If the article proves too long for you, check out the nifty slide show. Would love to hear back from anyone who tries this out!

What happens when you throw an elephant into a black hole? It sounds like a bad joke, but it’s a question that has been weighing heavily on Leonard Susskind’s mind. Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University in California, has been trying to save that elephant for decades. He has finally found a way to do it, but the consequences shake the foundations of what we thought we knew about space and time. If his calculations are correct, the elephant must be in more than one place at the same time.

Read the whole thing. Via GeekPress.

Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli didn’t suffer fools gladly. Fond of calling colleagues’ work “wrong” or “completely wrong,” he saved his worst epithet for work so sloppy and speculative it is “not even wrong.”

That’s how mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory. In his book, “Not Even Wrong,” published in the U.K. this month and due in the U.S. in September, he calls the theory “a disaster for physics.”

Interesting. Of course, I knew that string theory has its critics, but isn’t this excessive? What is the objection, precisely?

String theory, which took off in 1984, posits that elementary particles such as electrons are not points, as standard physics had it. They are, instead, vibrations of one-dimensional strings 1/100 billion billionth the size of an atomic nucleus. Different vibrations supposedly produce all the subatomic particles from quarks to gluons. Oh, and strings exist in a space of 10, or maybe 11, dimensions. No one knows exactly what or where the extra dimensions are, but assuming their existence makes the math work.

String theory, proponents said, could reconcile quantum mechanics (the physics of subatomic particles) and gravity, the longest-distance force in the universe. That impressed particle physicists to no end. In the 1980s, most jumped on the string bandwagon and since then, stringsters have written thousands of papers.

But one thing they haven’t done is coax a single prediction from their theory. In fact, “theory” is a misnomer, since unlike general relativity theory or quantum theory, string theory is not a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world. It’s more of an idea or a framework.

Partly as a result, string theory “makes no new predictions that are testable by current — or even currently conceivable — experiments,” writes Prof. Smolin. “The few clean predictions it does make have already been made by other” theories.

When I read that, I can’t help but be reminded of some of the arguments raised against intelligent design. It has been described as not so much a theory as a critique of the Darwinian model. One reason it falls down as a theory is that it can’t make predictions.

But surely, this weakness in string theory would have been evident from the beginning? How is it that the scientific community is able to quickly dismiss one proposition for having a particular weakness while spending years fiddling around with an idea that suffers from, essentially, the same weakness?

Well, I’m painting in almost ridiculously broad strokes here. Obviously, string theory and ID are not the same. There is no questionable group like the Discovery Institute pushing string theory; string theory isn’t joined at the hip with a pseudoscientific movement like Creation Science; no one is fighting to have string theory taught in schools for religious reasons.

But then again — none of those issues go to the merits of the case. If scientific methodology and the scientific community were as objective as they are generally presented to be, would intelligent design have recived the same kind of hearing that string theory has before being rejected? (Not to say that string theory is about to be rejected. This is just one book, after all.)

The answer: no. ID would never have been as warmly welcomed as string theory. This is partly due to the fact that ID commits the much more egregious error — from the standpoint of mainstream science — of allowing for the possibility of some reality outside of that which can be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms. Moreover, it has this overall guilt-by-association relationship with red states and bad haircuts and people who go to church.

Unfortunately, the second part of that equation is the reason why even a purely naturalistic take on some of the same ideas presented in ID — for example, the selfish biocosm hypothesis — is not likely to get a fair hearing. It turns out that science is subject to the assumptions and prejudices of the scientific community.

Fortunately, given time, it is a self-correcting model.

Underneath the uncertainty of quantum mechanics could lie a deeper reality in which, shockingly, all our actions are predetermined

“WE MUST believe in free will, we have no choice,” the novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer once said. He might as well have said, “We must believe in quantum mechanics, we have no choice,” if two new studies are anything to go by.

Early last month, a Nobel laureate physicist finished polishing up his theory that a deeper, deterministic reality underlies the apparent uncertainty of quantum mechanics. A week after he announced it, two eminent mathematicians showed that the theory has profound implications beyond physics: abandoning the uncertainty of quantum physics means we must give up the cherished notion that we have free will. The mathematicians believe the physicist is wrong.

“It’s striking that we have one of the greatest scientists of our generation pitted against two of the world’s greatest mathematicians,” says Hans Halvorson, a philosopher of physics at Princeton University.

I think Isaac Bashevis Singer got it right. Whatever they prove, life must be lived with the assumption of free will. Even if we know we don’t have it — and my guess is that we’re still a long way from knowing for sure — we have to assume that we do have it.

We may have free will; we may not. But life without the presumption of free will is absurd.