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A weird quantum phenomenon called delocalisation has been measured for a 100-nanometre glass bead, helping reveal where the boundary lies between quantum and classical physics

High-resolution images show large spots on the surface of Polaris.

Researchers have succeeded in something that has been pursued since the 1970s: explaining the X-ray radiation from the black hole surroundings. The radiation originates from the combined effect of the chaotic movements of magnetic fields and turbulent plasma gas.

Researchers have succeeded in something that has been pursued since the 1970s: explaining the X-ray radiation from the black hole surroundings. The radiation originates from the combined effect of the chaotic movements of magnetic fields and turbulent plasma gas.

Machine learning models have become increasingly popular for risk assessment of chemical compounds. However, they are often considered 'black boxes' due to their lack of transparency. To increase confidence in these models, researchers proposed carefully identifying the areas of chemical space where these models are weak. They developed an innovative software tool for this purpose, and the results of this research approach have just been published.

Researchers develop a one pot process to transform aromatic ketones to esters, offering advancements in pharmaceutical synthesis and materials science.

Scientists have developed photoresponsive supramolecular polymers that can undergo both intrachain folding and interchain aggregation.

A new adaptive 3D printing system can identify the positions of randomly distributed organisms and safely move them to specific locations for assembly.

A new adaptive 3D printing system can identify the positions of randomly distributed organisms and safely move them to specific locations for assembly.

Engineering researchers have successfully developed a quantum microprocessor chip for molecular spectroscopy simulation of actual large-structured and complex molecules.

Engineering researchers have successfully developed a quantum microprocessor chip for molecular spectroscopy simulation of actual large-structured and complex molecules.

James Joyce's tome 'Finnegans Wake' famously breaks the rules of normal prose through its unusual, dreamlike stream of consciousness, and new work in chaos theory takes a closer look at how Joyce's challenging novel stands out mathematically. Researchers compared the distribution of punctuation marks in various experimental novels to determine the underlying order of 'Finnegans Wake' and by statistically analyzing the texts, researchers found the tome exhibits an unusual but statistically identifiable structure. The wide singularity spectrum was perfectly symmetrical, meaning sentence length variability follows an orderly curve.

James Joyce's tome 'Finnegans Wake' famously breaks the rules of normal prose through its unusual, dreamlike stream of consciousness, and new work in chaos theory takes a closer look at how Joyce's challenging novel stands out mathematically. Researchers compared the distribution of punctuation marks in various experimental novels to determine the underlying order of 'Finnegans Wake' and by statistically analyzing the texts, researchers found the tome exhibits an unusual but statistically identifiable structure. The wide singularity spectrum was perfectly symmetrical, meaning sentence length variability follows an orderly curve.

Our understanding of Venus' water history and the potential that it was once habitable in the past is being challenged by recent observations.

Citizen science is such a great concept. Using the combined computing power of a gazillion (exaggeration) desktop and laptops to churn through data is an excellent and efficient way of analysing volumes of data. This has been shown yet again as a star has been identified to be hurtling out to intergalactic space! Most stars in the Milky Way are not travelling fast enough to be able to escape its immense gravity but the suspected brown dwarf is travelling at 1.5 million km/h, fast enough to escape. 

The concept of using members of the public to support scientific endeavours dates back further than you might think. One of the earliest examples can be seen in the 19th century when the Christmas Bird Count was launched by the Audubon Society in 1900. It encouraged members of the public to track bird populations. When it comes to space science projects like SETI@Home are among those that spring to mind. 

A home PC running SETI at Home helping to churn through observational data Credit: SETI@home

Another citizen science project ‘Planet 9’ was launched by Backyard Worlds and to date, it has 82,690 volunteers signed up. The goal is to hunt for possible distant planets in our Solar System or previously unidentified brown dwarfs in our solar neighbourhood. It takes images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and shares them with its volunteers who then study them for objects that are moving. 

While hunting for objects worthy of study, a team of volunteers; Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P.Bickle and Dan Caselden identified a fast moving object which became known by the catchy title CWISE J124909.08+362116.0. Observations were scheduled after its discovery by several ground based instruments that showed it was moving so fast that it will eventually escape the gravitational pull of the Milky Way, heading out to intergalactic space. It’s the first object with a mass smaller than or similar to that of a star that has been seen travelling at such eye watering speeds – 1.5 milllion km/h! To mark the citizen scientists contribution they are named as co-authors to the study which has recently been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

Artist’s concept of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer as its orbit around Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL

Quite what CWISE J1249 is remains a little bit of a mystery at the moment. It has a low mass suggesting either a low mass star or possibly a gas giant planet or maybe something in between known as a brown dwarf. It has also been found to have less iron and other metals in the core than other stars and brown dwarfs. The composition suggests it may be quite old and perhaps one of the first generations of stars from the Milky Way. If it is a brown dwarf then in itself it is not particularly rare. ‘Planet 9’ has discovered more than 4,000 of them alone but none are travelling at such a great speed that they will escape the Galaxy. 

It’s not just the nature of the object that is perplexing astronomers, its high speed to has been the subject of much debate. One theory suggests it could have been a part of a binary system with a white dwarf. The white dwarf would slowly accrete material from its companion leading to an explosion when the material reaches a critical point. This event may have provided the energy to accelerate the object out of the system and beyond.  Alternatively it may have been a part of a cluster which was ejected through gravitational interactions. 

Source : NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour

The post Citizen Scientists Find a Star Escaping the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.

The latest research on caffeine reveals why coffee and decaf can be so good for your health, but energy drinks can be lethal

Empty space is nothing but. According to the weird rules of quantum mechanics, it’s actually filled with an endless amount of energy, known appropriately enough as vacuum energy.

Quantum mechanics is super weird. One of the lessons of the quantum is that particles, like electrons and photons and neutrinos and whatnot, aren’t what they seem to be. Instead, each of the particles that we see in nature is actually just a piece of a much larger, grander entity. These grander entitles are known as quantum fields, and the fields soak every bit of space and time, all throughout the universe.

There is a quantum field for every kind of particle: one field for the electrons, one for the photons, and so on. These fields are invisible to us, but they make up the fundamental building blocks of existence. They are constantly vibrating and buzzing. When the fields vibrate with enough energy, particles appear. When the fields die down, the particles disappear. (Another way to look at this is to say what we call a “particle” is really a localized vibration of a quantum field). When two particles interact, it’s really just two pieces of quantum fields interacting with each other.

So if you think about all the particles that make up your body, all the electrons and protons and neutrons, those particles are just local vibrations of entities that span the entire cosmos. Neat.

These quantum fields are always vibrating, even when those vibrations aren’t strong enough to produce a particle. If you take a box and empty out all of the stuff – all the electrons, all the photons, all the neutrinos, all the everything – the box is still filled with these quantum fields. Since those fields vibrate even in isolation, that means that the box is filled with invisible vacuum energy, also know as zero-point energy – the energy of these fundamental vibrations.

This means that the vacuum of the universe is really made of something. There’s no such thing as a true vacuum; wherever you go, there are always vibrating quantum fields.

We know that the vacuum energy – this incessant boiling and vibrating of the quantum fields – interacts with the everyday world. For example, electrons inside of atoms occasionally move to more distant orbits away from the nucleus. There’s no reason for the electrons to make their way back down, until they get jostled by the quantum fields, prompting them to fall back into their normal orbital place.

I know this all sounds weird and new-agey, but it’s a real thing. Everywhere you go in the universe, there’s always something.

The post The Secrets Hiding in the Vacuum appeared first on Universe Today.

Computer code dating back to the 1960s is still vital to banks, airlines and governments, but programmers familiar with the language are in short supply. Now AI models are being trained to fill the skills gap

In 2021, the Listener Letter fracas erupted in New Zealand when seven professors at Auckland University argued that the indigenous “way of knowing,”  Mātauranga Māori (MM), while valuable in anthropology and sociology classes, should not be taught, as the government planned, as coequal with modern science.  The seven signers were right: while MM does contain some empirical knowledge obtained by trial and error, it’s also a mixture of that empiricism with religion, spirituality, morality, teleology, legends from word of mouth, and guidelines for proper behavior. That stuff doesn’t belong in science class, but they keep trying to sneak it in anyway.

Nevertheless, because the entire country has been captured by a woke mentality that holds the indigenous people as sacred, and their legends as sacrosanct, the signers of the Listener letter were demonized, threatened, and had some of their jobs downgraded. Further the Royal Society of New Zealand investigated the two members who signed the letter. (They were eventually exculpated.)

Since then, the drive to make MM coequal to science, and replace modern knowledge with Māori legends and tales, continues, even under a new and more conservative government.  And many people were “offended” by the letter; that is, they claimed it was hurtful to the indigenous people and damaged higher education. As I wrote on July 10, the Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University, Dawn Freshwater, issued a statement that said this in part:

A letter in this week’s issue of The Listener magazine from seven of our academic staff on the subject of whether mātauranga Māori can be called science has caused considerable hurt and dismay among our staff, students and alumni.

While the academics are free to express their views, I want to make it clear that they do not represent the views of the University of Auckland.

The University has deep respect for mātauranga Māori as a distinctive and valuable knowledge system. We believe that mātauranga Māori and Western empirical science are not at odds and do not need to compete. They are complementary and have much to learn from each other.

This view is at the heart of our new strategy and vision, Taumata Teitei, and the Waipapa Toitū framework, and is part of our wider commitment to Te Tiriti [the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi] and te ao [Māori] principles.

But the braver academics continued to beef, and so Vice-Chancellor Freshwater, the top official of Auckland Uni, promised in both August and December of 2021 that she would commission a series of academic debates and symposia on MM versus modern science. Her promises included these statements:

We will be setting up a series of VC lectures, panels and debating sessions, both within the University and externally, to address this and other topics. Universities like ours have an important thought-leadership role to play on these issues, which we embrace, while recognising that we need to foster an environment within which such debates can take place positively, respectfully and constructively.

. . . . I am calling for a return to a more respectful, open-minded, fact-based exchange of views on the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science, and I am committing the University to action on this.

In the first quarter of 2022 we will be holding a symposium in which the different viewpoints on this issue can be discussed and debated calmly, constructively and respectfully. I envisage a high-quality intellectual discourse with representation from all viewpoints: mātauranga Māori, science, the humanities, Pacific knowledge systems and others.

To give a short summary, these promises amounted to what comes out of the south end of a wildebeest facing north.

The debates and symposia never materialized, and I predicted as much.  Yes, there were at least three symposia, but they were purely rah-rah affairs boosting MM and indigenous knowledge, devoid of any dissenting views or debate, much less robust intellectual debate. Dean Freshwater simply brushed the issue under the rug in favor of further burnishing Auckland Uni’s worship of MM.

In light of this, I wrote Dean Freshwater in July of this year—THREE YEARS after she’d made her unfulfilled promise—asking her when the debates would happen between advocates of MM and advocates of modern science. I could do this because I’m not a Kiwi and won’t suffer professionally simply by asking this question. You can see my letter to VC Freshwater here.

I received no response from Freshwater, but she delegated her chief of staff to respond to me, and I got this email on August 7.

Dear Dr Coyne,

I write in response to your 06 July message to Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater in reference to Mātauranga Māori and science at the University of Auckland. As it happens, the University began holding an annual symposium on Mātauranga Māori in 2022, and our third event is scheduled for 11 September of this year. This symposium is open to the University community and focusses on different aspects of Māori knowledge systems (mātauranga). Our two events to date have each provided an opportunity for robust engagement. In addition, during this same period the University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori, Te Kawehau Hoskins, and Prof Alison Jones have led open discussions on a range of topics relating to Mātauranga and its relation to science, in every Faculty and a number of service divisions across the University. Please know that the Vice-Chancellor’s position on this has not changed: respectful, open-minded, fact-based exchange of views—as enabled by the kinds of activities mentioned above—are essential within research universities such as ours. Thank you for your continued interest in this important topic. Cordially, Brian

Brian C. Ten Eyck, EdD
Poumatua Kaimahi | Chief of Staff
Tari o te Ihorangi | Office of the Vice Chancellor
Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland

This letter is a masterpiece of disingenous rhetoric. Check out the link to the “annual symposium” in Ten Eyck’s letter. Do you see any dissent or pushback in the summary below? Neither did I.

The University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau, is hosting its first Mātauranga Māori Symposium, exploring Te Ao Toi (Māori arts) and creative expression, with a diverse range of experts.

The symposium, set to occur annually with a focus on looking at different aspects of Mātauranga Māori, or Indigenous knowledge, will take place on Thursday 24 November and be held at Waipapa Marae at the University’s City Campus.

It will feature speakers who are experts in their respective fields, ranging from: Indigenous art history and architecture; moko signatures and iwi histories and traditions to whakairo (carving), weaving, multimedia installation, visual arts, photography, and the revival of Māori aute.

Speakers will include Waipapa Taumata Rau’s Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis, Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, Bernard Makoare, Maureen Lander MNZM, Rongomai Grbic-Hoskins, Makareta Janke and Nikau Hindin.

Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori Te Kawehau Hoskins says the University is looking forward to opening this space to celebrate, share and engage with Mātauranga.

Several anonymous viewers of this symposium told me that there was no debate at all; one of them wrote me this:

This response is disingenuous. There have been presentations on MM but no opportunity to present different viewpoints. In other words, there has been no symposium fitting the description of the one promised by the VC in August 2021.

I’m told that there was a single pushback question from the floor, but it was largely sidestepped.

In other words, Vice Chancellor Freshwater lied when she promised a civil but robust debate on science vs. MM. My guess is that she knew when she made this promise that the debate would never take place. The University and VC Freshwater’s behavior are shameful.

And I’m pretty sure these debates never will happen. The entire curriculum of Auckland University, including its science offerings, is being captured by concepts from MM (more to come later), a capture heavily watering down the amount of science Auckland students will learn and giving them, instead, a big dose of postmodern philosophy of science. I’ll give one example of a “science” course, lacking any science, in a later post.

At any rate, the whole country is also subject to this ideological capture, despite the “progressive” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern being replaced by the more moderate Christopher Luxon.  The whole science curriculum of the country, from primary school through university, is in dire straits, accompanied by layoffs of faculty and staff.

Since I’m the only person outside of New Zealand to call the country repeatedly to account, and to point out the dissimulation of Vice-Chancellor Freshwater, my cry in the wilderness is made in hopes that things will change. But they won’t, for so long as the indigenous people are seen as sacred and their way of knowing immune from criticism or debate, the country’s educational system will be swirling down the drain.

************

To show you how much rancor this issue creates, here’s a comment I got from a Kiwi on this post (the address is clearly fake). Needless to say, I didn’t allow it to go through, but now seems an appropriate time to show it (“Aotearoa” is the Māori word for “New Zealand”):

fuckjerrycoyne
jerrycoynedefendsepsteinpedos@gmail.com

kiwi here. please none of you ever come to aotearoa, you racist fucks. kill yourselves, instead.

Though I’ve been busy with a number of physics and writing tasks, I’ve been beefing up the “Reader Resources” section of this website, devoted to extending the experience of readers of my book. [BTW, the audiobook is due out at the end of September.]

The book has many endnotes (available separately here, in case [like me] you hate paging back and forth between the text and the endnotes, and would like to have the endnotes more easily available on a separate screen.) A number of these endnotes have asterisks, and for those endnotes I promised to provide more information here on this website. Well, that information is going up, step by step.

For example:

In Chapters 1-3, I’ve added information to endnotes that cover a wide range of topics, some historical, some about basic physics, and some on quite advanced subjects (such as how to precisely define the relativity principle [note 1 of chapter 2] and on the cosmic microwave background interplays with the relativity principle [note 1 of chapter 3]).

If any of these topics interest you, click on the relevant chapter heading to go to the webpage that has the added information; or go to the Reader Resources page that has all the chapters. Again, comments are welcome!

• Chapter 1 Overture 1
  • Note 2: On Einstein Quotations
• Part I: Motion
  • Note 2: How to Measure Earth’s Shape and Size
• Chapter 2 Relativity: The Greatest Illusion 15
  • Note 1: Isolated Bubbles
  • Note 2: Earth’s Rotation
  • Note 8: Planes’ Relative Speeds
• Chapter 3 Coasting: Easier Than It Appears 29
  • Note 1: Relativity and the Cosmic Microwave Background
  • Note 3: The Sun and the Earth

. I’m hoping that readers of this blog and of the book will enjoy this new material, and will also let me know if they have questions, corrections, or suggestions as to how I could improve the material further.