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A small molecule that naturally serves as a binding site for metals in enzymes also proves useful for separating certain rare earth metals from each other. In a proof of concept, the process extracts europium directly from fluorescent powder in used energy-saving lamps in much higher quantities than existing methods. The researchers are now working on expanding their approach to other rare earth metals. They are in the process of founding a start-up to put the recycling of these raw materials into practice.

While not yet on the market, fully autonomous vehicles are promoted as a way to make road travel dramatically safer, but a recent study found that knowing more about them did not improve people's perception of their risk. They needed to have more trust in them too. This study adds to the evidence from other research that knowledge alone is not enough to sway people's attitudes toward complex technology and science, such as gene editing or climate change. In this case, researchers found that trust in the autonomous vehicles' reliability and performance played the strongest role in improving perceptions of the technology's risk.

While not yet on the market, fully autonomous vehicles are promoted as a way to make road travel dramatically safer, but a recent study found that knowing more about them did not improve people's perception of their risk. They needed to have more trust in them too. This study adds to the evidence from other research that knowledge alone is not enough to sway people's attitudes toward complex technology and science, such as gene editing or climate change. In this case, researchers found that trust in the autonomous vehicles' reliability and performance played the strongest role in improving perceptions of the technology's risk.

Researchers were involved in the development of a switch, an essential device in telecommunications, capable of operating at very high frequency with lower power consumption than conventional technologies. The technology has applications in the new 6G mass communication systems and is more sustainable in terms of energy consumption than current devices.

Researchers were involved in the development of a switch, an essential device in telecommunications, capable of operating at very high frequency with lower power consumption than conventional technologies. The technology has applications in the new 6G mass communication systems and is more sustainable in terms of energy consumption than current devices.

New research offers an enhanced understanding of common defects in transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) -- a potential replacement for silicon in computer chips -- and lays the foundation for etching smaller features.

New research offers an enhanced understanding of common defects in transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) -- a potential replacement for silicon in computer chips -- and lays the foundation for etching smaller features.

Material engineers have created a patent-pending process to develop ultrahigh-strength aluminum alloys that are suitable for additive manufacturing because of their plastic deformability. They have produced the alloys by using several transition metals that traditionally have been largely avoided in the manufacture of aluminum alloys.

Investigators sought to help figure out how to send materials like probiotics into space and to better treat a variety of gastrointestinal (GI) and metabolic diseases. The team's formulations allow microbial therapeutics, including those used to treat gastrointestinal diseases and improve crop production, to maintain their potency and function over time despite extreme temperatures.

Ice in nature is surrounded by liquid most of the time, and therefore it is key to understand how ice and liquid interact. A new study has now directly observe the precise shape of ice at the interface between ice and liquid -- by using antifreeze and a refrigerated microscope.

Lab-grown meat can be shaped into steaks and meatballs, but it can be lacking in the flavour department. Aromatic chemicals that are released when heated could offer a solution

Your body is home to trillions of beneficial viruses crucial for a healthy microbiome. We may one day be able to tweak this "virome" to treat obesity and anxiety

Your body is home to trillions of beneficial viruses crucial for a healthy microbiome. We may one day be able to tweak this "virome" to treat obesity and anxiety

Actually, this was an unusually homicidal weekend given that it lasted from Thursday (the Fourth of July holiday) through Sunday: four days of shooting opportunities.  And the bad actors were out in force: as everyone reports, there were 109 people shot in that period, 19 of whom died. From ABC News:

One hundred and nine people were shot, 19 fatally, in gun violence across Chicago from midnight Wednesday to midnight Monday during the extended Fourth of July holiday weekend, police said.

CPD Supt. Larry Snelling and Mayor Brandon Johnson both called for accountability for those responsible for the shootings during a press conference on Monday.

“This is a choice. The choice to kill. The choice to kill women, the choice to kill children, the choice to kill the elderly. These are choices that the offenders made and they calculated,” Johnson said. “We are holding every single individual accountable for the pain and from the torment that they have caused in this city.”

Chicago Mayor Johnson and Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling give an update after more than 100 people were shot in Chicago over the 4th of July weekend.

Snelling said adjustments were made after the Fourth of July heading into the weekend, including canceling officers’ days off, but ultimately, he said, they need communities to come forward.

“We have to really stop and think about the mindset of someone who will shoot a child, a helpless child an unarmed mother and think that that’s OK. And go about their days,” he said. “Those people have to be taken off the street. They have to be put away if we’re not doing that. Then we’re failing other families.”

Johnson said he has asked for more resources from the federal government to help invest more resources into communities.

When pressed to address what adjustments need to be made to keep the community safe, Johnson’s response was simply that the city needs more support.

“I am urging all of you across the entire city to step up and say, ‘We’ve had enough,'” Johnson said. “And I’m hopeful that our ongoing discussions will ensure that our state partners, as well as our federal partners, will swiftly come into the support of the city of Chicago. The city cannot afford to wait any longer.”

Well, if you’re a determinist, it’s not really a choice: you could not have done otherwise but pull the trigger. But of course future shootings can be reduced by modifying incentives, behavior, and so on, so determinism doesn’t justify this level of shooting. Further, gun control is vital, but almost useless to fight for given America’s love of guns. (One bright spot: a week ago the Supreme Court decided to leave in place Illinois’s ban on assault-style weapons.)

Brandon Johnson talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk, and weapons are one of the things he needs to deal with as Mayor (not to mention our many potholes that go unfilled). My prediction is that he will not be re-elected, as he’s perceived as a do-nothing mayor. Look at his response when asked what he will do to stop the killings!

One assault occurred only a few blocks from my office on Sunday morning. While driving to the grocery store at 7 a.m., I found my route blocked off by many police cars and “do not enter” tape. I took a roundabout way to the store, and the street was still blocked off when I came back. It turns out that right by the University, three people had been shot at 5:30 that morning. Thank Ceiling Cat that none were killed. And the shooting was only a block from our Emergency Room, so treatment must have been timely.

I suspect this was a gang-related shooting, but the aim was poor: two guys were shot in the leg and one in the nose. (How you can be shot in the nose and survive eludes me, but perhaps the guy was standing in profile.)

In this episode of Dead Planets Society, our hosts place primordial black holes in a variety of objects with surprising results

A digital "primordial soup" with no rules or direction can lead to the emergence of self-replicating artificial life forms, in an experiment that may hint at how biological life began on Earth

As usual, we’re running low, so send in your good wildlife photos.

Today’s selection comes from reader Ruth Berger. Her ID’s and captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them:

Here is a jumble of pictures taken with a little automatic camera with an 28mm lens in wild-growing greenery in and around industrial areas in Frankfurt, Germany.

My first is of a creature much beloved by me, Trichius cf. gallicus, an unusual-looking beetle:

Trichius spp. belong to the Scarabaeidae whose European members really like Rosaceae plants (but also Asteraceae and many others), so it’s no coincidence I caught this specimen sitting on a Rubus flower. Here is another, better known beetle of the same group, the beautiful and bigger Cetonia aurata, called rose chafer in English; I think the plant is meadowsweet (Filipendula cf. ulmaria), again from the Rosaceae group.

And here are two rose chafers copulating in a hawthorn tree (also a Rosaceae plant). On this very hawthorn tree, about a hundred beetles from several Scarabaeidae species were milling about on that day, while all the other hawthorn trees in the vicinity and in the wider area were blooming away with hardly any visitors. I returned to that same tree a few days later, and again it was buzzing with beetles, as if it had been designated an official meeting point. Do any of the other insect lovers among the readers have any comments about this phenomenon?

Here is a smaller and more homely beetle from the same tree, a male Valgus hemipterus, called stumbling beetle in German. On its left is the backside of a bee, on which more below:

The bee half visible in the previous picture must be some Andrena (mining bee) spp., and here is one of the species it might be (not at all sure about that), a female Andrena haemorrhoa, with its characteristic red thorax plus a fringe of red hair on the end of the abdomen, feeding on a daisy at one of the places where the municipal greenery crew likes to mow whenever a blooming plant other than a daisy opens its petals”

Many Andrena are very versatile and survive that kind of treatment, other genera, not so much. There used to be Ceratina and Hylaeus species on this site, among others, and they are all gone solely due to needless destruction of either their brood or their feeding plants or both over several years.

And now to something completely different, a bumble bee supposedly very frequent but which I see only rarely, Bombus pratorum, the early bumblebee. From both the Latin and the German name (Wiesenhummel), this should be a meadow species, but I saw this one in wooded terrain:

The following is a rare species (“endangered“ according to the German local red list), Mallota fuciformis, a hoverfly posing as a bumble bee, with some similarities to the early bumble bee shown above:

Many hoverflies have obvious mimicry elements in their looks, and one, the hornet mimicry hoverfly, Volucella zonaria, even in behavior: They show the same darting movements as a hornet on the prowl. In flight, they are hard to distinguish from a hornet. Here is a hornet mimicry hoverfly, sitting on the backside of the fence of a garden plot used to raise geese:

Does anyone know the reason why mimicry evolved in hoverflies, but not (to my knowledge) in other families of flies? Here is another hoverfly, Heliophilus trivittatus, a big species I find beautiful (I love the light pastel yellow), sitting on a widow flower, Knautia arvensis, near a river. Heliophilus spp. like it wet. This river meadow was full of widow flowers last year when I took the picture; this year, there isn’t a single one, but lots of clover instead:

As we were recently talking about Vanessa cardui, the Atlantic-crossing painted lady, I herewith present the only semi-decent picture I have of the species (which isn’t that frequent locally), showing it sitting on Buddleja davidii, a plant that is colloquially called butterfly bush because of its attraction to butterflies, although many other pollinating insects love it just as much:

Here is a small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) that was right beside it:

The butterfly bush is a neophyte from East Asia that is said to provide only nectar and no pollen, and it isn’t a typical feeding plant for caterpillars either, so it’s considered an invasive pest, although I personally don’t have the impression that it’s outcompeting indigenous flowering plants where I live. Here, it was part of a late-stage ruderal vegetation.

The next picture shows another plant non-native to central Europe (or Britain), the poppy. For reasons unclear to me, poppy flowers seem to be a favorite perching place for larvae stages of long-horned grasshoppers (Tettigoniidae). The one you see here I’d guess is Tettigonia spp. cf. viridissima. The blurry thing on the left is a hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, visible in flight towards the poppy.

Poppies are considered archaeophytes in Central Europe (and by extension also Britain and France), as they arrived 8000 years ago with the first farmers who had poppy mixed with their cereal seed. But despite their long presence here, and despite being part of lots commercial flowerseed mixes, they never really went native, or at least that’s my impression: The poppy in the photo grew at the edge of a rapeseed field, and most of the places where I see poppies are either fields and their close vicinity or plots that were used as fields or gardens in the past.

As I wrote the other day:

Don’t forget to bookmark the Snoozy the Squirrel animalcam so you can see her sleeping in the nest or coming and going. I’m pretty sure she’s pregnant and is going to have babies, so keep an eye on the nest.

Snoozy is an eastern gray squirrel (Scirus carolinensis), and their gestation period is about 40-45 days after mating. The young are born without fur, but quickly grow up and leave the nest within 50 days. In the meantime, they’re ineffably cute. With luck, they’ll be born and stay in this nest, though females often move their litters around to escape predation (they seem pretty safe on that ledge). Females have about two litters per year, and this must be the second.

Click on the screenshot below to see her, and don’t forget to click on the “forward” arrow at the lower left.

Snoozy’s cam was down for the weekend, as it has to be reset daily, but she’s back, though right now she’s out foraging. Click on screenshots to see her (or her empty nest. The first photo is from a few minutes ago. Some of her nest seems to have been displaced off the ledge, so perhaps she’s not pregnant after all (or perhaps Snoozy is a Man Squirrel!):

Here she was last evening:

In my role as a teacher and explainer of physics, I have found that the ambiguities and subtleties of language can easily create confusion. This is especially true when well-known English words are reused in scientific contexts, where they may or may not be quite appropriate.

The word “particle”, as used to describe “elementary particles” such as electrons and quarks and photons, is arguably one such word. It risks giving the wrong impression as to what electrons etc. are really like. For this reason, I sometimes replace “particle” with the word “wavicle”, a word from the 1920s that has been getting some traction again in recent years. [I used it in my recent book, where I also emphasized the problems of language in communicating science.]

In today’s post I want to contrast the concepts of particle, wave and wavicle. What characterizes each of these notions? Understanding the answer is crucial for anyone who wants to grasp the workings of our universe.

Why “Wavicle”?

What I like about the word “wavicle” is this.

• First, as a speaker of English or a related language, you may think you know what the word “particle” means. By contrast, you’re probably sure that you don’t know what “wavicle” means. And that’s a good thing! Since electrons’ and photons’ properties are quite unfamiliar, it’s better to bring as few preconceptions along as possible when one first seeks to understand them.
• Second, the word “wavicle” suggests that electrons and photons are more like waves than like dots. That’s true, and important, as we’ll see both today and in the next couple of posts.

Normally the word “particle” in English refers to a little ball or grain, such as a particle of sand or dust, and so an English speaker is imediately tempted to imagine an “elementary particle” as though it were roughly the same thing, only insanely small. But that’s not what electrons are like.

Wavicles are different from particles in several ways, but perhaps the most striking is this: The behavior and the energy of a wavicle are far more sensitive to the wavicle’s surroundings than would be the case for an ordinary particle. That is certainly true of electrons, photons and quarks. Let me show you what I mean.

Side Remark: Is the word “wavicle” really needed?

[An aside: Some might complain that the word “wavicle” is unnecessary. For example, one might propose to use “quantum particle” instead. I’m not convinced that’s any clearer. One could also just use the word “quantum”, the name that Einstein initially suggested. That potentially causes problems, because any vibration, not just waves, may be made from quanta. Well, terminology is always subject to debate; we can discuss this further in the comments if you like.]

A Stationary Particle in a Constrained Space Figure 1: A particle placed at point A has energy E=mc2, no matter how large L is.

Let’s imagine a flat surface bounded by two walls a distance L apart, as in Fig. 1, and place a particle at point A, leaving it stationary. Since the particle is sitting on the ground and isn’t moving, it has the lowest energy it can possibly have.

Why does the particle have its lowest possible energy?

• It’s stationary. If it were to start to move, it would then have additional motion energy.
• It’s at the lowest possible point. If it were lifted up, it would have more energy stored: if it were then released, gravity would convert that stored energy to motion-energy.

How much energy does it have? It has only its internal energy E=mc2, where m is the particle’s mass (specifically, its rest mass), and c is the cosmic speed limit, often called “the speed of light”.

Notice that the particle’s energy doesn’t depend on how far apart the walls are. If we doubled or halved the distance L between the walls, the particle wouldn’t care; it would still have the same energy.

The energy also doesn’t depend on the particle’s distance from the wall. If we placed the particle at point B instead, it would have the same energy. In fact there are an infinite number of places to put the particle that will all have this same, minimal amount of energy.

Figure 2: As in Fig. 1. If the particle is placed at point B instead of point A, its energy is unchanged; it depends neither on L nor on its location.

Such are the properties of a stationary particle. It has a location. It has an energy, which depends only on its local environment and not on, say, faraway walls.

Side Remark: Doesn’t gravity from the walls affect the particle and its energy?

Yes, it does, so my statements above are not exactly true. To be pedantic yet again: the walls have extremely tiny gravitational effects on the particle that do depend on the particle’s location and the distance L. But I have a more important point to make that is independent of these effects, so I’m going to ignore them.

Side Remark: Can all this about “lowest possible energy” really be true? Aren’t speed and energy perspective-dependent?

Total energy, like speed, is indeed a relative concept. So to be pedantically precise: the particle isn’t moving relative to us, and therefore, from our perspective, it has the lowest energy it can possibly have. That’s enough for today; we’ll be sticking with our own perspective throughout this post.

A Standing Wave in a Constrained Space

Waves, in contrast to tiny particles, are often exceedingly sensitive to their size and shape of their containers.

Although we often encounter waves that travel from place to place — ocean waves, earthquake waves, and light waves in empty space — there also stationary waves, known as standing waves, that don’t go anywhere. They stand still, just waving in place, going through a cycle of up-and-down-and-up-again over and over. A famous example of a standing wave would be that on a plucked string, sketched in Fig. 3.

Figure 3: If a string’s ends are held fixed, and the string is plucked, it will vibrate with a standing wave. The wave’s frequency depends on the length of the string (among other things), while its amplitude depends on how firmly it was plucked.

The number of cycles performed by the wave each second is called its frequency. Crucially, if the string’s length is shortened, the frequency of the string’s vibration increases. (This is the principle behind playing guitars, violins, and similar instruments, which play higher musical notes, at higher frequencies, when their strings are made shorter.) In short, the standing wave on a string is sensitive to the length of the string.

More generally, a standing wave has several important properties:

• It has a frequency; the number of back-and-forth cycles per second. In general, if the wave’s container grows wider, the frequency decreases.
  
  
• It has a wavelength — the distance between highpoints on the wave — which will increase if the container widens. (I won’t discuss wavelength here, as it doesn’t play a role in what follows.)
  
  
• It has an amplitude (or “height”) — which describes how far the wave extends away from its midpoint during each cycle. Unlike frequency and wavelength, which are determined in part by the container’s size, the amplitude is independent of the container and is adjustable. For instance, for the string in Fig. 3, the amplitude (the vibrating string’s maximum extension in the vertical direction) depends on how firmly the string was plucked, not on the string’s length.

For instance, if we take the two walls of Fig. 1 a distance L apart, and we put a simple standing wave there, we will find that the frequency decreases with L, the wavelength increases with L, and the amplitude and energy depend on how “high” the wave is, which has nothing to do with L.

Figure 4: A standing wave extending between two walls; it has a frequency (how many cycles per second), an amplitude (how far back and forth does it go) and a wavelength (2L in this case.)

Unlike particles, waves have neither a definite location nor a determined energy.

• A standing wave has no definite location; it is inevitably spread out.
• A standing wave has an adjustable energy; if one increases or decreases the wave’s amplitude, its energy will similarly increase or decrease. (For instance, plucking a guitar string harder puts more energy into the vibration of the string, and leads to a standing wave with a larger amplitude and energy — one which will in turn create a louder sound.)

Particles, meanwhile, have neither frequency, amplitude nor wavelength.

A Standing Wavicle in a Constrained Space

Wavicles differ from both waves and particles. Like a wave, a wavicle is spread out, and can have a definite frequency, unlike a particle. But unlike a wave, a wavicle’s amplitude and energy are not adjustable, and so, like a particle, it can have a definite, fixed energy.

In particular, thanks to a formula that Max Planck guessed and Albert Einstein correctly reinterpreted, a wavicle’s energy and frequency are precisely proportional; if you know one, you know the other. The formula?

• E = f h

where E is the wavicle’s energy, f its frequency, and h is called Planck’s constant. (I sometimes refer to this constant as the cosmic certainty limit, in parallel to c being the cosmic speed limit; but that’s a personal quirk of mine.)

Photons, electrons and quarks are all wavicles, and they share many properties. There is, however, a crucial difference between them: the rest mass of a photon is zero, while that of an electron or quark is positive. This difference affects how their frequency and energy depend on L when they form standing waves in a box. (The differences between the standing waves for these two types of wavicles are shown in this article.)

Let’s look at photons first, and then at electrons.

Photon in a Box

If a photon is trapped in a box, forming a standing wave much like a standing wave on a guitar string, then the minimum frequency of that photon is set by the size of the box L and the cosmic speed limit:

• f = c / L

(Here I’m slightly over-simplifying; since the box is really three-dimensional, not one-dimensional as I’ve drawn it, the formula is slightly more elaborate. See below for the more complete math formulas if you want them.)

But the energy of the photon is also determined, because of the formula E = f h, which implies

• E = h c / L

Therefore, as L shrinks, E rises: the smaller the box, the larger the frequency and energy of the photon.

If the box’s size goes to infinity, the photon’s frequency and energy both go to zero. This reflects the fact that light on its own, isolated from other objects such as a box, cannot form a standing wave. In empty space, light and the photons that make it up are always traveling waves; they can only stand when inside a container.

Click here for more complete formulas for a photon in a box

A three-dimensional, the box has a length, width and height , and the photon’s frequency is



If the box is a cube with sides of equal length , then



The relation is still true, so

I claimed earlier that the energy of a wave is adjustable, while that of a wavicle is not. In this context, that means that the energy of a laser beam can be adjusted, but the energy of the individual photons that make up the laser beam cannot be. How does this work?

Let’s combine N photons of frequency f together. Then we get a wave of frequency f, with energy N times larger than that of a single photon.

• E = N f h

And thus, by adjusting N, making the wave’s amplitude larger, we can adjust the energy E if the wave. (How big might N be? HUGE. If you turn a laser pointer on for one second, the wave emitted by the pointer will typically have N somewhere in the range of a million billion or more.)

By contrast, a single photon corresponds to N = 1. Nothing else can be adjusted; if the photon has frequency f, its energy is fixed to be f h. That energy cannot be changed without also changing f.

Electron in a Box

An electron, unlike a photon, can be a standing wave (and thus stationary) even outside a box. This is a point I emphasized in this post, where I described a type of standing wave that can exist without walls, i.e., without a container.

Such an electron, sitting still and isolated out in empty space, has energy

• E = mc2

where m is the electron’s mass. But since it is a wavicle, E = f h; and so [as discussed further in the book, chapter 17] its frequency is

• f = E / h = m c2 / h

Again, the idea that an electron has a frequency makes sense only because it is a wavicle; were it really a particle, we would be hard pressed to understand why it would have a frequency.

When the electron is placed inside a box of length L, its energy and frequency increase, just as is the case for a photon. However, whether the increase is large or small depends on whether the box is larger or smaller than a certain length, known as the electron’s Compton wavelength Le . That length is

• Le = h c / m = 2 x 10-12 meters

This distance is much smaller than an atom but much larger than a proton or neutron; specifically, it is about a hundredth of the radius of an atom, and about a thousand times larger than the radius of a proton.

Much depends upon the relation between L and Le.

• In a small box, where L is much less than Le , the effect of the box on the electron’s frequency and energy can be very large. In particular, it can make E much bigger than mc2 !!
• In a large box, where L is much greater than Le, then E will be only slightly bigger than mc2.

This behavior of the frequency (and thus the energy) of an electron, as a function of L, is shown in Fig. 5, along with the different behavior of the frequency for a photon. (These two types of behavior of frequency as a function of box size were also shown in this article.) We’ll come back to this in a later post, when we see how it is relevant for atoms.

Figure 5: The frequency of wavicles in a box. As L increases, a photon’s frequency f (orange) decreases as 1/L. An electron’s frequency (blue) is different. In an infinite box (infinite L) the frequency is mc2/h, where m is the electron’s rest mass (green dashed line.) In a large box, the frequency is just slightly above mc2/h. But when L is smaller than the electron’s Compton wavelength Le = mc/h, then the electron’s frequency behaves as 1/L, similarly to a photon’s. Click here for the more complete formulas for an electron in a box

Compare the following with the complete formulas for a photon, given above. The electron’s frequency in a box whose sides have different lengths is



If the box is a cube whose sides have equal length , then



The relation is still true, so

Thus if , then is very slightly larger than , whereas if then , just as for a photon.

Something similar is true for the up and down quarks, and indeed for any “elementary particle” that has a non-zero rest mass. This has relevance for protons and neutrons, a point to be addressed in a later post.

One last point about electrons. If the box is huge — if L is much, much greater than Le — then the electron can exist for a very long time as a localized standing wave, occupying only a small part of its box. This allows it to behave more like the particle in Fig. 1, tightly localized at a point, than like the wave of Fig. 4, which entirely fills the box. (Again, see this post on unfamiliar standing waves.) In that circumstance, the electron won’t have the lowest energy it can possibly have — to reach that low enerrgy would require filling the entire box — but its energy will still exceed mc2 by only a minuscule amount.

This illustrates another crucial fact: wavicles with rest mass can sometimes be much more particle-like than wavicles without rest mass, with an approximate location as well as an almost definite energy. It’s another reason why scientists initially thought electrons were particles (in the usual sense of the word) and were slow to understand their wave-like properties.

A Comparison

To sum up, particles don’t have frequency, and waves don’t have their energy tied to their frequency; it’s having both frequency and specific associated energy that makes wavicles special. A key feature of a wavicle is that when you make it stationary and put it in a box, its frequency and energy generally increase; the smaller the box, the greater the effect. As seen in Fig. 5, the increase is particularly dramatic if the box is comparable to or smaller than the particle’s Compton wavelength.

To help you remember the differences, here’s a table summarizing the properties of these objects.

stationary particlestanding wavestanding waviclelocationdefiniteindefiniteindefiniteenergydefinite, container-independentadjustabledefinite, fixed by frequencyfrequencynonecontainer-dependentcontainer-dependentamplitudenoneadjustablefixed by frequency & container
A stationary particle, standing wave, and standing wavicle, placed in an identical constrained space and with the lowest possible energy that they can have, exhibit quite different properties. The Old and New(er) Quantum Physics

Niels Bohr was one of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists and one of the founders of quantum physics. Back in the late 1920s and early 1930s, in his attempt to make sense of the confusions that quantum physics generated among the experts, he declared that electrons are both wave and particle — that depending upon context, sometimes one must view an electron as a wave, and sometimes one must view it as a particle. (This “wave-particle duality” lies at the heart of what came to be called the “Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics.”)

But this was back in the days before quantum field theory, when quantum physics was very new. The quantum theory of the 1920s did indeed treat electrons as particles — with positions, yet described by a wave-function. It didn’t treat photons in the same way. It was only later, in the middle of the century, that quantum field theory came along. Quantum field theory put electrons and photons on exactly the same footing, treating both as wavicles, described by a single, overall wave-function. (Important! be sure not to confuse wavicles with the wave-function; they are completely different beasts!!)

This quantum field theory viewpoint didn’t really fit with Bohr’s vision. But it’s quantum field theory that agrees with experiment, not the quantum physics of Bohr’s era. Nevertheless, Bohr’s interpretation persisted (and still persists) in many textbooks and philosophy books. I learned about it myself at the age of sixteen in a class on the philosophy of science. That was several years before I learned the mathematics of quantum field theory and began to question Bohr’s thinking.

From the perspective of quantum field theory, as I’ve outlined here, a wavicle does have features of both waves and particles, but it also lacks features of both waves and particles. For this reason, I would personally prefer to say that it is neither one. I don’t think it’s useful to say that it is both wave and particle, or to say that it is sometimes wave and sometimes particle. It’s simply something else.

But this is something we could debate, and perhaps some readers will disagree with me. I’m happy to discuss this in the comments.

That said, however, I do want to emphasize strongly that using “wavicle” does not in any way help resolve the most confusing issues with quantum physics. Adopting “wavicle” does not make it any easier to understand, for instance, the quantum double slit experiment or the issue of entanglement’s “spooky action at a distance”. I do think quantum field theory has the advantage of removing certain unnecessary confusions, making it somewhat easier to state the problems of quantum physics. But this makes them no easier to resolve.

Such issues, however, are a topic for another time.

In an optimally rational person, what should govern their perception of risk? Of course, people are generally not “optimally rational”. It’s therefore an interesting thought experiment – what would be optimal, and how does that differ from how people actually assess risk? Risk is partly a matter of probability, and therefore largely comes down to simple math – what percentage of people who engage in X suffer negative consequence Y? To accurately assess risk, you therefore need information. But that is not how people generally operate.

In a recent study assessment of the risk of autonomous vehicles was evaluated in 323 US adults. This is a small study, and all the usual caveats apply in terms of how questions were asked. But if we take the results at face value, they are interesting but not surprising. First, information itself did not have a significant impact on risk perception. What did have a significant impact was trust, or more specifically, trust had a significant impact on the knowledge and risk perception relationship.

What I think this means is that knowledge alone does not influence risk perception, unless it was also coupled with trust. This actually makes sense, and is rational. You have to trust the information you are getting in order to confidently use it to modify your perception of risk. However – trust is a squirrely thing. People tend not to trust things that are new and unfamiliar. I would consider this semi-rational. It is reasonable to be cautious about something that is unfamiliar, but this can quickly turn into a negative bias that is not rational. This, of course, goes beyond autonomous vehicles to many new technologies, like GMOs and AI.

There also appears to be a bias toward lack of trust in things that are highly complex. If someone has a hard time understanding the underlying science, their default position is negative. People are also biased towards information they recently encountered. So if someone sees a story on the news about an accident involving an autonomous vehicle, that will have more influence on their attitude than statistics. It is also easier to stoke fear than engender confidence. People have a risk-avoidance bias. One negative rumor about vaccines, nuclear power, or GMOs can cause a lot of risk avoidance that will be difficult to counter with information.

What about deference to experts and scientific authority? In this study reported deference to scientific experts did not modify the relationship between information and trust, but it did modify the impact of trust on risk perception. However, the desire for a new experience had a positive effect on the perception of risk. What does all this mean?

One take-away from this and many other studies that touch on this question is that there is a nuanced and complex relationship among the public perception of risk, reality, and public communication of information. Many factors shape public perception, including media reporting, the effectiveness of science communication, sensationalism, statistics, fear, the cool-factor, and trust in the relevant institutions. This also means that effective advocacy for science-based policy and public behavior is challenging.

The general media play a mixed role, but by my perception it is largely a negative one. They do provide information, for those who wish to avail themselves, but they are biased toward sensationalism, dramatic events, fearmongering, and fringe opinions. Fear, shock, drama, and spectacle drive clicks, but these are not the best way to make cold rational decisions.

Activist groups with an ideological agenda also have an easier time stoking fear and misinformation than science-based groups trying to improve public knowledge and perception. The anti-GMO campaign is a great example – it is based entirely on fear, distortion, and misinformation and yet has managed to convince a majority of the public that GMOs are something to be feared. Anti-vaccine campaigns also scare a lot of parents away from a safe and effective public health measure.

Those of us pushing for a science-based approach to these questions have many challenges. We cannot just give facts and information. The data shows that this is usually not enough (although it does help). We need to create scientific literacy, critical thinking skills, and media savvy. People need to understand that they have been manipulated by misinformation, and that they can be empowered with a more reality-based perspective.

But perhaps the most frustrating challenge is that trust itself is a complicated issue. There is no single source or institution that we can trust absolutely, and yet trust is essential. There are many examples of institutions lying, of researchers committing fraud, of experts just getting it wrong, and of governments covering up their failings. I find this the most challenging thing to communicate. People don’t deal well with complexity and nuance. We prefer simplicity and absolutes. This leads some people to effectively take the approach of – if I can’t trust absolutely, then I won’t trust at all. This means they will essentially believe whatever they want. This just leads to dueling experts and competing narratives.

The skeptical approach is – reality is messy, information is complicated, and trust is relative, but we can use a process to determine that some conclusions are more likely to be true than others. Conclusions are tentative, partial, qualified, and subject to revision, but it’s still better to make decisions on the best current information available than to live life as a “choose your own adventure” story.

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