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Reversing Quantum Processes Now Made Empirically Possible!

Credit: Shutterstock/Getty Images 


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

We are quite aware of the directionality of time. Everything we know of seems to follow a particular pattern and all events tend to move in a unidirectional path. In other words, it is conventionally known that once a particular event has occurred, there’s no chance that it can be reversed. The physical reason is simple and that is the arrow of time. In general, the arrow of time points in a single forward direction and this is one of the major unsolved challenges of the foundations of physics because physicists are uncertain of why the nature of time is such. 

Time as an entity can’t be controlled or manipulated. However, we can manipulate a physical system’s evolution in time and evaluate its metamorphosis from one state to another by careful observation, at least in the classical world. In the quantum domain, even...

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Cherenkov Radiation Detected in 2D Regime

Credit: Argonne National Laboratory 


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

What happens when a high-speed jet displays motion that is essentially higher than the velocity of sound? One would hear a cracking sound commonly known as a sonic boom. Analogous to this phenomenon, there might exist something similar in the case of electromagnetic radiation as light and sound have a lot of commonalities considering their physical effects. In fact, there does exist a similar phenomenon in the case of light.  

When a charged particle like an electron travels faster than the phase velocity of light inside a water-bound nuclear reactor, there is an intense emission of blue light. This effect is called the Cherenkov effect named after the Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov who observed it for the first time in 1934. In a way, this is an optical analogue of the sonic boom effect that essentially relies upon shock waves. A full mathematical...

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A Dive into the Thermodynamic Aspects of Quantum Computation

Source: QuantumComputingInc 


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

It is quite conventional that the working of classical computers is affected immensely by heat and one might have come across this situation in their lives when their computer failed to function properly due to excessive heating. 

But what about quantum computers? Do thermodynamical factors influence the workings of a quantum computing device? Well, the answer is yes, quantum computers operate using quantum bits or qubits that essentially are in a superposed state exchanging information in binary code. An interesting fact about qubits is that they not only exchange information using 0 and 1 but also intermediate values between 0 and 1. These qubits are very sensitive, in that excessive heat generation could cause work-related defects which in a sense can cause harm to the device as a whole. Another crucial point is that in order to retrieve significant information...

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Black Hole Devouring Encapsulated Star Resembles a Torus-shaped Dynamics

Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA, STScI


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation

A black hole by its own intrinsic nature has an extremely strong gravitational attraction and the intensity of which is primarily decided by mass as well as the nature of the astrophysical object that was crushed to form the respective black hole. In other words, the gravitational pull of a black hole is directly proportional to mass. Although the initial formation of a black hole results in a fixed mass, which principally depends on the mass of a star during its end stage, it continually grows in size by devouring stellar systems and other astrophysical objects floating in its vicinity.

Moreover, considering the black hole area theorem propounded by Hawking, the overall area of a black hole can never decrease so considering the classical scenario wherein it merges with another black hole, the area would always increase as the two black holes would form a single...

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Observations from the STEREO Collaboration Anticipate a Final Blow to the Sterile Neutrino Paradigm 

By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

Neutrinos are elementary particles that are essentially produced during radioactive decay and are named so because they do not carry any charge and hence are electrically neutral. Neutrinos are ever-present, fluctuating around us all the time, and penetrate the earth with little-to-no interaction. Essentially, they travel at the velocity of light and are not deflected in presence of magnetic fields. All these properties make the detection of neutrinos a troublesome enterprise.  

One of the concerning uncertainties surrounding neutrinos is whether they carry mass, though a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation does provide some hint that they possess a small mass. These puzzling particles originally come in three flavors (electron, muon, and tau) and their oscillation explicitly involves the transition of one flavor into another. Interestingly, neutrino oscillation indicates that neutrinos have...

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Axions and the Cosmic Optical Background  

Credit: NASA/APL/SwRI and NASA/JPL-Caltech 


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the earliest glow of radiation present in the universe that apparently dates back to the time when the universe came into being. Similar to this radiation, there is another glow that is lesser heard of and that corresponds to the light emitted in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum, mainly by all astrophysical sources outside the milky way. This radiation encompassing the universe is termed the cosmic optical background (COB). From a technical standpoint, the COB is an ensemble of photons, strictly in the visible spectrum, over the volume of the observable universe. One can infer a significant amount of information about galaxies, stellar clusters, etc from the COB. Furthermore, the phenomena involving mass accretion by black holes associated with the galactic and stellar systems also count within reach...

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Employing Quantum Cat States Could Help Achieve Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation 

Credit: Science/AAAS 


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

Quantum states generally represent the possible conditions of a quantum system in terms of a mathematical entity. For example- the spin of an electron can be either up or down so there are two quantum states and this can further be represented as a superposition using Bra-Ket or Dirac notation.  

In principle, quantum states are categorized into two types: pure states and mixed states. A pure state is principally the natural state of a quantum system and carries with it the exact information of the overall system. On the other hand, a mixed state has limited information about a particular quantum system and is usually an ensemble of probabilities. Talking of their representation, pure states are denoted by a ray in a Hilbert space over complex numbers whereas mixed states are represented by density matrices.  

Inspired by the infamous Schrodinger’s cat...

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New Study Suggests Atomic Nuclei Change Configuration at Varying Energy Levels 

Credit: University of Liverpool 


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

Atomic Nucleus is the central component of atoms comprising of protons and neutrons bound together by the strong nuclear interaction, one of the four fundamental forces and the most powerful of all.  

Just like atomic structure, there is a nuclear structure and various models have been propounded in order to approximate the behavior and interactions of atomic nuclei. Some of these models are the liquid drop model, the nuclear shell model, and the collective model proposed by Aage Bohr and co-workers concerning the non-spherical geometry of nuclei. 

With reference to the shell model propounded by physicists Goeppert Mayer and Jensen, who won the Nobel prize in 1963 for their work, it says that the atomic nucleus just like the atoms has energy levels that are characterized by the Pauli exclusion principle of quantum mechanics. They found that the main crux...

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What is the Fine-Structure Constant and How Do Physicists Compute it?

By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

The fine structure constant, also called the Sommerfeld constant or electromagnetic coupling constant, is one of the fundamental physical constants that characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between charged atomic particles. The name of this constant was coined by physicist Arnold Sommerfeld who extended Bohr’s atomic model with the motivation of explaining the fine structure lines observed in the hydrogen spectra, which the previous models had failed to explain satisfactorily.   

Physical constants are generally of two types: one which has a proper unit associated with them and others that are dimensionless. The fine-structure constant is of the latter type, it is dimensionless and is represented by a number. Various probes have determined this number to be close to about 1/137.  

Physicists have estimated that the values of fundamental...

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Neutron Helical Waves

CREDIT: SEAN KELLEY/NIST 


By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation 

Neutrons form a major component of baryonic matter. Except for hydrogen, neutrons are present in the central region (nucleus) of the atoms of all elements. Although they are electrically neutral, they are very crucial for the determination of atomic structure and its composition. One of the key reasons why they are influential is due to the fact that they can penetrate materials that optical radiations like X-rays usually cannot. 

The de Broglie hypothesis of quantum theory tells us that elementary particles can possess dual characteristics, wave and particle, depending on the situation. Just like the electrons, the wave characteristics of neutrons can also be employed to study materials and one of the major advantages in this regard is that the wavelength can be turned extremely small which in turn results in a high-resolution image of the sample under study. This...

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