The protons and neutrons making up atomic nuclei are made up of a trio of even smaller fundamental particles known as quarks.
A new study has now mapped out in unprecedented detail the distribution of the different kinds of quark inside a proton, expanding on our understanding of this all-important part of an atom.
Although the quantum landscape within protons is a seething mess of quarks and their opposing antiquarks popping in and out of existence, there is a general dominance of two ‘flavors’ over the others; two up-flavor quarks and a single down-flavor quark.
“Not only is the universe stranger than we think. It is stranger than we can think.” So argued Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum theory. We imagine our theories uncover how things are but, from quantum particles to dark matter, at fundamental levels the closer we get to what we imagine to be reality the stranger and more incomprehensible it appears to become.
Might science, and philosophy one day stretch to meet the universe’s strangeness? Or is the universe not so strange after all? Or should we give up the idea that we can uncover the essential character of the world, and with Bohr conclude that the strangeness of the universe and the quantum world transcend the limits of the human mind?
#DarkMatter #RupertSheldrake #SabineHossenfelder.
Influential scientist Rupert Sheldrake, prominent physicist Sabine Hossenfelder and esteemed philosopher Bjørn Ekeberg get to grips with whether the universe is stranger than we can imagine. Johnjoe McFadden hosts.
The Second Law: Resolving the Mystery of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Buy Stephen’s book here — https://tinyurl.com/2jj2t9wa.
The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater. Buy here: https://tinyurl.com/35bvs8be.
Stephen Wolfram starts by discussing the second law of thermodynamics — the idea that entropy, or disorder, tends to increase over time. He talks about how this law seems intuitively true, but has been difficult to prove. Wolfram outlines his decades-long quest to fully understand the second law, including failed early attempts to simulate particles mixing as a 12-year-old. He explains how irreversibility arises from the computational irreducibility of underlying physical processes coupled with our limited ability as observers to do the computations needed to “decrypt” the microscopic details.
The conversation then shifts to discussing language and how concepts allow us to communicate shared ideas between minds positioned in different parts of “rule space.” Wolfram talks about the successes and limitations of using large language models to generate Wolfram Language code from natural language prompts. He sees it as a useful tool for getting started programming, but one still needs human refinement.
New Study Solves Mystery on Insulator-to-Metal Transition
A study explored insulator-to-metal transitions, uncovering discrepancies in the traditional Landau-Zener formula and offering new insights into resistive switching. By using computer simulations, the research highlights the quantum mechanics involved and suggests that electronic and thermal switching can arise simultaneously, with potential applications in microelectronics and neuromorphic computing.
Looking only at their subatomic particles, most materials can be placed into one of two categories.
The “wobble” of a tiny particle known as a muon is once again challenging our understanding of physics and could be the start of a major discovery, scientists have said.
For the third time, findings from experiments have shown this particle does not behave as predicted by the Standard Model – the rulebook physicists use to describe and understand how the universe works at the subatomic level.
Scientists said their latest results, which have been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters, reinforce measurements of the muon’s wobble in previous experiments and are even more precise.
An experiment at Fermilab in the US suggests that muons rotate faster than expected, which would be a problem for the standard model of particle physics.
