"Schrödinger's Cat"

Imagine that you put your neighbor's annoying cat in a steel box that contains a mechanism with radioactive material and a flask of poisonous liquid an hour later there's a 50% chance that the radioactive atom will decay which will open the flask of poison and the cat will die if there's no decay the pet will survive as long as the Box remains closed the cat is considered to be both alive and dead so how can we learn its fate without opening the box for the past 100 years the best minds on the planet have tried to solve this riddle and it appears that they have recently succeeded fortunately over all the years and experiments in quantum physics not a single animal was injured well at least we think so the riddle with the cat was a thought experiment proposed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger and since then his imaginary pet has become the most famous cat in history the essence of this thought experiment is to show the imperfection of quantum mechanics which states that the atomic nucleus as well as all elementary particles are in so-called superposition that is the nucleus of an atom simultaneously decays and does not decay accordingly the cat is both alive and dead.

But when we open the box it will not be in both states at the same time only in one accordingly the study of quantum simultaneous States is impossible because when we observe an object it acquires one specific state when a particle is monitored we can witness while it makes a quantum leap a transition to one specific state moreover this jump occurs instantly as if by the push of a button however this of the 1990s believe that a particle goes through a certain smooth path before making a quantum leap which technology had not previously been able to measure in 2019 Yale University physicists along with their colleagues from France and New Zealand found a way to do it the scientists conducted an experiment in which they indirectly observe qubits artificial atoms used as the basic units of information in a quantum computer the researchers used three microwave generators to irradiate the qubit in an aluminum container this microwave radiation switches the qubit between energy states well the second ray controls the capacitance when the qubit is in the ground state microwave radiation produces photons when the photons begin to disappear this signals that the qubit is about to make a quantum leap to the excited state this means that the quantum leap is more like a smooth shift lever rather than an abrupt push of a button therefore it's possible to predict whether the cat will die before the particle makes a quantum leap which will save the pet from death just in time moreover the quantum leap can be reversed or you can change its direction that is you can control the quantum state of the atom and save any cat placed in a steel box with poison only there's one caveat by irradiating an atom we won't simply track the trajectory of the quantum jump but rather change it even a single particle of light a photon can change the energy of an atom which means that when you observe an atom with the help of light you'll also be able to determine the quantum state of the particle so in this way we can't solve the riddle of Schrodinger's cat however hold your Hofmann from Hiroshima University and Karthik patek are from the Indian Institute of Technology and Bombay decided to find a method to look inside the cat without changing anything in the structure of the observed particle scientists have suggested that at the initial stage when we only look at the cat before placing it in the box the photons scatter without any loss of information it's only at the second stage when we find out whether the cat is alive or not so half of the information is eliminated as false one of these possibilities will cancel the other one out now imagine that the cat is still in the box but instead of getting it out we place a camera outside that will take a picture of the cat the image will be blurry and it will give us two types of information the first type is a quantum label that shows how the cat changed during the interaction and the second type is the state of the cat whether it is alive or dead until both types of information are read they're not clear to the observer further it all depends on the order in which the information is processed either the observer can remove the quantum mark or find out whether the cat is alive or not when one piece of information is known the second will be automatically deleted but until the photo is processed the cat is in a quantum superposition to make this easier to understand you can refer to the example of a coin toss you can find out only two types of information about it either the coin is flipped now and rotate in the air or it lies on the table with heads or tails up it's impossible to observe both events at the same time however the blurry snapshot of the cat allows you to capture these two types of information at the same time that is for the first time physicists have the opportunity to measure a quantum system without its distortion that always occurs during observation however as it turned out in even earlier studies not only can they can't be alive and dead at the same time but it can also be in two different boxes at the same time Chen Wang a physicist at Yale University together with colleagues built 2 aluminum cavities with a diameter of about 1 inch or 2.5 centimeters and placed a superconducting element made of sapphire inside them which emitted stable waves of light as a result the quantum cat consisting of 80 photons was simultaneously in two containers true such an effect can be observed only under special conditions this requires ultra pure aluminum high precision micro circuits and electromagnetic devices that allow photons to exist in isolation from the observer as soon as something from the environment intervenes in this process all this quantum magic will disappear almost instantly by the way these quantum features are also related to temperature thanks to Schrodinger's cat physicists from the University of Exeter in England managed to find out that in the quantum world one particle in have two different temperatures at the same time scientists made their discovery based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle according to this principle it is impossible to accurately determine both the temperature and the energy of an object at the same time the fact is that the most accurate scientific determination of temperature is achieved by placing the object in a tank of water or air the temperature of which is known in this case the studied object reaches the temperature in the reservoir which allows you to determine the exact initial temperature of the object but then it's impossible to calculate the energy level since the object constantly gives and receives it in the opposite case when energy is measured the object must be isolated so that it doesn't come into contact with or exchange energy which in turn makes it impossible to measure temperature however in the quantum world everything works differently if you measure the exact energy the temperature remains uncertain and will fluctuate between two values for example between 31 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit or minus point five and zero degrees Celsius but if we apply the Schrodinger cat principle and some mathematical calculations it turns out that the particle does not oscillate but rather it has these two temperatures at the same time this means now physicists have the ability to measure the behavior of incredibly small nano particles with great accuracy such as concept may seem too strange and abstract but all the same it is the mystery of Schrodinger's cat that will lead to future development in many areas of human life this riddle is only partially solved but each new puzzle in the quantum picture of the world brings us closer to technologies that today seem unimaginable quantum supercomputers capable of digitizing human consciousness endless sources of energy all this will be available thanks to a small animal that existed exclusively in the imagination of one great scientist.

Ĥ🔱=𝐸🔱

I'm a playboy in a parallel universe😂

Bubbles of Nothing

Bubbles of nothing

A new paper that was published in the Journal of High-Energy Physics in March twenty-twenty, called “Nothing Really Matters” - great title - is why scientists are freaking out over “bubbles of nothing” that eat spacetime. Marjorie Schillo is one of the authors of this amazing new study. She is a researcher at Sweden’s Uppsala University in their Department of Physics and Astronomy where she studies theoretical physics. Physics is the study of matter, energy, and the interactions between them, but it’s a much more exciting science than that description makes it sound. Physicists try to answer big questions like “How did the universe begin?” or “What are the basic building blocks of the universe”, or even “How will the universe end?” Theoretical physics and math may not sound very cool, but some of the biggest rock stars of science have come out of this field. Isaac Newton invented calculus and discovered gravitation; Albert Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity, among many other important discoveries, and Stephen Hawking was one of the most recognizable scientists of all time. Many physicists use experiments to test their theories, but theoretical physics is different in that they use math to attempt to answer these big questions in areas where scientists can’t yet perform experiments. Marjorie Schillo and her colleagues have spent years studying the phenomenon of “spacetime decay”, trying to answer the big questions about how the universe might end. This newest paper explores one possible answer - a bubble of nothing that eats spacetime.

As she explains it: “A bubble of nothing describes a possible channel for universe destruction; in that the bubble of nothing expands and can ‘eat’ all of spacetime, converting it into ‘nothing’.” Umm...OK. Translated from “science” to plain English, what she and her team of researchers at the University of Uppsala in Sweden are saying is that a bubble of nothing that eats spacetime is just one of the theoretically possible ways that our universe could be destroyed. To be honest, that doesn’t sound much better... There’s plenty of things in the universe worth freaking out about - black holes, supernovas, even rogue asteroids. But could a bubble of nothingness eat all of space and time, devouring the universe and ending life as we know it? Is the universe eating itself from the inside out? The idea of a “bubble of nothingness” in space isn’t a new one. In nineteen-eighty-two, theoretical physicist Edward Witten first posited that the universe could be devouring itself when he wrote about a hole that “spontaneously forms in space and rapidly expands to infinity, pushing to infinity anything it may meet.” To understand these bubbles of nothing, we need to wrap our heads around vacuums. No, not that kind of vacuum…In physics, a vacuum is an empty space devoid of all matter. In Quantum Field Theory, the theory that connects quantum physics with spacetime, a vacuum is the lowest possible energy state. More ‘excited’ or higher-energy quantum states tend to decay very quickly into lower energy states as they give off energy. Since a vacuum doesn’t have a lower energy state to decay to, vacuums are relatively stable. It’s commonly accepted that outer space is a vacuum, so the universe should be pretty stable, right? Well, it’s not quite that simple. Outer space certainly isn’t devoid of matter - it’s full of stars, planets, particles, and, umm ... people! It’s the extremely low density of the matter that’s important - between the planets in our solar system there is an average of five atoms per cubic centimeter. In interstellar space - between the stars and molecular clouds - there is only one atom per cubic centimeter, and in intergalactic space - between galaxies - there’s one-hundred times less matter per cubic centimeter than in interstellar space.

This extremely low density of matter, combined with the incredibly low pressure in space, creates an almost perfect vacuum ... but not quite. Quantum theory actually suggests that a perfect vacuum is impossible, since energy fluctuations, known as ‘virtual particles’ happen even in empty space. In the nineteen-seventies, some Russian physicists were the first to suggest that there could be a middle ground between a stable vacuum and an unstable non-vacuum. These ‘false vacuums’ stay in a metastable, or semi-stable, state for an incredibly long time before decaying, giving them the illusion of being a stable vacuum when in fact they are not. The quantum force field that pervades the universe and gives all matter its mass is called the Higgs Field, and it was first detected by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It would take a whole other video to even begin to explain the Higgs field, but as far as understanding bubbles of nothing are concerned, here’s why it matters: Recent research into the Higgs Field suggests that we may actually be living in a false vacuum after all. If that’s true, our university is not the safe and stable place we once thought - it’s actually unstable, and this is where the bubbles of nothing have their opportunity. A bubble of nothing is one of the ways that a false vacuum could theoretically decay to a more stable energy state. If a bubble of nothing were to form within the apparently false vacuum that is our universe, it would start out as a small hole in the fabric of our reality. The tiny space of emptiness would then quickly begin to expand outward, picking up speed as it expands until it’s growing at the speed of light. As it grows, the bubble of nothing would eat all of the matter it encounters, gobbling up everything in its path and converting all matter into nothingness until the universe is erased completely. So what are these ‘bubbles of nothing’ exactly? As you can imagine, describing ‘nothing’ is not exactly easy. It’s tempting to compare a bubble of nothing to another phenomenon of ‘nothingness’ that we know exists in our universe - black holes - but a bubble of nothing couldn’t be more different from a black hole. A black hole is an area of such intense gravity that it sucks anything, including light, into its center.

A bubble of nothing, on the other hand, expands outward and devours everything in its path, turning anything it encounters into more nothing. If you threw something into a black hole, it would disappear forever, and we would have no idea what happened to it once it passed through the black hole, since we’ve never seen the inside of one. But if you could throw an object into a bubble of nothing, it would bounce right back out - for all intents and purposes, it would have hit the edge of the universe. A bubble of nothing is not the only kind of bubble that might exist in space. A spacetime bubble is any area of space that has different properties inside the bubble than the space outside the bubble. For example, some bubbles could have different strengths of dark energy inside and out. Bubbles of nothing have no interior at all - they are totally empty inside. As the bubble grows, it ‘eats’ all the regular matter it encounters and converts it to ‘nothing’. So how could a bubble of nothing form in the first place? To understand how bubbles of nothing might form, we have to dive into string theory a bit. Don’t worry, it won’t be that bad… String theory attempts to tie together the two most basic laws of physics: the theory of general relativity, or gravity - with quantum physics, the study of the very smallest particles that make up the universe. String theory also attempts to unify the four forces in the universe - the electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravity - into one model. String theory may indeed turn out to be the “theory of everything”, but it’s important to know that String Theory relies on a lot of assumptions about particles and forces that can’t yet be proven. Don’t worry, scientists aren’t just blindly guessing - these assumptions are all based on solid scientific evidence and complex mathematical equations - needless to say, you’d need a Ph.D. in physics to truly understand the intricacies of String Theory. The biggest problem with string theory is that it requires more than the four observable dimensions to work. We can easily observe the three dimensions of space and the extra dimension of time, but for string theory to work, there must be at least a few other dimensions that are invisible to us. As cool as the idea of hidden dimensions sounds, it’s not the parallel universe you might be picturing - you know, the one where you’re you, but with money and power and good looks and anyway Physicists theorize that these extra dimensions could actually be incredibly tiny and curled up below the observable scale, making them too small for us to see them. Scientists can still account for these extra dimensions mathematically, but we have yet to prove they exist. For some reason, bubbles of nothing can’t form in four-dimensional spacetime - don’t ask us to explain the math behind why it would take years! But scientists believe that they can form in stringy multidimensional spacetime like the spacetime described by string theory.

One model of stringy space-time, the Kaluza-Klein model, states that across infinite space the probability of a bubble of nothing destroying everything is one-hundred percent. So, should we be concerned about bubbles of nothing appearing in space and devouring the entire universe? Apparently not. Most scientists believe that since the universe hasn’t eaten itself in the thirteen billion years since the Big Bang, it’s an unlikely scenario. One Czech string theorist named Lubos Motl went so far as to say that we should use the idea of bubbles of nothing to rule out certain descriptions of our universe since if it was going to happen it would have happened by now. That doesn’t negate the possibility, but it’s also reassuring to know that scientists consider this to be something to rectify, not something to agonize over. We’re not sure exactly how scientists would suggest that we fix a bubble of nothing, but it’s nice to know that they at least think we can...right? Perhaps most importantly, physicists think that studying these bubbles of nothingness can give us important clues about the very beginnings of our universe. The study authors think that the mathematical models used to describe a bubble of nothing could also be used to model the birth and expansion of the universe.

Marjorie Schillo, the researcher we met at the beginning of this video, has said “It would be interesting to work out under what conditions an observer could ‘ride’ on the bubble of nothing and see a universe that is similar to the one we live in. Because the bubble expands, such an observer would see an expanding universe.” Riding on a bubble of nothing may be a bit far-fetched, but this research is important for helping us understand our universe, according to the researchers who authored the “Nothing Really Matters” paper. They argue that we can learn important lessons from these bubbles of nothing that might help us better connect the current best theories about fundamental building blocks of the universe with theories about space and time, and hopefully, finally, help us finalize String Theory - the theory of everything. So, what are your thoughts on the bubble of nothing that eats spacetime? Do you think we should be worried about the universe eating itself from the inside out?!

Blog sub by Manoj