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The Awesome Science Thread (pg. 33)
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From Wikipedia:
Functioning tractor beams based on solenoidal modes of light were demonstrated in 2010 by physicists at New York University. [34] The spiraling intensity distribution in these non-diffracting beams tends to trap illuminated objects and thus helps to overcome the radiation pressure that ordinarily would drive them down the optical axis. Orbital angular momentum transferred from the solenoid beam's helical wavefronts then drives the trapped objects upstream along the spiral. Both Bessel-beam and solenoidal tractor beams are being considered for applications in space exploration by NASA.[35]
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_beam
Laser physicists have built a tractor beam that can repel and attract objects, using a hollow laser beam that is bright around the edges and dark in its centre.
It is the first long-distance optical tractor beam and moved particles one fifth of a millimetre in diameter a distance of up to 20 centimetres, around 100 times further than previous experiments.
"Demonstration of a large scale laser beam like this is a kind of holy grail for laser physicists," said Professor Wieslaw Krolikowski, from the Research School of Physics and Engineering.
The new technique is versatile because it requires only a single laser beam. It could be used, for example, in controlling atmospheric pollution or for the retrieval of tiny, delicate or dangerous particles for sampling.
The researchers can also imagine the effect being scaled up.
Source:
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/physicists-build-reversible-tractor-beam
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Continued....
From wiki:
On 'Alien Abduction Phenomena'
Due to a paucity of objective physical evidence, most scientists and mental health professionals dismiss the phenomenon as "deception, suggestibility (fantasy-proneness, hypnotizability, false memory syndrome), personality, sleep paralysis, psychopathology, psychodynamics [and] environmental factors".
Again from wiki on Tractor Beams
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_beam
According to Peter Sturrock’s report of findings by the panel of scientists assembled to review the physical evidence of UFOs, one of the reports of apparent gravitational and/or inertial effects was the Mansfield, Ohio, Case of October 18, 1973.[41] Chapter 29 of Sturrock’s report included the entire investigative report by Jennie Zeidman, former Project Blue Book secretary for J. Allen Hynek. Zeidman’s reports had been prepared for the Center for UFO Studies.[42][43] Michael D. Swords presented the Mansfield, Ohio, Case to Sturrock’s panel of scientists. According to the testimony of the flight crew and independent ground witnesses, a green light beam from a cigar-shaped UFO had caused an U.S. Army Reserve helicopter to ascend 2,000 feet while its flight controls were in the descend position. Attempts to debunk the early reports of the incident were effectively refuted by researchers.[44] The Mansfield, Ohio, Case has been described as one of the most amazing UFO reports.[45]
Jenny Randles’ summary of the Mansfield, Ohio, Case concluded a tractor beam had been used to cause the rapid ascension of the helicopter.[46] She compared that case with a February 12, 1979, incident that had been investigated by the Yorkshire UFO Society. According to that account, a British Rail worker was transported six feet into the air by a green light beam to avoid potential harm from a passing Harrogate to Leeds train.[citation needed]
Jemgum, GermanyEdit
The compilation of European cases by Illobrand von Ludwiger, Director, Mutual UFO Network – Central European Section, Incorporated (MUFON-CES), included the sightings of two cigar-shaped UFO’s emitting light beams, that seemed to guide the behavior of smaller UFOs.[47] Witnesses in Jemgum, a small village in the northeast corner of Germany, saw the objects through binoculars on March 7, 1977. MUFON-CES investigated the reports and assessed the case with a 99.99% reliability index (a definition of Olsen’s reliability index was given in Appendix A of Ludwiger’s book).
Ok so the physics is right but not the premise? |
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| being "abducted" is a very personal experience, an amazing experience. |
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from wikipedia:
Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small amount present in the atmosphere as vapour.[1] The only place where water ice is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.[2] Abundant water ice is also present beneath the permanent carbon dioxide ice cap at the Martian south pole and in the shallow subsurface at more temperate latitudes.[3][4][5][6] More than five million cubic kilometers of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters.[7] Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.[8]
This is the Bering Glacier in Alaska. I've seen this up close!
Some liquid water may occur transiently on the Martian surface today but only under certain conditions.[9][10][11] No large standing bodies of liquid water exist because the atmospheric pressure at the surface averages just 600 pascals (0.087 psi)—about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure—and because the global average temperature is far too low (210 K (−63 °C)), leading to either rapid evaporation (sublimation) or rapid freezing. Before about 3.8 billion years ago, Mars may have had a denser atmosphere and higher surface temperatures,[12][13] allowing vast amounts of liquid water on the surface,[14][15][16] [17][18] possibly including a large ocean[19][20][21][22] that may have covered one-third of the planet.[23][24][25] Water has also apparently flowed across the surface for short periods at various intervals more recently[when?] in Mars' history.[26][27][28] On December 9, 2013, NASA reported that, based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus, Gale Crater contained an ancient freshwater lake which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life.[29][30]
from wiki:
It is now widely believed that ice accumulated when Mars' orbital tilt was very different from the present (the axis the planet spins on has considerable "wobble," meaning its angle changes over time).[35][36][37] A few million years ago, the tilt of the axis of Mars was 45 degrees instead of its present 25 degrees. Its tilt, also called obliquity, varies greatly because its two tiny moons cannot stabilize it like our moon.
Many features on Mars, especially in the Ismenius Lacus quadrangle, are believed to contain large amounts of ice. The most popular model for the origin of the ice is climate change from large changes in the tilt of the planet's rotational axis. At times the tilt has even been greater than 80 degrees[38][39] Large changes in the tilt explains many ice-rich features on Mars.
Studies have shown that when the tilt of Mars reaches 45 degrees from its current 25 degrees, ice is no longer stable at the poles.[40] Furthermore, at this high tilt, stores of solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) sublimate, thereby increasing the atmospheric pressure. This increased pressure allows more dust to be held in the atmosphere. Moisture in the atmosphere will fall as snow or as ice frozen onto dust grains. Calculations suggest this material will concentrate in the mid-latitudes.[41][42] General circulation models of the Martian atmosphere predict accumulations of ice-rich dust in the same areas where ice-rich features are found.[43] When the tilt begins to return to lower values, the ice sublimates (turns directly to a gas) and leaves behind a lag of dust.[44][44][45] The lag deposit caps the underlying material so with each cycle of high tilt levels, some ice-rich mantle remains behind.[46] Note, that the smooth surface mantle layer probably represents only relative recent material.
Scientists Abby Kavner and Thomas Duffy of Princeton University and Guoyin Shen from the University of Chicago have been using the nation's most brilliant X-ray beams to study iron sulfide (FeS) under the extreme pressures and temperatures thought to exist in the core of Mars. The experiments were the first direct density measurements of FeS at pressures and temperatures corresponding to conditions at the martian core. Along with observations made by spacecraft, the experiments have given scientists a better idea of the red planet's interior structure — and raise new questions about how the solar system's inner planets formed.
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The Quantum Handshake
by John G. Cramer
Alternate View Column AV-16
Keywords: quantum, paradoxes,transactional, Copenhagen, interpretation
Published in the November-1986 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine;
This column was written and submitted 4/4/86 and is copyrighted © 1986, John G. Cramer. All rights reserved.
No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.
Quantum mechanics is weird. It has led respectable physicists to spin theories about cats that are half alive and half dead, about worlds which split into alternate universes with each quantum event, about a reality altered because an intelligent observer watches it, about mathematical equations describing "knowledge" rather than physical reality. This month's AV is about my own work, a new interpretation of quantum mechanics which seeks to dispell this weirdness by depicting each quantum event as a "transaction", a sort of handshake across space-time. A long description of this "Transactional Interpretation" has just been published in the July Reviews of Modern Physics (available at most university and major public libraries). It challenges the standard Copenhagen Interpretation of Bohr and Heisenberg which has maintained a shaky dominance as the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics for over fifty years.
Quantum mechanics (QM) was invented in the late 1920's when an embarrassing body of new experimental facts from the microscopic world couldn't be explained by the accepted physics of the period. Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Dirac, and others used a remarkable combination of intuition and brilliance to devise clever ways of "getting the right answer" from a set of arcane mathematical procedures. They somehow accomplished this without understanding in any basic way what their mathematics really meant. The mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics is now trusted by all physicists, its use clear and unambiguous. But even now, five decades later, its meaning remains controversial. One hears the platitude that "mathematics is the language of science". Quantum mechanics reminds us that this "language" may lack a proper translation, that formulating a theory is not the same as understanding its meaning.
For orientation, let's start our discussion with some fairly simple questions and answers:
Q: What is quantum mechanics?
A: It's the theory which deals with the smallest scale of physical objects in the universe, objects (atoms, nuclei, photons, quarks) so small that the lumpiness or quantization of physical variables becomes important.
Q: What is quantization?
A: Its the idea that there are minimum size chunks for certain quantities like energy and angular momentum. The minimum energy chunk for light of frequency f is E=hf where h is Planck's constant. We call the particle of light carrying this minimum-size energy chunk hf a photon.
Q: What is meant by "the formalism of quantum mechanics"?
A: Basically, the formalism is mathematics consisting of (1) a differential equation like Schroedinger's wave equation which relates mass, energy, and momentum; (2) the mathematical solutions of that wave equation, called wave functions, which contain information about location, energy, momentum, etc. of some system; and (3) procedures for using wave functions to make predictions about physical measurements on the system.
Q: What's a "system"?
A: It is any collection of physical objects which is to be described by quantum mechanics. It could be a single electron, a group of quarks, an atom, a cat in a box, or the whole universe and all its contents.
Q: Why all the recent fuss about quantum mechanics?
A: Albert Einstein distrusted quantum mechanics because he perceived embedded in its formalism what he called "spooky actions at a distance". The characteristic which worried Einstein is called "nonlocality". The term locality means that separated system parts which are out of speed-of-light contact can only retain some definite relationship through memory of previous contact. Nonlocality means that some relationship is being enforced faster-than-light across space and time. The recent fuss has arisen because the nonlocality of quantum mechanics has been spotlighted by the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) experiments performed in the last decade. These measurements of the correlated optical polarizations for oppositely directed photons show that something very like faster-than-light hand-shaking must be going on within the formalism of quantum mechanics and in nature itself.
Q: Finally, just what is the Copenhagen interpretation?
A: The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is a set of ideas and principles devised by Bohr, Heisenberg, and Born in the 1930's to give meaning to the formalism of quantum mechanics and to avoid certain "paradoxes" which seemed implicit in the formalism.
My RMP article lists five independent interpretational ideas which comprise the Copenhagen interpretation:
(1) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the idea that pairs of "conjugate" variables (like position and momentum or energy and time) cannot simultaneously be measured to "perfect" accuracy, nor can they have well-defined values at the same time;
(2) Born's Probability Law, the rule that the absolute square of the wave function gives the probability (P=|psi|2=psi×psi*) of finding the system in the state described by the wave function;
(3) Bohr's Complementarity Principle, the idea that the uncertainty principle is an intrinsic property of nature (not a just a measurement problem) and that the observer, his measuring apparatus, and the measured system form a "whole" which cannot be divided;
(4) Heisenberg's Knowledge Interpretation, the notion that the wave function is neither a physical wave travelling through space nor a direct description of a physical system, but rather is a mathematically encoded description of the knowledge of an observer who is making a measurement on the system; and
(5) Heisenberg's Positivism, the principle that it isn't proper to discuss any aspect of the reality which lies behind the formalism unless the quantities or entities discussed can be measured experimentally.
The first three elements of the Copenhagen interpretation are needed to connect the formalism with the results of physical measurements. The last two were devised by Heisenberg to deal with Einstein's "spooky actions at a distance" criticism and similar problems which lie in the general area of nonlocality. Let's consider an example of how the knowledge interpretation handles nonlocality.
A excited atom gives up energy by spitting out a photon. The QM formalism represents this event as a wave function which spreads out from the atom in an ever-widening spherical wave front resembling the ring of ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. The absolute square of this spreading wave function at a particular point in space-time gives the probability of finding the photon there. Finally the photon hits a silver atom in a photographic plate, giving up its energy and leaving a black spot on the plate. Instantaneously the photon's wave function undergoes a process called "collapse" which resembles the pricking of a soap bubble. The wave function completely disappears from all of space except in the immediate vicinity of the struck atom. The photon has now delivered its energy to the silver atom and has no probability of existing elsewhere. The wave function which had just been expanding through time and space has abruptly vanished.
This vanishment is part of Einstein's "spookiness" criticism. In 1929 at a physics conference he questioned how the remote parts of the wave function could possibly know that it was time to vanish when the photon was detected. Heisenberg's explanation was that the spreading wave function was not a real wave moving through space at the speed of light but rather a representation of the knowledge of an observer. When the observer had not yet detected the photon, it has an equal probability of being anywhere on the spreading spherical wave front. But as soon as the photon is detected it is know to have travelled to the silver atom and its probability of being elsewhere must become zero.
The problem with the knowledge interpretation comes when we try to stretch it to the EPR experiments, a system of two polarization-correlated photons travelling in opposite directions. Now there are two observers making measurements and gaining information about two photons which are out of speed-of-light contact, and yet the two measurements remain correlated in a "spooky" way. The nonlocality which enforces this correlation cannot be dismissed by attributing it to changes in knowledge. Something else must be going on, and the Copenhageners can only retreat behind the shield of Heisenberg's positivism in dealing with the problem.
The transactional interpretation meets the nonlocality problem head on, using a "transaction" model for quantum events which is itself nonlocal because it uses advanced waves which have negative energy and travel backwards in time. Advanced waves were the subject of a previous AV column ["Light in Reverse Gear II", August-1985 Analog]. This transaction model is based on the "absorber theory" originated by Richard Feynman and John Wheeler.
In the absorber theory description any emission process makes advanced waves on an equal basis with ordinary "retarded" waves. But when the retarded wave is absorbed (sometime in the future) a cancellation process takes place which erases all traces of advanced waves and their "advanced" effects. The absorber manages to absorb the retarded wave by making a second retarded wave identical to but exactly out of phase with the retarded wave from the emitter. Thus the two cancel and we say that the retarded wave from the emitter is absorbed. However, the absorber also must make an advanced wave. This advanced wave backtracks the retarded wave, travelling backwards in time along the path taken by the retarded wave and reaching the emitter at the instant of emission. It continues backward in time, but now it is accompanied by the advanced wave from the emitter. The two waves are exactly out of phase, so they also cancel, removing all "advanced" effects in the process.
An observer not privy to these inner mechanisms of nature would perceive only that a retarded wave had gone from the emitter to the absorber. The absorber theory description, unconventional though it is, leads to exactly the same observations as the conventional one. But it differs in that there has been a two-way exchange, a "handshake" across space-time which led to the transfer of energy from emitter to absorber.
This advanced-retarded handshake is the basis for the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is a two-way contract between the future and the past for the purpose of transferring energy, momentum, etc. It is nonlocal because the future is, in a limited way, affecting the past on the same basis that the past affects the future. When you stand in the dark and look at a star a hundred light years away, not only have the retarded light waves from the star been travelling for a hundred years toward your eyes, but also advanced waves from your eyes have reached a hundred years into the past to encourage the star to shine in your direction. In my RMP paper this model is used to explain the accumulation of curiosities and paradoxes (the EPR paradox, Schroedinger's cat, Wigner's friend, Wheeler's delayed choice, etc.) which have lain in the quantum mechanics Museum of Mysteries for decades. The need for half-and-half cats, schizophrenic universes, observer-dependent reality, or "knowledge" waves has been eliminated.
In this column we usually spotlight recent physics developments and then consider their science fiction implications. The transactional interpretation unfortunately pulls the rug from under a number of excellent SF works based on the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics. Examples are Pohl's "The Coming of the Quantum Cats" and Hogan's The Proteus Operation, both of which use the many-worlds or Everett-Wheeler interpretation of quantum mechanics [See "The Alternate View: Other Universes II", November-1984 Analog]. The transactional interpretation addressed the same problems which prompted development the many-worlds interpretation and solves them in a more satisfactory way.
There are SF possibilities in the transactional interpretation. Advanced waves could perhaps, under the right circumstances, lead to "ansible-type" FTL communication favored by LeGuin and Card and to backwards in time signaling of the sort used in Benford's Timescape and Hogan's Thrice in Time. There is also the implication implicit in the transactional interpretation that Possibility does not become Reality along that sharp knife-edge that we call "the present". Rather, Reality crystallizes along a much fuzzier boundary which stitches into both future and past, advancing somehow in a way which defies sharp temporal definition. There must be a story in that. |
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A Nobel Prize winning biologist has ignited controversy after publishing details of an experiment in which a fragment of DNA appeared to ‘teleport’ or imprint itself between test tubes.
According to a team headed by Luc Montagnier, previously known for his work on HIV and AIDS, two test tubes, one of which contained a tiny piece of bacterial DNA, the other pure water, were surrounded by a weak electromagnetic field of 7Hz.
Eighteen hours later, after DNA amplification using a polymerase chain reaction, as if by magic the DNA was detectable in the test tube containing pure water.
Oddly, the original DNA sample had to be diluted many times over for the experiment to work, which might explain why the phenomenon has not been detected before, assuming that this is what has happened.
The phenomenon might be very loosely described as 'teleportation' except that the bases project or imprint themselves across space rather than simply moving from one place to another.
To be on the safe side, Montagnier then compared the results with controls in which the time limit was lowered, no electromagnetic field was present or was present but at lower frequencies, and in which both tubes contained pure water. On every one of these, he drew a blank.
The possible quantum effect – the apparent imprinting of the DNA on the water – is not in itself the most contentious element of the experiment, so much as the relatively long timescales over which it appears to manifest itself. Quantum phenomena are assumed to show their faces in imperceptible fractions of a second and not seconds minutes and hours, and usually at very low temperatures approaching absolute zero.
Revealing a process through which biology might display the underlying ‘quantumness’ of nature at room temperature would be startling.
Montagnier’s experiment will have to be repeated by others to have any hope of being taken seriously. So far, some scientists have been publically incredulous.
"It is hard to understand how the information can be stored within water over a timescale longer than picoseconds," said the Ruhr University in Bochum’s Klaus Gerwert, quoted by New Scientist magazine, which broke the story (requires registration).
What does all of this mean? It could be that the propagation of life is able to make use of the quantum nature of reality to project itself in subtle ways, as has been hinted at in previous experiments. Alternatively, it could be that life itself is a complex projection of these quantum phenomena and utterly depends on them in ways not yet understood because they are incredibly hard to detect.
Speculatively, (and Montagnier doesn’t directly suggest anything so unsubstantiated), it could also be the little-understood quantum properties of the water molecule and not just its more obvious chemical bonding properties that gives it such a central role in the bio-engineering of life-forms. Water might be a good medium in which DNA can copy itself using processes that hint at quantum entanglement and ‘teleportation’ (our term).
Montagnier's paper goes on to discuss the phenomenon he claims to have uncovered using 'quantum field theory' within the context of his personal interest, disease propagation.I'm |
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Stolen Goods.
1 Majorana’s paper was published a year before his disappearance from a transport ship between Palermo and Naples. The story behind his life and theories of his demise are interesting in their own right and are summarized by Holstein (Holstein, 2009) and references therein.
"In solid state physics the only fermionic particles that mat- ter for all practical purposes are electrons. Electrons are, of course, Dirac fermions. However, as it turns out, Majorana fermions can occur in certain solids as emergent quasiparti- cles which can be thought of as collective excitations of the quantum many-body state describing the interacting electron system."
"
Condensed matter physics is replete with examples of emer- gence (Anderson, 1972). Emergent particles in solids range from those very well established (phonons, magnons, plas- mons, polarons) through some that are more elusive (triplons, composite fermions) to truly exotic and speculative (spinons, holons, chargons, visons, etc.). At the conventional end, phonons for example represent quanta of the lattice vibra- tions, and form an essential ingredient in the description of the low-temperature thermodynamic and transport properties of all solids (Kittel, 1987). Magnons – quanta of spin fluctu- ations – are similarly essential in the description of magnetic solids, as are polarons for ionic insulators and semiconduc- tors. In this sense, emergent particles are as real as the el- ementary particles in nuclear and high-energy physics. Ob- servation of an emergent Majorana fermion in a solid state system would be as exciting, and perhaps even more so, as establishing that e.g. the neutrino is a Majorana fermion. As we shall see in Sections II and IV quasiparticle excitations in superconductors indeed behave in all respects as Majorana fermions."
"Majorana bound states (MBSs) [1] in solid-state systems is currently receiving a lot of attention from theorists and experimentalists alike [2–4]. Shortly after the prediction that MBSs can be realized in semi- conductor nanowires with strong Rashba spin-orbit cou- pling [5–7], various experiments have indeed reported sig- natures of Majorana fermions in such systems, which are currently being scrutinized [8–11]. MBSs appear at the phase boundaries between topologic" |
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A team of researchers at Princeton University (New Jersey) has developed a way to use a quantum cascade laser (QCL) to measure blood sugar noninvasively. With more work to shrink the laser system to a portable size, the technique could allow diabetics to check their condition without pricking themselves to draw blood.
Led by Claire Gmachl, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the Mid-InfraRed Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE) Center at Princeton, the researchers measured blood sugar by directing the QCL they developed at a person's palm. The laser passes through the skin cells without causing damage, and is partially absorbed by the sugar molecules in the patient's body.
"Because the quantum cascade laser can be designed to emit light across a very wide wavelength range, its usability is not just for glucose detection, but could conceivably be used for other medical sensing and monitoring applications," Gmachl says.
Besides Liakat and Gmachl, researchers included Kevin Bors ('13), Laura Xu ('15), and Callie Woods ('14), who worked on the project as undergraduate students majoring in electrical engineering; and Jessica Doyle, a teacher at Hunterdon Regional Central High School (Flemington, NJ).
http://www.bioopticsworld.com/artic...monitoring.html |
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The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. A View on the Quantum Nature of our Universe, Compulsory or Impossible?
Gerard 't Hooft
(Submitted on 7 May 2014 (v1), last revised 10 Jun 2014 (this version, v2))
When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, "quantum logic" is taking over from "classical logic" in the minds of almost all researchers today. Dissatisfied, the author investigated how one can look at things differently. This report is an overview of older material, but also contains many new observations and calculations. Quantum mechanics is looked upon as a tool, not as a theory. Examples are displayed of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and we argue that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, may be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analyse a system that could be classical at its core. We then explain how these apparently heretic thoughts can be reconciled with Bell's theorem and the usual objections voiced against the notion of 'super determinism'. Our proposal would eradicate the collapse problem and the measurement problem.
Indeed, this is one of the central questions that forced us to do the investigations described in this report; the hamiltonian of the quantum field theory considered here is
an extensive one, and also naturally bounded from below.
At first sight, the similarity between the automaton described by the equations (5.38) and (5.39), and the quantum field theory of Section (5.1.1) may seem to be superficial at
best. Quantum physicists will insist that the quantum theory is fundamentally different.
To construct theories containing fermions, it was proposed to plant fermionic degrees of freedom on the string world sheet. Again, anomalies were encountered, unless the bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom can be united to form super multiplets. Each bosonic coordinate degree of freedom Xµ(σ, τ ) would have to be associated with a fermionic degree of freedom ψ µ(σ, τ ) . This should be done for the left-moving modes independently of the
right-moving ones. A further twist can be given to the theory by only adding fermionic modes to the left-movers, not to the right movers (or vice versa). This way, chirality can be introduced in string theory, not unlike the chirality that is clearly present in the Standard Model. Such a theory is called a heterotic string theory. |
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Self-organized complex systems are ubiquitous in nature, and the structural complexity of these natural systems can be used as a model to design new classes of functional nanotechnology based on highly interconnected networks of interacting units. Conventional fabrication methods for electronic computing devices are subject to known scaling limits, confining the diversity of possible architectures. This work explores methods of fabricating a self-organized complex device known as an atomic switch network and discusses its potential utility in computing. Through a merger of top-down and bottom-up techniques guided by mathematical and nanoarchitectonic design principles, we have produced functional devices comprising nanoscale elements whose intrinsic nonlinear dynamics and memorization capabilities produce robust patterns of distributed activity and a capacity for nonlinear transformation of input signals when configured in the appropriate network architecture. Their operational characteristics represent a unique potential for hardware implementation of natural computation, specifically in the area of reservoir computing—a burgeoning field that investigates the computational aptitude of complex biologically inspired systems.
http://m.iopscience.iop.org/0957-44.../204003/article |
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