Lifeboat Foundation

In one of my first articles for Lifeboat,* I provided an experimental methodology for demonstrating (or proving) the instantaneous ‘communication’ between quantum entangled particles. Even though changes to one particle can be provably demonstrated at its far away twin, the very strange experimental results suggested by quantum theory also demonstrate that you cannot use the simultaneity for any purpose. That is, you can provably pass information instantly, but you cannot study the ‘message’ (a change in state at the recipient), until such time as it could have been transmit by a classical radio wave.

Now, scientists have conducted an experiment proving that objects can instantaneously affect each other, regardless o the distance between them. [continue below]

[From The New York Times—Oct 21, 2015]:

Sorry Einstein.
Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ is Real

Continue reading “Quantum Theory: ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ confirmed” »

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Continue reading “5 REAL Possibilities for Interstellar Travel | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios” »

How cool is this!

Rendering of a virus used in the MIT experiments. The light-collecting centers, called chromophores, are in red, and chromophores that just absorbed a photon of light are glowing white. After the virus is modified to adjust the spacing between the chromophores, energy can jump from one set of chromophores to the next faster and more efficiently. (credit: the researchers and Lauren Alexa Kaye)

Continue reading “Engineered viruses provide quantum-based enhancement of energy transport” »

In physics there are two broad ways to look at the world. One is the classical realm of Newton and Einstein, where objects have definite form and interact in clearly determinate ways. The other is the quantum realm, where objects seem nebulous, with a strange mix of particle-like and wave-like behavior. The classical view gives us a wonderfully accurate description of everything from planets to baseballs. The quantum view is necessary to accurately describe the behavior of light and atoms. The classical world dominates on the scale of our daily lives, but nature seems to be rooted in quantum theory at its most basic level.

While both the classical and quantum approach are extremely accurate in their respective regimes, what happens in the intersection of the two regimes is still unclear. We don’t have a rigorous theory combining our classical and quantum models. We also don’t have certain key observational evidence, particularly in the nexus of quantum theory and gravity. But as quantum experiments increasingly study more massive objects and gravity experiments become increasingly sensitive, we’re approaching the point where “quantum gravity” experiments could be made. That’s the goal of a recently proposed experiment.

Continue reading “A New Experiment May Determine Whether Gravity Is Quantized” »

Nature has had billions of years to perfect photosynthesis, which directly or indirectly supports virtually all life on Earth. In that time, the process has achieved almost 100 percent efficiency in transporting the energy of sunlight from receptors to reaction centers where it can be harnessed—a performance vastly better than even the best solar cells.

One way plants achieve this efficiency is by making use of the exotic effects of quantum mechanics—effects sometimes known as “quantum weirdness.” These effects, which include the ability of a particle to exist in more than one place at a time, have now been used by engineers at MIT to achieve a significant efficiency boost in a light-harvesting system.

Surprisingly, the MIT researchers achieved this new approach to solar energy not with high-tech materials or microchips—but by using genetically engineered viruses.

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Tl;dr: Experimentalists are bringing increasingly massive systems into quantum states. They are now close to masses where they might be able to just measure what happens to the gravitational field.

Quantum effects of gravity are weak, so weak they are widely believed to not be measurable at all. Freeman Dyson indeed is fond of saying that a theory of quantum gravity is entirely unnecessary, arguing that we could never observe its effects anyway. Theorists of course disagree, and not just because they’re being paid to figure out the very theory Dyson deems unnecessary. Measurable or not, they search for a quantized version of gravity because the existing description of nature is not merely incomplete – it is far worse, it contains internal contradictions, meaning we know it is wrong.

Take the century-old double-slit experiment, the prime example for quantum behavior. A single electron that goes through the double-slit is able to interact with itself, as if it went through both slits at once. Its behavior is like that of a wave which overlaps with itself after passing an obstacle. And yet, when you measure the electron after it went through the slit it makes a dot on a screen, like a particle would. The wave-like behavior again shows up if one measures the distribution of many electrons that passed the slit. This and many other experiments demonstrate that the electron is neither a particle nor a wave – it is described by a wave-function from which we obtain a probability distribution, a formulation that is the core of quantum mechanics.

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A team of physicists has proposed a way of teleporting energy over long distances. The technique, which is purely theoretical at this point, takes advantage of the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement where two particles share the same existence.

The researchers, who work out of Tohoku University in Japan, and led by Masahiro Hotta,describe their proposal in the latest edition of Physical Review A. Their system exploits properties of squeezed light or vacuum states that should allow for the teleportation of information about an energy state. In turn, this teleported quantum energy could be made useable.

Unlike teleportation schemes as portrayed in Star Trek or The Fly, this type of teleportation describes entanglement experiments in which two entangled particles are joined despite no apparent connection between them. When a change happens to one particle, the same change happens to the other. Hence, the impression of teleportation. Physicists have conducted experiments using light, matter, and now, energy.

Continue reading “Physicists say energy can be teleported ‘without a limit of distance’” »

A team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the Pennsylvania State University have accidentally discovered a new way of using light to draw and erase quantum-mechanical circuits in a unique class of materials called topological insulators.

In contrast to using advanced nanofabrication facilities based on chemical processing of materials, this flexible technique allows for rewritable ‘optical fabrication’ of devices. This finding is likely to spawn new developments in emerging technologies such as low-power electronics based on the spin of electrons or ultrafast quantum computers.

The research is published today in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s new online journal Science Advances, where it is featured on the journal’s front page.

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What can skyrmions do for you? These ghostly quantum rings, heretofore glimpsed only under extreme laboratory conditions, just might be the basis for a new type of computer memory that never loses its grip on the data it stores.

Now, thanks to a research team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the exotic ring-shaped magnetic effects have been coaxed out of the physicist’s deepfreeze with a straightforward method that creates magnetic skyrmions under ambient room conditions. The achievement brings skyrmions a step closer for use in real-world data storage as well as other novel magnetic and electronic technologies.

If you have a passing familiarity with particle physics, you might expect skyrmions to be particles; after all, they sound a lot like fermions, a class of particles that includes protons and neutrons. But skyrmions are not fundamental pieces of matter (not even of yogurt); they are effects named after the physicist who proposed them. Until just recently, magnetic skyrmions had only been seen at very low temperatures and under powerful magnetic fields.

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