Slashdot Mirror
Relativity Finally Meets Quantum Theory?
prion86 writes "Physisist Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara (try saying that 3 times fast) believes she has found a way to blend relativity with quantum theory. The article can be found on the Scientific American site."
> Markopoulou Kalamara (try saying that 3 times fast)
Easy man.
I just copy and paste into my voice synth. (I'm mute).
Markopoulou Kalamara, Markopoulou Kalamara, Markopoulou Kalamara. =)
But it sound kind of wierd though.
She talks about physics like it's cooking. If it turns out she's right, a whole new generation of scientist will grow up thinking that women are only good with kitchen-related things. If it turns out she's not, then, it's just a flash in the pan. Insert moronic sexist joke here. (I hope she's right though, it's about time that somebody found something significant, to finally have another woman's name in physics books).
The ENIAC Demo Competition
The physicists who can make stuff like this comprehensible to laymen like me (like Stephen Hawkings) are the ones that really deserve a Nobel prize.
but how will this help me with getting laid
It'll help with that special physisist of your dreams you've had your eye on, of course! Great conversation peice.
I hereby propose the motion that radio.slashdot.org be killed by hanging. Those in favour please say w00t.
Just like to point out that what she's doing is combining relativistic gravitation with quantum physics to produce the physicist's holy grail - quantum gravity.
Merely mixing relativity and quantum theory has been done for years and years - the form of the strong nuclear force was found by Yukawa to be a solution of the Klein-Gordon equation - which was proposed in 1924. The relativity papers were published in 1905, 1908.
OK, so I haven't actually clarified anything at all, have I?
She MIGHT have found a way...
I'm surprised she's Greek AND a girl. wow. Go Foteinh.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Say what three times? Physisist?
I usually read the articles (if I got there fast enough, that is), but this time...relativity and quantum theory blended together? Sorry, but I remember getting D in phy101 couple years ago...
If this works out we'll have anti-gravity engines?
Hey, I can hope, can't I?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Am I the only one that found some of the article's tone, and the cooking analogies, a bit sexist? I don't think the oven stuff at the end would have made it into the article if this work was being done by a man.
As a student of physics, this is still a bit beyond me, but I'll be there soon. Things like this pop up occasionally -- most disappear. The theory has to make predictions that can be tested and verified. Just getting QM and gravity together mathematically is not enough.
Tim
-- Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings
this sort of thinking has its uses and indeed is in use everyday. However, won't a lot of it be pre-empted when cold fusion comes out from underground? After all, Mitsubishi heavy industries, among others, is doing cold fusion right now, thanks to the politicization of research in the US.
C|N>K
"Having fun is essential, because otherwise you get stressed out. You think, I have to show the universe is made out of atoms, and aaaaahhh, you flip out! So you want to keep loose."
One experiment could be to track gamma-ray photons from billions of light-years away. If spacetime is in fact discrete, then individual photons should travel at slightly different speeds, depending on their wavelength
spelling "physicist" three times right
As with any other theory, we can discover that some constants are only so under certain conditions - that still makes the theory valid, but allows a whole new sets of possibilities.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
The last thing this world needs is another person nitpicking about others infringing on his rights. Please, let it go, and I'll do the same.
Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara
Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara
I did it. I did it!!!! That's probably harder than relating relativity with quantum theory.
From the article:
She talks about physics like it's cooking. (at the beginning), and In the meantime, she's hard at work, and waiting for the oven bell. (at the end).
Why are women always associated with cooking? Maybe she does cook well but that's not the point of the article... so why open and close it with that?
What a babe. And an excellent conversationalist as well (well that is 1/2 of the babe-age) ;)
Definitely hypersensitive.
Not every attempt at humor is a slur. And shame on the moderator for marking this comment at all.
Insightful my ass. The poster obviously thought this was important or wouldn't have posted it. Why would they do such a thing AND make a 'racist' comment about the person they are evangelizing?
Get a grip and then go get a life.
Anyways, back to real commentary.....
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Physisist Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara (try saying that 3 times fast)...
Try saying "physicist" once, and slowly.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
From the article -
"According to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, things remain in a limbo of probability until an observer perceives them. But no lonely observer can find himself beyond the bounds of the universe staring back. How, then, can the universe exist? "That's a whole sticky thing," Markopoulou Kalamara says. "Who looks at the universe?" For her, the answer is: we do."
So, where was the universe when there was no life to observe it? Was sentience created with the big bang? Could a statement like this, if expounded and supported mathematically, give empirical evidence of the existence of an intelligence behind existence?
(Not trolling or trying to start a religion vs. science flame war, just a few of the questions that popped into my head when I read this).
Am I the only one who's fallen in love?
Honey, explain it once more as I gaze into your big, brown eyes.
I want to have her baby. I'll take the hormones.
but when was the last time any of us has seen a woman, let alone a woman that looks like that in our physics departments? I don't know about the rest of your schools, but my University's Math and Physics departments are completely devoid of females both on the student and faculty level. I think something like this could finally tell that majority of women that feel that they just can't do stuff like that, that in fact, they can, and that they can do it well.
:) and then stated that she works in the Physics field with QM and Relativity? I know I would be.
Honestly, how many of you would not be totally stuned if a girl looking like that introduced herself to you (first big surprise
Slightly OT: these kinds of news makes you wish Cosmos and Dr. Sagan were still around and explain about them with Vangelis' music in the background.
Maybe if this theory doesn't work out we can ask her to host a show? (or else we post a story linking to their website ^^).
The ENIAC Demo Competition
> has found a way to blend relativity with quantum theory
Shaken, not stirred!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"It's a beautiful thought: we each have our own universe. But there's a lot of overlap. "We mostly see the same thing," Markopoulou Kalamara explains, and that is why we see a smooth universe despite a quantized spacetime."
Personally I like this version of unified relativity but I'm very certain that there will be many nay-sayers concerning her metaphysical POV of light cones and spin networks as personal and individual interpretations of the universe... though it is really nice to hear a published physicist speak about overlapping collective conciousness and the impact on perceived physics of the universe.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I may still be a plain old physics student, but even I know that using the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, as she appears to, to create an entire cosmology, is very problematic. The standard interpretation is beset by massive difficulties in the form of the measurement problem, and most other intepretations are far more successful in dealing with this. The Everett interpretation (sometimes referred to as the 'Many-Worlds' interpretation, although this ascription is inaccurate in several ways) is the one most commonly used by quantum cosmologists, and with good reason, as it does actually allow for a quantum state vector to be applied to the universe. The standard intepretation, however, does not allow for such an assignation, it is nonsensical to talk about it in the standard interpretation, a point which seems lost on the writer and perhaps even the obviously very intelligent physicist. Maybe they both should have attended philosophy of physics 101.
Forgive me, oh vengeful modders-down, but...
Every up-and-coming physicist and his brother has a "theory" of quantum gravity.
Note I said "his". What ratio of physisists do you suppose have two "X" chromosomes?
So why did *this* theory make it to the increasingly (and disconcertingly politically correct) Sci-Am?
You already have the answer, from what I wrote above.
To put it bluntly, this wouldn't have gotten a second look from someone's dissertation advisor if "she" had 'nads.
Note that I do NOT mean this to say a female can't do physics - I only mean to say it only got published in such a high profile magazine because of her gender, not on its own merits. Sad, really. I used to like, Sci-Am, once upon a time. Long ago, I even switched from the somewhat flakier "Discover". Looks like I'll need to go to just plain vanilla "Science", along with its HUGE pricetag, if I want to continue getting reasonably unbiased and non PC-censored news from the world of science.
There's one thing I don't get. Here's the relevant snippet:
But a spin network represents the entire universe, and that creates a big problem. According to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, things remain in a limbo of probability until an observer perceives them. But no lonely observer can find himself beyond the bounds of the universe staring back. How, then, can the universe exist? "That's a whole sticky thing," Markopoulou Kalamara says. "Who looks at the universe?" For her, the answer is: we do. The universe contains its own observers on the inside, represented as nodes in the network. Her idea is that to paint the big picture, you don't need one painter; many will do. Specifically, she realized that the same light cones she had used to bring causal structure into quantum spacetime could concretely define each observer's perspective.
Because the speed of light is finite, you can see only a limited slice of the universe. Your position in spacetime is unique, so your slice is slightly different from everyone else's. Although there is no external observer who has access to all the information out there, we can still construct a meaningful portrait of the universe based on the partial information we each receive. It's a beautiful thought: we each have our own universe. But there's a lot of overlap. "We mostly see the same thing," Markopoulou Kalamara explains, and that is why we see a smooth universe despite a quantized spacetime.
So my boggle is this: Until the first "observer" evolved, nothing observed the universe, so it existed in all quantum states simultaneously. If so, how did that first observer ever evolve? Or is she posutlating that the universe's existence is its own observation?
... is whot bwings os tugevza tsuzay.
String theory has been the predominant contender....whereas strings are fine for describing matter, they do not explain the space in which they wiggle.
Of course, that's why we have Super String Theory and now M-Theory
String theory a predominant contender? Where have she been all these years?
I wanted to compare her 'forked' String Theory but I yet to find more papers from her...hmm...
This would seem to indicate that if we looked out far enough into space, we would see nothing. We've yet to find any boundary. When will we? When I was about 10 years old... I remember reading on the side of my McDonalds Happy Meal box that we'd see the "edge" of the universe within the decade. Why haven't we found it yet?
Sex - Find It
That depends. Is she married?
... is whot bwings os tugevza tsuzay.
The article says that being outside of the universe will make everything clear.
Well, that's kind of obvious, considering than in the 3rd dimension we can see everything inside the 2nd dimension. So if we could go to a higher dimensional plane, we could finally see what our own dimensional structure is.
But I wonder what kind of experiments we can do to test this theory while remaining inside of our measle three-dimensional mortal envelopes.
Somebody bring me Schrodinger's cat, I have to try something. ^^
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Haha! You almost got me there..
/etc/hosts :-)
Too bad for you that I have goatse.cx pointing to 127.0.0.1 in
-$|{
au=Markopoulou_F
So, either we're just probably reading Slashdot or there is a God. Pick one.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Even if this theory it true and explains a lot about the universe, it will be like the weather:
:-(
:-)
We have all the formulas and we can predict how things work for a given set of variables. But in the real world we don't even have a way to store all the existing variables.
By the way, I'm surprised that nobody mentioned that the spatial network thingy was basically a beowulf cluster of quantum particles...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Maybe the folks at Scientific American just needed to find one person that they could write a nice story about. You could check out John Baez's web page too, or Dan Christensen's page for example.
The questions posed of the validity of string theory are weak. I believe that sting theory is much more applicable than this theory. The main point of contention this article makes of string theory is that 26 dimensions must exist, and that that hasn't been verified. It needen't be verified, it necessarily exists in this model of the unvierse. blah
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0203036 for those of you that have advanced degrees in physics... could the rest of us have a translation? Of course I could be off with the publication, but it is hers and it's the only one Perimeter Institute had for her, and the introduction implies gravity with quantum physics... just a disclaimer. I don't have that advanced physics degree yet.
scientists from coca cola think they have found a way to blend coke with vanilla...
'nuff said. I got her number. How do you like THEM apples?
You see, if you don't look at yourself, you are either getting laid or you are not, with an equal probability.
If you look you may find out you are not getting laid. So you should never look, because half laid is better than not laid at all.
Just go ask that cat if you don't believe me.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Well.. we had relativity (which has been beyond us mortals), we had quantum mechanics ( whic again has been beyond us mortals) and now we have quantum relativity (and guess what ! they all are STILL beyond us). Now what? Humans have this notion that they are gonna solve the mystery of life.. which they may someday.. but not for the next few centuries (unless we have vulcans landing up on earth a-la star trek). When we discovered the atom we thought we had all the answers.. and NOW we say if we crack quantum mechanics.. we are gonna have it all. Hm.. maybe if I understoof what this lady was saying, it would help.. but.... wooooooshh.. over my head
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Yeah, but we'll probably be able to use the theory to improve our technology, much like quantum mechanics. Even though few people really understand it, it's brought for example a lot faster computers, and who knows maybe in the future we'll have a quantum computer?
Meep.
I have also sat in on many of Chris Isham's Theoretical physics lecture at IC and I wonder how he would present this theory in a lecture, if at all. Purly theoretical, speculative attempts to explain observed phenomonon come along all the time (cold dark matter, string theory, etc, etc, etc) and they are not usually taken seriously as 'physics' until the rest of the scientific community have had chance to find holes of disprove it. I wont be bothering to learn how to do the sums until this has been done for a while. But maybe for the first time it will be possible to show a mathmatical proof of this theory, it explaining all observables in our universe and all...
I don't understand any of the physics involved, but dude, she's hot!
The real point to the whole article is that she's a hot chick. There's lot's of speculative ideas floating around about how to resolve the differences between relativity and quantum Mechanics. The discussion has been running since the twenties.
She may well have some contribution to make, but that's not how you get your picture in a magazine. You get your picture in a magazine by looking good. I used to work as a TV cameraman, and we always interviewed the hottest chicks we could find. Why not? They have opinions too. And they draw audiences, thus spreading the word.
"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down / In the most delightful way" as Mary Poppins put it.
So sexist remarks are very appropriate. Pile'm on.
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
Everyone who's whining about the line "she talks about physics like it's cooking," should shut their pie holes. The reason that line is in there is not because the writer is sexist, it's because she DOES talk about physics like it's cooking ("to take this ingredient and another one there and stick something together").
If YOU made MY dick hard, I'd give you a little extra attention too.
"Marko!" "Poulou!"
Anyone else notice all the stories from top to bottom of page are submissions from chrisd or Timothy? They blowin' CmdrTaco and/or CowboyNeal? No wonder none of my submissions have been posted... it's not like they weren't every bit as interesting, dynamic and fulla the fluff expected on /.
"It is essential that justice be done
Relativity and quantum theory blend you.
No, I think you're just being hypersensitivie.
:)
First of all, you can't tell a persons race from his or hers name. At first glance I thought it was a finnish name.
I'm not a racist. I found the "try saying that 3 times fast" remark just hilarious
-skurk
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
...can be found in the arXiv database. A search for Fotini gives ten results between 1997 and 2002, most of them published in well-known journals, such as Phys. Rev. D, Nucl. Phys. B etc. Not that I understand any of it, by the way...
From the article:
Each spin network resembles a snapshot, a frozen moment in the universe. Off paper, the spin networks evolve and change based on simple mathematical rules and become bigger and more complex, eventually developing into the large-scale space we inhabit.
Is it just me or does this look a lot like what Wolfram suggested in "A new kind of science"?
Going to court, quick, to get a fast divorce. I really, really, really want a wife who can beat Einstein.
This reminds me of a theory put forth by Stephen Wolfram in "A New Kind of Science" (or, possibly from someone else earlier). Imagine that the universe was actually a huge cellular automota, where every concievable location in space-time is a cell. If you start drawing lines between these cells, you get a network which is perhaps similar to the system described by the article.
What is interesting is that this can explain the "light cone" phenomenon as well. If we are given that a cell can only be affected by those cells adjacent to it in the network, there is a theoretical fastest response of a system, depending how often the "steps" of the automota occur, and how far reaching are these network edges. For example, if we had two nodes 3 edges away from each other in this great graph, it would take at least 3 "ticks" for either cell to affect the other. Perhaps this is the concept she's using, but with actual physical concepts instead of some abstract idea of cells?
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
"designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error"
Sorry, it's true.
If it turns out she's right, a whole new generation of scientist will grow up thinking that women are only good with kitchen-related things
only ignorant people think so even today.
STW for Emma Noether's and Lisa Mitner's stories.
(Lisa Mitner was like an underdog^2 : both a jewish and a woman
in the pre-Nazi regime. So off the Nobel went to who was very
probably the less-deserving coleague)
Working for necessity's mother.
I have many female friends who were inspired to go into theoretical physics because of Chris Isham's ...... lect.. well they all thought he was rather sexy let say.
How on earth did you "burn cereal"?
-$|{
Some of the players in loop quantum gravity (LQG) before Kalamara are Abhay Ashtekar, Lee Smolin, Carlo Rovelli, John Baez and Chris Isham. Also, Julian Barbour has written a cute semi-popular book called The End of Time on the subject as has Lee Smolin---Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
Don't physicists realize that at a certain point their work blends with philosophy... The answer to Quantum Gravity is 42...
Now for the question...
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
You never know.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Some other names we can all have a laugh about:
Severiano Ballesteros!
Deng Xiaoping!!
Wim Kok!!!
*sigh*
Why do I always come away with the idea that the Universe is using the same Z-Buffer routine as Q]I[, as nothings ever there till we look at it. I tell you! The MATRIX IS A REALITY!!! Hehe ;)
Well, in Russia there are more female than male students in ALL DEPARTMENTS of various universities.
Some professions such as medicine, are DOMINATED by females. For example in Medical Schools 70%-to 80% of students are female (being a physician is usually thought as being a 'female job'). There are only a few exceptions, for example there are more male surgeons than females.Other branches, such as Internal Medicine, are dominated by females
Very different from the US, isnt it? Could slashdot people come up with an explanation for this phenomenon?
It bugs me when these physicists get all postmodern about their work and call it art. What they do is organize phenomenalogical data into commessurable patterns. They then mess around with seemingly conflicting patterns in weird combinations to see if they can get 'fundamental' patterns. They do this over and over again. She probably means that advancing physics requires a willingness to break the rules, think differently, color outside the lines... etc. The the degree to which physics posesses that quality pales in comparison to the classical definition of art I suppose the process of physics does require creativity, but physics is an overwhelmingly destructive context for ideas.
It is well known that physicists occasionally fudge things especially undergrad labs (cough..) i've also noticed this to be true of many theories throughout history. we fudge things enough to avoid an answer we don't like! eventually some bright spark come along and says youve compensated for too many things that dont add up. what you find is always a relatively simple answer to the problem. i.e. IMO this doesn't sound right and no other current thoery does either, but thay have some good ideas...
Really, this is just PR for L.Q.G, not that I'm knocking that - string theory attempts to solve similar problems (quantum gravity) and although it is in a much more advanced state of understanding (hundreds if not thousands of physicists have been working on it for 20 odd years) it is still completely hypothetical without a shred of experimental evidence and yet, if you listen to the popular science guys, that's quite often put in the small print - giving the impression that string theory is accepted fact. Giving some popular airtime to some of it's (admittedly few) rivals can only be a good thing.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Jeeze, instead of thinking about science we should spend more time making babies.
I suspect people haven't yet forgiven him for creating the Daleks.
She's the one on the left.
They are not even that good. Most chefs are male, you know.
JMA
It is important to notice that the light cones for all humans being (dead, living, and in all probability those not yet born), are not just ovrlapping, they are for all practical purposes identical, because we all live so close together (cosmologically speaking) in both time and space.
There is a sad tendency of some less honrable people at humaniora to try to tie their pet models of the weak (consensus reality, social consructionism, cultural relativism, whatever it is called this month) to physical theories like quantum physics and even Einsteins relativity theory, apparently to give them some extra credibility.
Apart from it being bad science to apply models outside their domain, these attempt are never really based on more than some shared terms, even if this usually is hidden by a flood of words.
The models humaniora are actually pretty good in their own domain, as long as one remember they are models useful for dealing with a limited range of problems, and does not attempt to interpret them as metaphysical truths.
Stupid commie!
At 31 years old, Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara is hailed as one of the world's most promising young physicists.
Err, young physicists? 31 years old?
I am a genius; therefore, you suck.
One of the results of your suggested search was a section of a website called "Crank Dot Net."
'nuff said.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
...who mistakenly read the url as www.scam.com ;)
"only ignorant people think so even today."
You say that as if ignorant people were a rarity.
BTW, what's STW?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
You say that as if ignorant people were a rarity.
.
...
ignorant _physicists_ are in my humble experience a rarity
BTW, what's STW?
Search The [F word of choice] Web w/o the F
Working for necessity's mother.
John Baez is a well-known mathematician/math. physicist who works in, among other things, quantum gravity. He is also very well known for the Usenet column This week's finds in mathematical physics, which is certainly worth a look a t if you're at all interested in these things and have a bit of a mathematics background.
One of the great things about TWFiMP is the writing style: when reading it, one really does get the idea that one understands what's going on. Of course this tends to wear off soon after leaving the computer, but. At any rate, many of the TWFiMP talk about spin networks and quantum gravity, including for example week 43 and week 55. Week 110 talks specificially about Penrose's spin networks. He mentions some of Markopoulou's work in week 99, week 114 and week 133. These might provide a bit of a middle-ground between the very fluffy SciAm article and the hard stuff on arXiv.
Of course there is also Markopoulou's recent expository article, which is a great introduction!
Is it some sort of disease?
The only Daleks I know are described as follows: Encased in their pepperpot-shaped travel machines, each Dalek is a mutant monstrosity from the planet Skaro. They are one of the Galaxy's most fearsome races, with no thoughts other than that of conquest. The Daleks consider themselves the most superior race in the Universe. Humanity and all of the other species in the Galaxy may be permitted to live as their slaves - but that which they cannot subjugate they will destroy. Their main weaponry is the gun attached to the front of their casings. Even a glancing shot is sufficient to despatch the hapless victim in screaming agony... I doubt the Stephen Hawking invented those....
What's under yellowstone?
for a geek :)
that's gonna get me modded down hard
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
I'd like to see more stories like this on slashdot. It would be nice if we could spend more time contemplating real science and less time bashing microsoft.
I for one spend to much time being bitter at microsoft and not enough doing interesting things.
I wanted to compare her 'forked' String Theory but I yet to find more papers from her...hmm...
I can't help but recall a joke in which the punchline is something along the lines of: "I wanna fork on the table."
Perhaps I should get some sleep, or something.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
It's nice to see someone doing some valuable research on this stuff. It be sad if all the scientists only did research cures for cancer AIDS Polio, Malaria etc. No we need to devote ourselves more to Quantum Fysics and seedless watermelons, becous that (ptuy) has got to stop!
First them scientist claim that man is decended from monkeys. Now they think that everything is made out of shoestrings. Hope she is right...
Damn, that was a bizzare post.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
The Observer has been there from the beginning.... but not before the beginning.
ignorant _physicists_ are in my humble experience a rarity
I once had a teacher (who was my tutor in my thesis for my Physics Ms) who had a Astrophysics Phd. We (a group of undergradute students) had a group for watching and recording star-by-asteroids occultations where we collaborated with some people from IOTA.
One day she seemed interested in comming with us and we invited her to the meeting prior to the occultation where we discussed the proceedings, and suddenly she raised her hand and replied:
- "Wait a second, I'm not familiarized with these observations, and haven't checked the occultation schedule yet, so please inform me, is the asteroid occulting the star or the star occulting the asteroid?"
As you could tell I has embarrased as hell, but I had to finish my thesis with her (I had already started).
Posting anonymously for safety sake.
The EPR 'paradox' isn't a problem at the level of physics. Quantum theory (even non-relativistic) makes very clear predictions about the statistical properties of measurements on spatially separated but correlated particles, and experiments agree. There is no violation of causality. No information propagates faster than the speed of light. Certainly the effect is weird, and it conflicts with some of our naive (i.e. non-quantum) intuitions of how to interpret a physical theory, but there is no logical contradiction and no need to extend or modify the quantum theory to account for experiment.
Wavefunction 'collapse' has some interesting details to be worked out, and some deep matters of interpretation that could use clarification, but it also to date presents no conflicts between experimental results and theoretical predictions. Wavefunctions follow the time-dependent Schrodinger equation, always. It's just when the quantum mechanics extends substantially into macroscopic systems with very large numbers of degrees of freedom, the dynamics of the many-body correlated wavefunction becomes quite complex and our regular intuitions can't keep up very well.
One thing to keep in mind is that wavefunctions do not exist, according to a reasonable definition of exist. The only thing that exists is that which can be measured, that which is physically observable, that which is accessible to an experimental observation. A wavefunction is not physically observable. It is a mathematical tool used to make predictions about experimental results. The simultaneity of collapse of a wavefunction isn't like the simultaneous collapse of say an egg carton. All physical properties related to the process of collapse of an egg carton can be measured by experiment as a function of distance across the carton: density, shear forces, stresses, shape, etc. Not so for a wavefunction.
Curtains for windows?
Every greek should have no hard time saying that name many times in a row.
If you want to try a difficult name try:
Alexandros Barbageorgopoulos.
or
Konstantinos Mitsikostas.
But...
Loosen up. He tried to make a joke. Not everything is culturalist or racist or everything.
Damn, I think I know how the theory got started.
"Let's suppose there are a number of dimensions...for convenience, call them dimension A...dimension Z....so well then, let's assume there are 26 dimensions for now."
Gotta say it like the Prez...
Wes - Crazy like a fox.
Don't you people keep up? Bob the Angry Flower reconciled quantum physics wtih relativity a couple of years back :-)
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
...can /. add a mod category called, say, "Greek", or perhaps "Clicks and pops"?
"If correct, the causal spin networks theory that she's helped to develop would mean that the universe functions like a giant quantum computer".
No one saw the slight reference to Douglas Adams' ( rest his soul ) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ? So you mean we're just operating in the Magrathians "Universe" after all ? If so, I wonder how much longer DeepThought had to formulate the rest of the universe ? Is the answer still "42" ? And when do we get to know what the "question" is ?
Sig ? What's a sig ?
There are many contenders
Loop Gravity (this article) & Spin Networks (the easiest to quantize space time with)
Noncommutative Geometry (IMO the most promising)
Stochastic Gravity (the most humble)
And I am sure that I am forgeting more. But string theory gets the most attention and the most money. This is odd to me because string theory has/had some of the ugliest assumptions (particles are strings, supersymmetry) and introduces the most extra stuff (lots of extra Kaluza-Klein style dimensions, all kinds of extendend objects, excessive parameters).
If string theory ever reaches current holy grail, then I think it will end up being a completely different theory.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
I'd like to Fotini her Markopoulou!
There is a reason that scientific american's website is only one letter away from 'www.scam.com.'
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I don't know about the physics, but spin networks are a really cool computational technique for organizing information about representation theory. It warms my heart to see the popular press take an interest in it. It remains to see if
any of this stuff will every pan out experimentally. They are trying to make predictions on a global scale of 10^{-33} which is way beyond any measurements that have been taken
up to this point.
String theory is really questionable. As I understand it, they talked and talked and talked, and then way after anyone would wait to make physical predictions, they predicted the half life of some common particle. The Japanese government then spent 15 million dollars to build these tanks underground to check the prediction, and found out the string theorists were off by a factor of 100. Then the string theorists say, WE FORGOT THE D-BRANES!, thats the ticket. The last 7 years have been a quest to figure out what the heck a D-Brane is. No one knows, but they figure that out, and maybe they can make a second physical prediction that is not even close.
Time to walk away kids.
Is this the same Markopoulou that went tramping around Mongolia and China a few hundred years ago?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
That's not how our understanding of weather works, smart guy. The weather doesn't operate based on any discrete formulae. And we can predict how things work for a given set of variables in a grossly simplified theoretical world. Usually. In the real world, whether you fart in 10 minutes will contribute to whether or not a hurricane hits Borneo. It's not even theoretically possible to predict the weather to any consistent accuracy more than 3 or 4 days hence. It has nothing to do with storing variables. A computer the size of this universe couldn't do it without playing it out to see. (Turing's halting principle.) And that's essentially what's being done. The system of the weather operates under a strange attractor, and if you've ever heard of Edward Lorenz, you'll realize that using a machine to predict the weather perfectly would require, among other things, an infinite number of significant digits for every measurement. Which is also not even theoretically possible.
When was the last time you saw an asian or a black in a physics dept?
How about 'off-topic', 'flame-bait', 'troll'...?
Einstein and others of his ilk that expected science would continue to find simpler and simpler rules that explain how things work would be very sad.
Once we completely understand the laws of physics, I have every expectation that they will be completely incomprehensible, even to really smart people.
Just last night John Baez (mentioned several other times in this thread) announced a potentially important breakthrough: a LQG calculation that derives the same value for a fundamental parameter as one based on classical assumptions. He calls it "tooth-gnashingly nerve-wracking exciting."
Hear, hear, indeed.
A lot of people seem to be missing the point here. They're all focused on the 'sexist cooking' comments made in the article.
The important thing behind this article is not only is this young woman poised to redefine the laws of physics, but she's also a MAJOR babe!!!
Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara, will you marry me?
I'm an Aquarius, enjoy moonlight walks on the beach, I love children and animals, I can count to ten (twenty if I take my shoes off!), AND on top of all that, I'm a pretty good cook...!
Whew! This water sure is cold!
At least we know she can recite the alphabet now. Which is good, because she sure as fuck isn't a good scientist, releasing this shit without a whit of experimentation to back it up. And I got news for her: there won't be. Ever.
Does this mean science has inadvertantly said "Yes, there is a god"? It's been driving me nuts since I discovered Quantum Theory...
Guys .. she isn't all that you know.
So concentrate on the ideas not some damned fantasy.
Most of you could score, but not as long as you drool over any semi-decent woman you meet. Drooling is unattractive, and women can smell desperation.
Let's face it, everyone who's anyone in Physics at the moment is working on this problem. But I wouldn't mind seeing her solve it because a few more women making influential discoveries can't be a bad thing. Perhaps it'll encourage more of them to go into intellectual disciplines: we often hear about how much smarter women are than man but very rarely do we see much empirical evidence of that.
I always told myself that if it doesn't turn into real physics, if it doesn't get in touch with experiment, I'm getting a really well paying job in New York. Funny, I recently told myself that if I can't find a job in NY soon, I'm gonna spend my time making up dumb physics theories...
I wonder what kind of convincing was required? Did she also wind up with a Ph.D in quantum blow jobs?
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene does a great job of explaining relativity, quantum mechanics, and how superstring theory makes them all play nicely. ISBN# 0-375-70811-1 if you're interested.
Insert moronic sexist joke here.
Now get in the kitchen and make ma a pie!!!
Obviously what is being discussed is the unification of quantum mechanics with general relativity. Physicists have had no problem unifiying QM with special relativity; the result is simply called relativistic quantum mechanics.
[admission of ignorance]
I'm not a physicist, nor a physics student, nor have I ever played one on television. I do, however, have an interest in abstract theories -- as the act of interpretation can itself change the variables. Sorry, but that's just cool.
[/admission of ignorance]
While Ms. Kalamara's take on unification is indeed radical -- she's not alone in postulating existence through observation. I bring this up not to lessen Ms.Kalamara's position -- but to draw attention to the theoretical support she has. Australian physicist, Greg Egan (as one example), has toyed w/ similar notions for over 15 years -- Both 'Permutation City' & 'Distress' (yes, I know... they're 'sci-fi' books) presented his views in a neatly bound narrative.
One can also see efforts made [on the part of some physicists] to examine possible connections between physics & higher consciousness. I'm particularly intrigued by the inclusion of the Dalai Lama in various round table discussions. (This was an interesting read...)
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/2/8/13/1
There is, obviously, a difference in languages (read: scientific views vs. metaphysical) but it's reassuring to note that there are some who would not disallow possibilities for their own prejudice of [what some would term] superstition.
As for the notion of "physics as art" (and those who don't like the comparison); I'm reminded of two things: Hofstadter's 'Gödel, Escher, Bach. The Eternal Golden Braid (If you're not familiar w/ it, it's definately a wonderful read) -- and the works of Philip Glass. While there are many who do not appreciate Glass's compositions, I've spoken with a few mathematicians who found his compositions to embody a "sense of mathematical purity". I suppose it can work both ways.
All in all -- I'll definately be following Fotini's work. Fun, fun stuff.
-----
The difficulty of a system is only comparable to the ignorance of the end-user.
#SickNotWeak
Now try to disprove it.
Disprove what? A free-energy scheme, which has managed to hire a web-designer and leech some investment capital?
A rudimentary amount of research reveals the company you refer to was founded by a Dr. Randell L. Mills in 1991, and has so far failed in all attempts to produce results... a buisiness based on exploiting the energy of the alleged "hydrino," which I doubt any reputable physicist has even HEARD of, is a rather bad idea.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Nothing like a good-looking genius to get the juices flowing.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
I wrote up the connection between Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara and University of Waterloo here.
home page
sounds like it. This article was a joke. I agree with an earlier message saying that the article tried to make it seem she solved a problem that einstein couldn't. Affirmative Action at work.
It's Emmy Noether and Lise Meitner. Not to be anal, but I regard spelling people's names correctly as a sign of respect. Even on Slashdot ;-)
....and she should be from Africa!
(I wonder how many people are going to get this?)
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.
Yeah, she's a hottie, blah, blah.
Next.
Mike Nomad
IANAP
so excuse what may be an ignorant qestion. Is c not completely dependant on the point of observation? I mean if object A leaves point X at a velocity of C relative to X then and while on it's merry way it passes an object (B) coming from the opposite direction at an equal velocity does this not mean that the relative speed of A as measured from B is 2C? If not then, is C relative only to a stationary starting point or perhaps to the medium through which an object(particle,wave whatever) is travelling?
My brain hurts please help.
Slashdot: droud for nerds. Nothing matters.
Have tracked down her homepage like a lot of other people in this discussion (actually because her work sounded interesting rather than because she's a hot chick; although lets face it, she is), I was a bit dissapointed to find a lack of materials on there. Maybe its different in physics (not my field so I wouldn't know) but normally people put publications links.
Does anybody in the field know anything about her work, I noticed that her thesis title was Quantum Gravity which sounds ambitious (not quite a solved problem yet is it?). Are there any critques out there, or even a copy of her papers?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
If a male scientist looked like, say, Pierce Brosnan, don't you think he'd get a lot more pictures in the magazines, too?
I saw a special on one of those Edu-macational channels about this issue. They described an experiment where they sent two groups of people around to various job interviews, then interviewed the interviewers afterwards. One group was conventionally attractive but told to phrase replies in the simplest way possible. The other group was plain but smart, and told to be as witty as they could. When asked, the interviewers almost always claimed the better looking person sounded more intelligent.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hah! What a loser!
(looks around nervously to see if this is the correct response)
Of course it's going off the rails. How else is it ever going to fly?
What new gizmos and widgets will we get because of it? Antigravity? Cold Fusion? A toaster that won't burn toast?
Eat at Joe's.
I know a lot of women who burn water and have to look up the recipe for ice cubes. I know a lot of men (myself included) who can make hundreds of dishes from memory. I'm a network admin and part time programmer. I think many people in the computer field have the proper mindset to make good cooks, whether they have any training or not. Recipes are so much like programs. Once you know the basic syntax and common routines of cooking, it's easy to come up with tasty recipes. I usually only look in books for highly technical recipes, like breads and such; or to get inspired by new ideas.
I guess I'm going off about cooking because it's Thanksgiving here in the States, and I'm cooking a bunch of stuff right now: Turkey, stuffing, gravy and two pies. I haven't eaten anything, to save room. The smell is driving me berserk. I practically need a damn drool cup, and it's gonna be two hours until we eat.
Turkey coma, here I come!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
get her bitch-ass back in the kitchen and bake me a Pi(e)
Disprove what? Knee-jerk skepticism based on a Google search? Go read Mills' papers and try to explain the ABSOLUTELY REPEATABLE results -- anomalous spectral lines and high-energy H species are produced when hydrogen is reacted with other elements that have ionization energies equal to a multiple of the potential energy of hydrogen. Why? Mills theorizes hydrinos, based on a mountain of math -- a model which has led him to make predictions, perform further experiments, and confirm those predictions. Methodically. Repeatably.
This is NOT pseudoscience. THIS IS SCIENCE. I suggest that you, the rest of the Slashdot knee-jerk skeptics and the scientific establishment figures who dismiss Mills' hydrino theory AND HIS EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS out-of-hand because you just 'know' they can't be true should examine your faculties for emotional attachment to other theories that, while they may be useful, are clearly incomplete. Not that Mills' theories are complete; we have no COMPLETE model of physics and probably never will. But his model describes and predicts a wider range of phenomena than the theories he proposes to replace.
There is NO valid reason to remain attached to ANY scientific model that cannot describe observable phenomena without essentially saying "and then some magic happens." Exclusion of observable phenomena from dominant theories is as old as science, probably. In the domain of energy production, take a look at Faraday's homopolar generator for an example. EM theory as we generally conceive today cannot fully explain this device, so it is excluded as anomalous. Far better to include reality rather than exclude it, I say.
...poulou!
>> That depends. Is she married?
"We never thought our Fotini would get married. NEVER!"
Then one day, she met this attractive teacher who showed her how the spin nodes make the geometry give birth to spacetime, you put the lime in the coconut, and there you go.
All the great physicists were Greek!
"There are two kinds of people: Greeks, and everyone else who wish they was Greek." Heh heh!
sigh smart, loves physics & maths and looks good, are you listening santa???
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I hate Slashdot discussions on Physics. Popular science is a curse on society, doubly so when it is abused.
Very much related. Wolfram makes this connection himself in "A New Kind of Science," pointing to spin networks as a possible link to his all-encompassing network automaton. Note, however, that Woflram's network doesn't just divide space into cells; the network precedes space or time. We perceive three-dimensional space and time, matter and energy due to the evolutions of the underlying network, but the network itself doesn't necessarily match our physical concepts of spatial continuity. So, conceivably, connected nodes in this network could represented what we see as spatially separated points. I personally think he was just leaving the door open for non-locality, and that spatially separate points will always be separated in the network.
The universe can be conceived of as an infinite set of discrete points that all occupy the same location, each point has its own unique set of dimensions or properties that allow it to exist in the same place simultaneously. The only time there is an issue is when two or more points begin to attain the same state in several of their dimensions or properties. Then you have an interaction that either creates new states in the various points or causes two or more existing states to collapse into one new state with properties defined by the merging of the point's two properties. These transformations are time and the inertia of the system is the cause of gravity. Seems like a good explanation for me.
Smile, hey if she can do it so can I.
Wish I may, wish I might, change occurs at the speed of light. Light and time they are the same, change occurs, the only game. If I would, then I could, the arrow of time of scalar wood. Change, its reverse but more the same, one arrow of time, forward the game. Quanta, bits that bite one another's flesh, defined by change, a rational guess. Space itself is formed thus, a spin network to knots, not ashes nor dust. Photon and gluon agents of change, notwithstanding a difference in range. Birth equals death, time on the fly, relative equivalence; one instance goodbye. Web of relationships masquerading as things, permanence illusion, change defines being. No future or past far star to retina, bosons gauge alterations, light bulb to paper. Simultaneous connections world does work, singularity to horizon, entropy is felt. Spooky action at a distance a puzzle not, one event timeless connected, reach notwithstanding. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
The Asians are OVER-REPRESENTED , that is the percentage of Asian physicists is higher than the percentage of Asians in the general population.
Why? Americans only care about money; they would rather study Law or Medicine because there is the opportunity to MAKE LOTS OF MONEY.
For Americans it seems STUPID to spend 7-8 years in school for a PhH in Astrophysics or Theorerical physics when in the same time time they can get a degree which means LOTS OF MONEY.
Should open-minded science and rational religion actually converge at some point, we would have great cause to celebrate. Ultimately, shouldn't they produce the same conclusions about the nature of reality? This may occur through totally different methods and vocabularies, but it should still occur.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Hot chicks can make a difference. I think that Bob the Angry Flower said it best.
Wah!
See this treatment of Bell's Theorem for a well-written counter-argument. Note that the EPR paradox attempted to prove locality by invoking causality (no "spooky action-at-a-distance", according to Einstein), but ended up leading to Bell's work.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
You'll have much more success looking for Emmy Noether and Lise Meitner.
i am an american male... i am not "white bread", you racist cunt.
Actually I heard the chef world is mainly male.
;).
But in many cases when the chef goes home, the wife cooks
Not sure why. But I believe I'm telling it like it is.
I heard people say that most women don't mind supporting roles. I suppose more (not all) guys do mind, and so they strive harder to be boss, chef, etc in their domains of interest.
Why the hell are people so attached to causality anyway. If you relax the causality constraint, then waves travelling backwards in time mean that Quantum mechanics makes perfect sense (provided you step outside time). What's the problem with that? I don't know.
This is a very operationalist standpoint, and I would be pleased if it were followed completely through. The article which is being discussed here takes a very different view of quantum mechanics, feeling it has something to say about something real in the universe. If only observable quantities exist, then we can deny the reality of any theoretic substructure of physics, it's merely a model of the universe. I am quite happy to heap praise on this instrumentalist view, but it is not strictly relevant to a discussion of the implications of new theories within a realistically constrained paradigm.
There are certain kinds of information that can effectively be sent FTL. Non-local information falls into this category.
Applied mathematics _is_ real.
One cannot say that an abstract class represents an actual object without actually instantiating that abstraction. Wavefunctions are real and they can be physically observered. Any observable interference pattern is a projection of a wavefunction.
You are liable for your speech and actions, not your thoughts.
If you guys/girls only knew how ridiculous all your comments are, you'd stop giving them. If you want to do physics, start with the basics. Otherwise, you're speaking of things way more complex or in depth than your capable of doing. For those of you that worship Steven H. He's not held in any light to real physicist. He's just a public figure that raises eyebrowns of those that don't know any better.
Her on the left, Dr. Fiorella Terenzi on the right...
Or maybe reversed...
Or top and bottom...
Or me on top of them on top of each other...
Oh, the combinations physics can produce...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
(1) Time is not just how fast things change. Time also provides a way of ordering observed events. I don't see how you could remove time from Einstein's equations. I mean, there are lots of situations where physicists make up "non-physical" quantities that aren't necessarily part of a physical understanding. These quantities could be more or less removed from the physical equations. Many people would consider electromagnetic fields to be non-physical, for example. I've actually never seen a clear definition of what a "physical quantity" is, but time and space are pretty much assumed to be physical. In classical quantum mechanics, time is treated as a parameter of the system, not as an observable (i.e. physical quantity in the normal sense) like position, energy, momentum etc. I think though, in relativistic quantum mechanics, time is an observable, because otherwise the relativistic transformations wouldn't work correctly. It's hard to get anywhere if you don't want to assume that there's anything like time that really exists.
(2) Objects travelling near the speed of light don't actually have slower time, they just seem to from a "stationary" observer. The reverse also applies: the stationary observer seems to have slower time from the point of view of the "moving" object. So neither observer's time is actually slower. When objects accelerate, e.g. in the twin paradox, then you can say that one object's time is going slower than anothers, but that's a whole new kettle of fish.
(3) If the total energy available were to change between different reference frames in the way that you describe, it probably would mean that different outcomes are observed in different reference frames. This is a bad thing, if say one observer sees something blow up and another observer sees it stay intact. As it is, the total energy of an object does depend on the observer (the kinetic energy changes in different reference frames), but this energy doesn't necessarily affect the internal workings of the moving object.
Anyway, if you want to read a good popular account about this sort of stuff that gets the details right, I'd recommend The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It doesn't cover the theory specifically mentioned in this article, but covers a "competing" theory, string theory. On the way, it also discusses special and general relativity, the nature of space and time, quantum mechanics, extra dimensions, and all sorts of other fun stuff.
...look that up in your Funk'n'Wagnall's! :)
Or perhaps I should say, "welcome to my world!"
"Suppose I wanted to have a party?" I said.
"Like, what kind of a party?"
"Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?"
"...It'd cost you."
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a ... and a $7,000 car which
soda can, when discarded will last forever
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...