American Institute of Physics’ Post

Why the universe might be a hologram Why the universe might be a hologram The colored circle represents the hologram, out of which the knotted optical vortex emerges. A quarter century ago, physicist Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence, an intriguing holographic connection between gravity in a three-dimensional universe and quantum physics on the universe's two-dimensional boundary. This correspondence is at this stage, even a quarter century after Maldacena's discovery, just a conjecture. A statement about the nature of the universe that seems to be true, but one that has not yet been proven to actually reflect the reality that we live in. And what's more, it only has limited utility and application to the real universe. Still, even the mere appearance of the correspondence is more than suggestive. It's telling that there is something deeply fundamental to the hologram, that the physics of the volume of the universe might just translate to the physics on the surface, and that there is more to be learned there. It's one thing to cast problems of physics in a new language, even a new set of dimensions, to make them easier to solve. After all, physics abounds with such mathematical tricks and games that practitioners employ to solve challenging problems and move on to the next one. But the AdS/CFT correspondence, and the more general holographic principle that it represents, is so much more than a mathematical curiosity. Remember that the essential goal here is to describe gravity, which for centuries we believed to be just another force of nature, just one more interaction that entities in the cosmos can use to interact with each other. But gravity does stand alone and unique among all the forces, even beyond its quantum intractability. Gravity is the only force emitted and felt by every single entity in the cosmos. Anything with mass, anything with energy, creates a gravitational influence around it. And so too does anything with mass, anything with energy, anything with what we call existence respond to that gravitational influence. #unitofbharat #quantum #cosmos #hologram #two-dimensional #physics #universe

You might of heard about high-energy cosmic rays, the most famous being the aptly named 'Oh my god particle', but not realize how deeply fascinating they are to astrophysicists. Cosmologists have setup arrays of detectors around the globe to learn more about the universe's heavy-weight in the energetic particle domain. These particles are mysteriously accelerated to very close to the speed of light, accruing relatively enormous amounts of mass. The record energy of the Oh my god particle over 3 decades ago measured a whopping 320 exa-electron volts (similar to a slow-moving school bus). This is remarkable for what is agreed to have been a single proton - essentially one fragment of a smashed atomic nucleus. When particles with this amount of energy hit the earth's atmosphere they transform into a myriad of gazillions of new particles that shower the sky in true E = mc² fashion - converting energy into new particles like a super collider on steroids. Like in this artistic simulation by Kyoto Universe, the microscopic becomes a macroscopic event. And the impacts of these cosmic ray showers has been known to flip bits in computers, literally taking over cruise control in cars and even changing the outcome of an election. Recently another proton particle was detected with the second highest energy ever recorded, exceeding 240 exa-electron volts of energy. It's requires scientific creativity for theoretical physicists to come up with various possible astronomical sources that might be capable of producing these events. However there is a real kicker with the sources of these particular particles, as physicist of the University of Utah John Matthews points out. "𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑶𝒉-𝑴𝒚-𝑮𝒐𝒅 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒍𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒍𝒆, 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒄𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆'𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒊𝒈𝒉 𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒈𝒚 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒕. 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕'𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 – 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒄𝒌 𝒊𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒏?" It's such a cosmic conundrum that even the possibility of extra terrestrial intelligence or new laws of physics isn't off the table. Article link in comments for more information - credit to Mariam Brian for sharing on LinkedIn. #CosmicRay #Particle #Physics

UNRAVELING THE COSMIC ENIGMA: EXPLORING THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE HYPOTHESIS Embark on a quarter-century scientific odyssey with physicist Juan Maldacena and his groundbreaking AdS/CFT correspondence, a holographic link between gravity and quantum physics. Despite being a conjecture, Maldacena's visionary concept challenges our understanding of reality, suggesting a profound connection between the physics within the universe and its surface. Delve into the holographic principle's exploration of gravity, a force universally shaping spacetime. Explore the potential redefinition of black holes through surfaces and boundaries, not their full extents. The AdS/CFT correspondence offers a compelling perspective in the search for a quantized theory of gravity, inviting us to rethink the very essence of space, time, and matter. More: https://lnkd.in/dnhRUnm3

The speeds of the five fastest things in the universe, according to physics, are: 1. Light in a vacuum: Approximately 299,792,458 meters per second (or about 186,282 miles per second). 2. Subatomic particles called neutrinos: Very close to the speed of light. 3. Cosmic rays: Can reach speeds close to the speed of light. 4. Gravitational waves: Travel at the speed of light. 5. Number of Gen AI expert on Internet: have significantly surpassed the speed of light ! #physics #generativeai #hypecycle

"In 1977, Ray and Charles Eames released a remarkable film that, over the course of just nine minutes, spanned the limits of human knowledge. Powers of Ten begins with an overhead shot of a man on a picnic blanket inside a one-square-­meter frame. The camera pans out: 10, then 100 meters, then a kilometer, and eventually all the way to the then-known edges of the observable universe—1024 meters. There, at the farthest vantage, it reverses. The camera zooms back in, flying through galaxies to arrive at the picnic scene, where it plunges into the man’s skin, digging down through successively smaller scales: tissues, cells, DNA, molecules, atoms, and eventually atomic nuclei—10-14 meters. The narrator’s smooth voice-over ends the journey: “As a single proton fills our scene, we reach the edge of present understanding.”  During the intervening half-century, particle physicists have been exploring the subatomic landscape where Powers of Ten left off. Today, much of this global effort centers on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an underground ring 17 miles (27 kilometers) around that straddles the border between Switzerland and France. There, powerful magnets guide hundreds of trillions of protons as they do laps at nearly the speed of light underneath the countryside. When a proton headed clockwise plows into a proton headed counterclockwise, the churn of matter into energy transmutes the protons into debris: electrons, photons, and more exotic subatomic bric-a-brac. The newly created particles explode radially outward, where they are picked up by detectors. " https://lnkd.in/d-Bn7_eW

Here is an interesting question - can gravitational waves also be particle-like? If quantum physics is right, then wave-particle duality must be real, even for gravitational waves. There is every reason to believe that gravitational waves are simply the quantum analog of electromagnetic waves. One of the incredible revelations of quantum mechanics is wave-particle duality: the idea that all fundamental quanta, whether massless or massive, exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behavior. It’s one of the strangest quantum phenomena ever uncovered. The only force we don't have a quantum theory for is gravitation, which obeys Einstein's general relativity. Although there are gravitational waves, there's no particle-like (graviton) counterpart in GR. But at a fundamental level, gravity may indeed be a quantum force: with a quantum gravity theory we still haven't discovered. Gravitons are fully expected to emerge as a consequence of gravity being an inherently quantum force in nature, and just as light is composed of photons, gravitational waves ought to be composed of gravitons. Testing gravitational waves for wave-particle duality might bring about a new scientific revolution. But until we figure out a way to test quantum gravity using gravitational waves, we won’t know whether the “particle” part of wave-particle duality holds for gravitons. Unfortunately, LIGO and other gravitational wave observatories are unlikely to be able to perform any tests in their current incarnation. We may never know for certain… #gravity #quantumphysics #waves #particles

"When it comes to primordial black holes being dark matter suspects, their alibi may be falling apart. Tiny black holes, created seconds after the birth of the universe, may survive longer than expected, reigniting a suspicion that primordial black holes could account for dark matter, the universe's most mysterious stuff. "Dark matter currently represents one of the most pressing problems in physics. That is because, despite making up an estimated 85% of the matter in the cosmos, dark matter remains effectively invisible to our eyes because it doesn't interact with light. "Because the particles that comprise atoms that compose "everyday" stuff we can see, like stars, planets, and our own bodies, clearly do interact with light, this has prompted the search for dark matter particles outside the Standard Model of particle physics. Many scientists believe the answer could still lie within the Standard Model, however, if we consider a diminutive cousin of cosmic objects we usually view as tremendously massive, and even monstrous: Black holes." #blackhole #darkmatter

Day 1: #Quantum30 Cosmic Connections: Imagine this – the events we experience in our lives are intricately tied to astronomical events unfolding across the universe. From distant galaxies to the tiniest particles, everything seems to have a sequential order orchestrated by the cosmos. It's mind-boggling yet undeniably true! As Kurzgesagt puts it, "We are the universe's way of experiencing itself." Matter Mysteries: Ever wondered about the building blocks of our universe? Enter electrons, protons, and neutrons – the basic ingredients of matter as we know it. But here's the kicker: these particles are just the tip of the iceberg! Learning about the Planck epoch and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis shed light on the origins of our universe, challenging our understanding of reality Quantum Quirks: Schrödinger's equation – a familiar friend to physics students, yet its implications for the periodic table are truly mind-blowing! Solving this equation for hydrogen lays the groundwork for understanding the entire periodic table, unraveling the mysteries of atomic structure in a whole new light. Quantum Computing India #quantumcomputing

For decades, physicists have searched for a “theory of everything” that would finally explain the physics that define the entire universe. But, as Dennis Overbye, a science reporter for The Times, writes, a “theory of everything” still might not explain it all. The universe is so big that, even if we knew all of its rules, there would never be enough computing power to accurately track all of its particles — leaving many things about our future and our past a mystery. FOOTNOTES : 1. What does The Theory of Everything explain? Since general relativity describes the large scale, or cosmological, structure of the universe, and quantum theory describes the microscopic, or subatomic, structures, the unification of these theories would explain both the very big and the very small. This theory is often referred to as a "theory of everything". 2. It was this theory that Einstein attempted to further develop into a unified field theory, which would describe all fundamental forces, including gravity, and the relationships between elementary particles in terms of a single theoretical framework without the need for quantum physics. His attempt ultimately failed. #science #universe #space #cosmology

THE FORCE OF GRAVITY — STILL A MYSTERY This is an excellent article that gives a high-level synopsis on the gravitational force [one of the four forces of nature]. Quantum gravity is bewildering when trying to understand through the lens of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Is gravity a wave; particle; both? Does it have wave-particle duality as the electromagnetic field? Can we understand the photon and electrons as the same analogy with gravity by theorizing the "graviton"? This is where all the fun blackhole, wormhole and theoretical physics come into play in cosmology and astronomy. However, we have not proven the [quantum] existence of gravity. The good news is similar to how the Higgs Boson was theoretical until LHC discovered it in 2012/3, we think through better sensor [technology] equipment the graviton can be observed. We are talking beyond attosecond (10^-15 s to 10^-18 s) time ranges by creating clusters of interferometers with significant reduction in noise. Not technically impossible; it’s just technologically difficult. Look at how challenging quantum computing is today with noise and decoherence! 👉 My conjecture is the framework of the electromagnetic field is not the same as the gravitational force in quantum mechanics — it is not [just] scalar, vector and tensor bending space-time; this graviton is elusive because it is physics we do not understand yet. 👉 I am not convinced our technology touches 5% of understanding physics due to our macroscopic constraints in the physical limitations of the laws we know. We are scratching the surface to understand more while having the mechanics of a bumblebee — which are a cool physics phenomenon — however, still severely limited. Do you have a conjecture, theory or thoughts with gravity? Perhaps it is a different phenomenon [yet to be discoverd] when leaving the Milky Way into Andromeda..? 🤔 #physics #gravity #quantum #blackhole #phenomenon #relativity #explore #science #nature #cosmology #astronomy #mathematics #geometry #calculus #algebra #tensor