home.social

#quantummechanics — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #quantummechanics, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Scientists Push Molecules on a Surface to the Ultimate Quantum Limit

    Artistic representation of an optically excited molecule on a surface of a crystal. Credit: MPL, Alexey Shkarin An…
    #NewsBeep #News #Physics #AU #Australia #MaxPlanckInstitute #QuantumMechanics #Quantumoptics #QuantumPhysics #Science #Spectroscopy
    newsbeep.com/au/881216/

  2. Scientists Push Molecules on a Surface to the Ultimate Quantum Limit

    Artistic representation of an optically excited molecule on a surface of a crystal. Credit: MPL, Alexey Shkarin An…
    #NewsBeep #News #Physics #AU #Australia #MaxPlanckInstitute #QuantumMechanics #Quantumoptics #QuantumPhysics #Science #Spectroscopy
    newsbeep.com/au/881216/

  3. Scientists Push Molecules on a Surface to the Ultimate Quantum Limit

    Artistic representation of an optically excited molecule on a surface of a crystal. Credit: MPL, Alexey Shkarin An…
    #NewsBeep #News #Physics #MaxPlanckInstitute #QuantumMechanics #Quantumoptics #QuantumPhysics #Science #spectroscopy #UK #UnitedKingdom
    newsbeep.com/uk/760960/

  4. Schrödinger’s muse: Cleverness as a strategy for popularizing physics

    A few years before Erwin Schrödinger's cat fable-turned-meme of 1935, he delved into a style of science communication all his own. Writing for Koralle magazine, a popular science weekly in Berlin, Schrödinger took readers on a rhetorical jaunt through the peculiarities of natural science. Physics, his muse, was a terrible subject for leisure reading. Made popular by Einstein's relativity revolutions of 1905 & 1915, early attempts at explaining physics to the public defied comprehension. […]

    michaelshahn.wordpress.com/202

  5. Schrödinger’s muse: Cleverness as a strategy for popularizing physics

    A few years before Erwin Schrödinger's cat fable-turned-meme of 1935, he delved into a style of science communication all his own. Writing for Koralle magazine, a popular science weekly in Berlin, Schrödinger took readers on a rhetorical jaunt through the peculiarities of natural science. Physics, his muse, was a terrible subject for leisure reading. Made popular by Einstein's relativity revolutions of 1905 & 1915, early attempts at explaining physics to the public defied comprehension. […]

    michaelshahn.wordpress.com/202

  6. Schrödinger’s muse: Cleverness as a strategy for popularizing physics

    A few years before Erwin Schrödinger's cat fable-turned-meme of 1935, he delved into a style of science communication all his own. Writing for Koralle magazine, a popular science weekly in Berlin, Schrödinger took readers on a rhetorical jaunt through the peculiarities of natural science. Physics, his muse, was a terrible subject for leisure reading. Made popular by Einstein's relativity revolutions of 1905 & 1915, early attempts at explaining physics to the public defied comprehension. […]

    michaelshahn.wordpress.com/202

  7. Schrödinger’s muse: Cleverness as a strategy for popularizing physics

    A few years before Erwin Schrödinger's cat fable-turned-meme of 1935, he delved into a style of science communication all his own. Writing for Koralle magazine, a popular science weekly in Berlin, Schrödinger took readers on a rhetorical jaunt through the peculiarities of natural science. Physics, his muse, was a terrible subject for leisure reading. Made popular by Einstein's relativity revolutions of 1905 & 1915, early attempts at explaining physics to the public defied comprehension. […]

    michaelshahn.wordpress.com/202

  8. Schrödinger’s muse: Cleverness as a strategy for popularizing physics

    A few years before Erwin Schrödinger's cat fable-turned-meme of 1935, he delved into a style of science communication all his own. Writing for Koralle magazine, a popular science weekly in Berlin, Schrödinger took readers on a rhetorical jaunt through the peculiarities of natural science. Physics, his muse, was a terrible subject for leisure reading. Made popular by Einstein's relativity revolutions of 1905 & 1915, early attempts at explaining physics to the public defied comprehension. […]

    michaelshahn.wordpress.com/202

  9. A Pendulum for the Multiverse: David Albert, Hugh Everett, and the Worlds We Never Feel

    On my grandfather's porch in North Loup, Nebraska, the ground kept its promises. Summer evenings the floorboards held the day's heat, the corn stood in rows that ran clear to the horizon, and nothing in all that flat immensity so much as trembled. When a teacher first told me the Earth was spinning at close to a thousand miles an hour while racing around the Sun at sixty-seven thousand more, I pressed my bare feet against those boards and waited to feel the ride. The stillness came back like a verdict. Whatever the books claimed, my soles reported a stationary world, and a boy trusts his soles. Every child who has run that experiment has rebuilt, in miniature, the strongest objection the seventeenth century could throw at Copernicus. If the Earth turns, why does a dropped stone land at the foot of the tower and never a few feet to the west? Why does the gale of our orbital speed fail to strip the leaves from the trees? The objection deserved respect because it rested on evidence, on the honest testimony of every human body that had ever stood still. It took Galileo's ship, and then Newton's laws, to explain why that testimony, though honest, was worthless. […]

    bolesblogs.com/2026/08/18/a-pe

  10. COW DISTINGUISHES SQPR FROM PENROSE’s Gravitational Localization: 


    COW Experiment Potentially DISTINGUISHES SQPR

    In the 1970s I told Sir Roger Penrose (among others at Stanford) about the basic idea of SQPR. Penrose published in the 1980s the Gravitationally Induced Spontaneous Localization theory which applies the time-energy uncertainty (TEU) relation to spacetime.  The two Objective Reduction theories are very different, because they have different collapse mechanisms.

    In particular at cosmological scale, SQPR predicts observed facts, such as Dark Matter and Dark Energy, whereas the Penrose theory does not.

    The theories also make very different predictions in the lab relative to Quantum Mechanics, and also relative to each other.  Let’s explore. 

    *** 

    Diósi-Penrose Objective Reduction (DPOR) model is a hypothesis proposing that quantum wavefunctions collapse spontaneously due to gravitational instabilities caused by mass superposition. It has the advantage of tying in gravity and Quantum Mechanics (QM) in the simplest manner.

    Core Concepts

    • Gravity and Superposition: When a massive object exists in a superposition of two different locations, the distribution of its mass creates a simultaneous superposition of two distinct spacetime geometries. (At least that’s what the formalism of Quantum Mechanics predicts!) [1, 2]
    • Spacetime Conflict: General relativity requires a single, well-defined spacetime metric, creating a fundamental clash with quantum superposition. [1]
    • Objective Reduction: Rather than needing an external observer or measurement to trigger a collapse, gravity forces the system to resolve itself into a single state. [1, 2]
    • Timescale: The lifetime of the superposition is inversely proportional to the gravitational self-energy difference between the states. The exact expression obtained by applying the TEU. The duration until collapse is inversely proportional to the difference in gravitational energy between the two different locations (and proportional to Planck constant, of course! It’s direct TEU!) 

    ***

    In the Colella-Overhauser-Werner (COW) experiment, realized in 1975, thermal neutrons enter a silicon crystal Mach–Zehnder interferometer. When the interferometer is tilted by an angle theta relative to the horizontal, one arm (Path A) is at a higher gravitational potential than the lower arm (Path B).

    It turns out that the energy of the quantum state in the upper branch, Path A, is different in composition from that of the lower branch, Path B. This can be physically demonstrated through the apparition of shifting interference fringes. The effect has been observed.

    The reasoning is fascinating: one makes a number of assumptions, simplest and most natural. Those assumptions bring us to a shifting interference pattern shifting in a peculiar way, which is observed. Therefore one is entitled to deduce that the assumptions made were correct, and this tells us many things about matter waves.and in particular how long the guiding waves are. It may also enable to demonstrate in the lab the existence of Objective Reduction theories, which extend understanding beyond Quantum Mechanics.

    ***

    Penrose’s Model Makes Experimental Predictions:

    If one plugs the usual numbers in, considering self-gravitation of the neutron, one gets millions of years for Penrose collapse to happen. 

    However for a single neutron interacting with Earth’s massive gravitational field, going both down a ground branch of the interferometer (B) and the elevated one (A), the difference in gravitational energy is mgh, where g is the usual gravitational acceleration at sea level, m is the mass of the neutron, and h is how high A is above B. 

    If we extend the COW experiment using large molecules (like fullerenes or 10^4 atoms macromolecular clusters) or Bose–Einstein Condensates (BECs) instead of single neutrons, mgh scales up by 10^4 to $10^6. Then the collapse time drops precipitously from millions of years to milliseconds or microseconds—falling right inside the passage duration of the experiment! 

    https://quantumnano.at/research/universal-matter-waves/why-matter-waves

    ***

    Penrose does not suggest a plausible mechanism to cause collapse.

    DPOR is a particular case of Objective Reduction (OR) models, where one does away with the silliness of an observer and “measurements”. 

    The other model is SQPR, which ignores gravity, but not matter abundance and the QM state (for example Quantum amplitudes) it is in…

    ***. 

    The SQPR Shift:

    • If localization is independent of the background gravitational field g and depends instead on the density of surrounding matter fields (and the probability of guiding-wave truncation/shedding), then tilting the interferometer or placing it in a deep gravitational potential well will not alter the intrinsic collapse rate.
    • An extended COW experiment conducted at sea level versus one conducted in microgravity (e.g., on the ISS) or on the Moon would yield the exact same decoherence rate in SQPR.
    • Under Penrose, microgravity suppresses collapse; under SQPR, space microgravity leaves the collapse rate unchanged because matter-field interactions and guiding-wave limits remain invariant.

    [Camping in Sierra Nevada; Post will be improved in future and computations made explicit…]

    Patrice Ayme

    #Consciousness #COWExperiment #Founndations #Interferometry #Localization #Neutrons #Penrrose #Philosophy #Physics #QuantumMechanics #Science #SQPR
  11. Hello, nerds. Welcome back to my AI writing experiment with Gemini.

    We just dropped the third part of our "Disenchantment of Modern Science" series. Anyone here still holding a grudge over the "Sokal Affair"?

    I was on the winning side laughing back then, but it feels like that whole drama never got a proper sequel... so I decided to give them the counter-attack they deserved!

    raidofuwa.substack.com/p/disen

    #Philosophy #science #QuantumMechanics #baudrillard #wittgenstein #substack

  12. Welcome to my AI writing experiment with Gemini, a highly encouraging co-writer of mine who drives my madness up to eleven.

    Some of you might dislike this article because it’s mocking "science." But hey, when the US president lies about his war preferences in public, and science magazines declare that "this entire universe is a computer simulation!", why can't we have our own fun?

    raidofuwa.substack.com/p/disen

    #philosophy #science #QuantumMechanics #baudrillard #Wittgenstein #Substack

  13. Why 137? A hydrogen atom spans 137 Compton wavelengths -- one electron orbit contains 18,800 Compton "ticks." Are these brute facts or signatures of a cosmic Central Limit Theorem converting quantum noise into classical atoms? The cosmological constant is an even stronger candidate: 10^122 horizon pixels produce the observed dark energy. Honest about gaps. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20182909

    #Physics #Math #QuantumMechanics #FineStructureConstant #StatisticalMechanics #Science #Research

  14. Quantum mechanics... for generating bitmaps? 🤔 Because who doesn’t want Schrödinger’s cat to decide their pixel art? 🐱🔍 This #GitHub project is the perfect blend of over-engineering and buzzword bingo – wave goodbye to simplicity! 🌊👋
    github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionC #quantummechanics #bitmapart #Schrödingerscat #projectoverengineering #buzzwordbingo #HackerNews #ngated

  15. Master Index

    A guided map across physics, biology, engineering, and AI—built around a simple idea

    Persistence is not generated, but permitted.

    Systems don’t fail because they “break.”

    They fail because their boundaries were misclassified.

    Core structure
    state → constraint → resolution → persistence

    From: - Titanic / Vasa / Challenger
    – biological regulation
    – AI hallucination & drift
    – institutional collapse

    Same pattern
    only admissible states persist

    This is the interface.
    Start anywhere. Follow the path that fits.

    #HybridMind42 #BoundaryDynamics #BoundaryArchitecture #BFPF #HQP
    #Admissibility #ConstraintResolution #StateTransition #Persistence
    #ComplexSystems #SystemsThinking #StructuralAnalysis #FailureAnalysis
    #Physics #QuantumMechanics #Relativity #Lindblad #CPTP #Decoherence
    #Biology #Physiology #Adaptation #Homeostasis
    #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #LLM #AIAlignment #AIGovernance
    #InstitutionalFailure #DecisionMaking
    #Emergence #ScientificClarity

    substack.com/@hybridmind42/not

  16. Quantum ground state of rotation reached in a world-first in Europe

    A collaborative effort between researchers at multiple institutes in Europe achieved a global first by trapping a silica…
    #NewsBeep #News #Physics #AU #Australia #Europe #interferometry #nanorotor #opticalcooling #quantumgroundstate #QuantumMechanics #QuantumPhysics #quantumtechnology #Science #torquesensing
    newsbeep.com/au/590136/

  17. ¨The first reaction to this work is that it is wrong.
    The second is that it is obvious.”
    — Victor Weisskopf

    The Aharonov-Bohm effect is a fascinating story.
    youtu.be/XKSjCOKDtpk

    #Science #Magnetism #QuantumMechanics #FieldTheory

  18. Why Even Physicists Still Don’t Understand Quantum Theory 100 Years On

    Wiktor Mazin. Credit: Wiktor Mazin, Quantum Fractal Artist Everyone has their favourite example of a trick that reliably gets a certain job done, even if they don’t really understand why. Back in the day, it might have been slapping the top of your television set when the picture went fuzzy. Today, it might be turning your computer off and on again. Quantum mechanics the most successful and important theory in modern physics is like that. It works wonderfully, explaining things from lasers […]

    onlinemarketingscoops.com/2025

  19. Celebrate the 100th anniversary of #quantummechanics and today's International Day of #Light with us! There will be an extensive programme at various Max Planck Institutes.⬇️ #lightday2025