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Exploring Superstrings in the Lab
ultracool writes "Physicists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands have come up with a way of observing a superstring by utilizing Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). A one-dimensional BEC in an optical lattice is rapidly rotated, causing a quantized vortex to form. The bosonic part of the superstring consists of this vortex line. Inside the vortex, they would trap an ultracold cloud of fermionic atoms. Hopefully this will allow observation of the supersymmetry between bosons and fermions, thus providing the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory."
I almost understood a word of that.. Almost.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/ StringBuilder.html .
They're great. You can modify them and they aren't synchronized so they're fast, too. If these scientists are only just now discovering them they should try reading some newsgroups.
A more detailed explanation of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstringssuperstri ngs.
Supersymmetry between bosons and fermions is not possible in your universe. We have seen to that.
It's the one in which Q inverts a universal constant, right?
...to refer people to more information on Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC):
BEC wikipedia page
BEC home page at Colorado
BEC at NIST
What is a BEC?
A liquid or solid condensate at room temp exhibiting BEC properties will be nice. I wonder if liquid helium can be made that way.
Just pop open the bottle and show friends how the BEC flows up the wall.. down the bottle, over your arm and onto the floor..
I thought liquid helium was the best way to learn about BECs
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
- (This added to get past slashcode)
this is the first experiment that could confirm the existence or non existance of super strings. This would begin to give emperical evidence to support String Theory. up until now most work on String Theory has been unable to provide a working way to test it. this could easily change the face of theoretical physics in the labs and particle accelerators.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Bose-Einstein Condensate blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah quantum blah blah blah blah blah blah superstring blah blah blah blah blah blah . Hopefully blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Any string theorists out there want to chime in?
I swear. This type of science is sounding more and more like Stan Lee's Marvel dialog every year.
I've been a science geek my whole life, and I have barely an idea of what they are talking about. I thought there was some disagreement about the existence of the multidimensional strings. Is that over now?
We're going to wake up one day and someone in Portugal will have a wormhole operating in his lab, or an antimatter explosion will accidently be set off in Japan. Careful, boys, we're getting into comic book territory now.
This has direct implications for the food industry. No longer will superstring cheese have to be refrigerated, the fermionic atoms will maintain an ultracold cloud around the superstring cheese, keeping it tasty and fresh. Yum.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
... so I am very curious to see if they will come up with anything.
If they can demonstrate that the predictions of superstring theory hold true, and that it can actually be used to connect Quantum Physics with Relativistic Physics, we might actually be able to stop some of the bickering that goes on among Physicists today.
What does that mean for us? Well, when Newton found physical laws that worked more generally than Aristotle thought, Physics was born and we were launched into a new era of science. Einstein's Special (and then, afterward) General Relativity made what we consider the modern era possible.
Quantum Physics and Relativity have always been at odds, though. After all, what makes gravity operate at a quantum level? Superstring theory is one of several "theories of everything" that would allow us to explain the world in more general terms--and in the past, every time that has happened, society and technology has taken leaps and bounds forward.
What will happen if we find out that Superstring theory really is the theory of everything? It's liable to be as outlandishly unthought of as space travel to the people of the turn of the 20th century.
In Korea only old people rapidly rotate a one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensation in an optical lattice to cause a quantized vortex to trap an ultracold cloud of fermionic atoms.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
String Theory was unknown to me until I saw the awesome Nova special on it..
from the article : String theorists attempt to explain all the fundamental particles as vibrations on tiny strings on length scales of about 10-33 metres. The theory naturally includes "supersymmetry" - a symmetry that connects particles with integer spin, known as bosons, to particles with half-integer spin, which are known as fermions. The particles that carry the fundamental forces of nature, such as the photon and the gluon, are bosons, while the quarks and leptons that make up matter are fermions. Although superstring theory is the leading candidate for a theory of everything, there is no experimental evidence to date for strings or supersymmetry.
Here's what I don't get. The article on Physics web says, "The particles that carry the fundamental forces of nature, such as the photon and the gluon, are bosons, while the quarks and leptons that make up matter are fermions." Then it goes on to say, "Bosonic atoms such as rubidium-87 can enter such as state because, unlike fermions, they do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle." What makes atoms bosonic versus fermionic? Just whether or not they follow the Pauli exclusion principle?
Humans really have got some sophisticated toys running these days. Is it any easier to create a black hole from BEC than from "STP" matter? If so, I'd like to hear about some research on rotating cylindrical ones, and their effects on signal propagation in their peculiar spacetime neighborhood. Conducted far out in space, preferably ;).
--
make install -not war
Interstellar space is "ultracold", and there are some accumulations of bosonic and fermionic atoms there. Could these superstringy conditions be found there, and observed by instruments on Earth?
--
make install -not war
It's still a char array, no matter how sophisticated MSDN tries to make it sound.
The scientists are creating a system here that looks quite similar to superstring theory in some ways from a mathematical point of view. They have no way of observing "real" superstrings at these energies. While certainly interesting in its own right, this experiment can in no way provide experimental evidence that superstring theory really describes reality.
Don't you just puss the button on top of the can and the superstring sprays all over the lab?
That is taken straight from that episode of Star Trek last season
Toss all this in a flashlight casing and some foggy-headed obscure physics nerd gets to be the first one to play Jedi.
"The bosonic part of the superstring consists of this vortex line. Inside the vortex, they would trap an ultracold cloud of fermionic atoms. Hopefully this will allow observation of the supersymmetry between bosons and fermions, thus providing the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory."
Pfft. Well, obviously.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
Have they tried reversing the polarity?
...it looks like there's a few years yet before Vortex Cool Transportation Inc opens its first showrooms.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
And if we channel a reverse impulse through the reflector dish, the superstring will disperse the space-time anomoly. Aren't you waiting for some of this quantum research to accidentally unleash a super-mega-quantum bomb.. "safety tip - avoid trying to look under God's skirts".
meh
To use a computational analogy, they are simulating the equations of string theory using a BEC as the computer. So whatever results they get had better agree with string theory! They aren't actually testing whether these explain the world, just exploring the equations of string theory with an efficient computer -- the BEC.
Of course it's possible to see symmetry between bosoms and females--
(hears enraged Slashdotters worldwide screaming bosons and fermions)
--what? nah, I've no idea about those.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The big problem with String theory is lack of experimental evidence (or even experiments) to prove it. It's detractors like to say it is just a religion with no proof. However, this looks more like an experiment to prove supersymmetry which doesn't necessarily prove string theory.
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The fact that it sounds farfetch does not mean it is any less likely/unlikely that what is true.
:
Yes, the high energy physics jargon is terrible and inviting ridicule such as yours. But, remember the Top, Bottom, Charm, Strange, or even the Big bang theory?
The article is terribly written, but it has a link to the original arxiv scientific article. So you are welcomed to go try to understand it.
Btw, this statement by you
I thought there was some disagreement about the existence of the multidimensional strings. Is that over now?
is condescending and shows a lack of understanding of the scientific process.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
All 3 hours of it are avaliable on PBS's website.
It's amazing stuff.
The book "The Elegant Universe" by Brain Greene is what the TV Special above is based on.
Definitly worth a look at - if you enjoy the TV special, have a look around for the book... It goes into a LOT more detail.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
It is about time that string theory is exposed as the sham that it is!
More like Snoreway.
I knew Wil Wheaton had an account somewhere on slashdot, I was WONDERING what his username was!
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It will be rather nice to have an actual TEST of superstring theory that can prove or disprove something, rather than the usual hot gasses issuing from competing theorists.
An ounce of experimental data is worth a ton of mathematics.
Wow, me and 'da guys were just tossing around that idea at the construction site during lunch just last week. Who wouldda thunk!
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I particularly dislike the string theories. If they could prove that string theories are right this would diminish my respect for god as a smart guy/girl/whatever. I hold the quantum-loop theory or the heim theory in much higher regards as they are smarter.
http://www.heim-theory.com/Contents/contents.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim-Theory
regards, sqar
So this is very cool (literally!) science, but NOT a test of superstring theory as a way to describe fundamental particles or interactions. At best, it will provide some interesting checks of the mathematical predictions of string-like theories, but only translated into this system. You still won't know if string theory has any hope of describing real electrons, photons, gravitons, etc.
IAAP (I am a physicist), and again we have an physics article posted by someone who doesn't know the difference between reality and an analogy.
The system that these folks propose to study (quantized vorticity in a Bose-Einstein condensate) can be described with the same type of mathematics that is used in superstring theory. The proposed experiments would test the validity of the math. These experiments would say nothing about whether the math of superstring theory is a valid description of the world!
A similar situation would be the following: observing a weight on a spring would confirm the math behind simple harmonic oscillators. It would not, however, tell me anything about whether the vibrational modes of the sun obey those same equations.
Analogy != equivalence!
Superstring Theory - Excerpt: "Superstring theory is an attempt to explain all of the particles and fundamental forces of nature in one theory by modeling them as vibrations of tiny supersymmetric strings." How does this differ from String Theory?
"Hopefully this will allow observation of the supersymmetry between bosons and fermions, thus providing the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory." Where's the news? Any third-grader worth his salt could tell you this.
Condescending? You could argue that it didn't adequately caputure the nuance of the process, but I'd hardly call it condescending. (And it's not entirely unreasonable, I'd argue, to wonder whether a consensus has developed about a particular matter.)
Were you perhaps reading some snideness into the post that wasn't intended?
Good scientitst might have a good feeling, a hunch, but are ready to be disproved so they can move on, because a negative value is just as good as a positive (if not as exciting).
:)
That beleive stuff is for tooth fairies and god(s)
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I'm somewhat tired of these silly theories of everything thought up by pseudo-intellectuals by piling theories on top of theories.
and then in the end someone will ask, where do strings come from? And you'll work out another 10 theories to figure that out, only until someone asks where whatever that came from as well.
whether you put the blame on silly self-serving religious ideals or theorised theories of theories, I'll pick the third option: sun god.
Oh wait.
so yeah go prove superstrings or whatever. I still think the string theory is a big load of shit made up by people who idolize Einstein a little too much...maybe if these people thought for themselves they could see the obvious truth to things.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
Great scott! That just sounded like a scene from star trek!
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Though I haven't compleated it yet I'll got "The Elegant Universe. Richard Morris also wrote some good books before he died.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You must be an Einstein-Rosen bridge because after I come in you I'm going to be somewhere else.
uh.er. just what in the meat world is one dimensional
Woah, hearing news like that just makes my day.
...of why you should take everything you read/see/hear from journalists with a grain of salt. Nine times out of ten, they will either be overdramatizing, underestimating, or inaccurately representing key facts.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
Frankly, I'm a little bit annoyed by the treatment of scientific theories as 'absolute truths'. It's been a while since I studied physics, but basically, it works as follows:
You have empirical evidence: things you can feel, touch, hear, smell, see, etc. Beyond that, you have NOTHING. To be more precise: speculation (theory). The best theories are simply the ones that best, or most easily explain empirical findings (what you can see, touch, smell, etc.)
So the power of say, Einstein's relativity theories is not that they're 'true', but that they are theories that offer the most simple, and/or general explanation of everything we can see, hear, feel, etc. On a scale ranging from sub-atomic to inter-galactic.
Not that I'm trying to bash the parent poster in any way. I would be thrilled if something like the String Theory would gain in strength. But why? Not because it would be 'true', but because it could offer a single, unifying explanation about an incredible number of phenomena we see, feel, hear, measure, etc. A minimal set of rules that explains how our universe works. And (between the lines) offer some hints about the true nature of our universe.
But in the end: THEORY. Because I can't feel atoms or sub-atomic particles, or know anyone that can. Nor can I touch gravity waves, or imagine the speed of light in my head. But a few (relatively, no pun intended) simple rules that explain everything I could ever see, touch, hear, smell or feel, would be really, really awesome.Can anyone tell me what a superstring is made of then? And if you know that, whats the stuff that makes up them made of?
etc etc....thanks.
Phenomena such as this often fail to manifest in the presence of skeptics. I suggest we hold a prayer vigil to ensure their success.
Love modern theoretical physics. It reads a lot like ST:TNG scripts. If there were more hot babe theoretical physicists, they'd get higher ratings.
So, reading your post and some other posts in this thread, this is the impression I have got, please tell me if it is correct or incorrect:
If this experiment works, it will not prove superstring theory. But if the experiment DOESN'T work, it will DISPROVE or seriously hamper superstring theory?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Its more likely we're a figment of Jules Verne's imagination.
Dennis Miller: I don't wanna go on a rant here but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowolf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first Battle of Antetum. I mean when a neo-conservative defenstrates it's like Raskalnakov filibuster dioxymonohydrostinate.
Peter: What the hell does rant mean?
Hot babe theoretical physicists? Or were you thinking of these ones?
They better make sure to decouple the eps manifold and realign the tachion emitters such that the polarity of the warp field doesn't collapse.
Yup. There are quite a few physical systems one can devise theoretically that are supersymmetric but that don't imply that the universe itself has supersymmetric equations of motion.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I want to download groceries and convert them from binary to matter. I think it would make pr0n a LOT more interactive too, but until then, you can't impress me w/ your nano particles and sub-servient vortexes.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
I'd rather it be over my head than below me.
I thought that it was called M-Theory now? (Simplified here). ...most correct? ;)
As some of you know, there are five superstring theories - M-theory was supposed to "unite" these theories, so to speak. The difference between these superstring theories, is in how the implement supersymmetry, so I guess that this experiment, would somehow point us to which of the five theories are
I am in way over my head here, but perhaps someone is more knowledgable here
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Get out of your ivory tower. Any group of scientists can snipe, gossip, and backstab one another to rival teenage girls.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
1. Find lady in pub.
2. ???
3. Observe supersring.
What I'm interested is the ??? stage, but if physisicts can't do it how can I.
If it doesn't, they could always try reversing the polarity. It's a million-to-one shot, but it just might work..
But in the end: THEORY. Because I can't feel atoms or sub-atomic particles
Sure you can.
Lick your fingers, then with the same hand grab a fork and stick it in the nearest electrical socket. You'll be feeling all sorts of sub-atomic particles.
But seriously, you don't consider bubble chamber photos or electron microscope photos of atoms as conclusive enough, albeit vicarious, touching of atoms and sub-atomic particles to dispense with some of the caveating about atomic theory?
Brian Greene in two whole books never answered the question: is there any reason, beyond wishful thinking, to believe that the coupling constant isn't exactly 1?
Brian Greene, in two whole books, never answered the question: is there any reason beyond wishful thinking to believe that the coupling constant isn't exactly 1?
I weep to see it.
I thought it was a little hard to follow , but I always have had a hard time with 11 dimensional space. The UofW science channel had a better one.
Why should it be? It isn't in any other theory. And it would disagree with experiment.
Incorrect! He'll feel electromagnetic fields coursing through his body. This is a valuable experience of one of the four fundamental forces of the universe (jumping out of a fifth story building would give exposure to gravity and technically the strong force though breaking your knuckles with a visegrip is a better demonstration of that force) so it's all to the good. The actual transfer of subatomic particles will be negligiable though. A better choice for him would be putting a highly radioactive isotope in his pants.
also, there are many coupling constants...
...the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory."
Or not.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
That I just don't possess the "Branes" to understand this superstring theory.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Damn, even Babelfish has no idea what to do with it.
Exploring Superstrings in the Lab... I really misunderstood that. strings.. super... Labs( ?! ) Heh. :)
Thanks for the laughs
In the Soviet Union, signatures writes you!
Wouldn't such a test represent a shift of String Theory from "theorhetical" into "applied" physics?
How, exactly, do you change the face of theorectical physics?
"Bosons are also the only particles which can occupy the same state as another."
Ok this is cool shit. This means that bosons fall throught the table. Literally. Do not put a boson in your pocket, you will loose it! The practical uses for it are stunning! Keys your are garanteed to loose!
Hopefully this will allow observation of the supersymmetry between bosons and fermions, thus providing the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory.
precisely! after all, A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).
--- sig moved for great justice.
Wouldn't agree with experiment? What experiment? Last I heard nobody had managed to think of any way to test any aspect of string theory in (any existing) lab.
All Greene had to say about the value of the coupling constant he was on about was that everybody hoped it was small, because otherwise the approximations everybody is using would be way off; and that the closer it was to 1, the less like any of the current formulations the final string theory would be.
Might this experiment be expected actually to nail down a coupling constant (or two)?
PBS has a wonderful layman-oriented mini-series on string theory online -- several hours of professional quality video presentation.
I highly recommend it as it also gives a nice background into the development of string theory and Very Important People.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
As the saying goes... You must be new here, right???
Since when are the slashdot summaries in any way related to the content of TFA?
P.S. for the unobservant, the parent has a 3 digit UID.
Bad spellers of the world untie!
you must be thinking either of the cosmological constant or some coupling constant I am not aware of. Many coupling constants (those for the strong interaction or quantum electrodynamics, for example) are quite well tested.
Supersymmetric? Superstrings? Can we not make words up please, we're all adults here. How can supersymmetric be more symmetric than symmetric? ! one+one = supertwo!
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
How can a one dimensional object create a vortex, let alone be rotated. Both events require more than one spatial dimension, and also occur in time.
Maybe they meant a "thin string" of condensate? Or would that be to understandable to us morons?
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Here is an example of a simple test of a physical phemonom. ( well besides the fast that my M and N keys are reversed ...)
How to demonstrate Q.E.D. Theory.
Classic mechanics says light reflects at the angle of incedent. ( Angle of incident = Angle of Reflection ). Quantium Electrodynamics says that this is true excpet for the edge of reflected surfaces...so... if you gathered many edges of reflected surfaces together... then, by classical dynamics you would only see the reflection, and by Quantium Electrodynamics, you would see the sum of the path intergrals of the light. i.e. a rainbow.
Experment: Hold up a common computer CD and look at the reflected light. if you see a perfect mirror, then classical dynamics holds. If you see a rainbow, then you are seening a phenomonon who's very existance verifies Quantium Electrodynamics behaivor of light.
This is an example of an experment, done outside the lab, that can verify a fundememtal principal of physics. Thank you James Gleick for writing 'Genius' and the line at the DMV for giving me the opportunity ot read it.
"Quantized vortices were first seen in superfluid helium." Then Richard Feynman would have had an inkling of what that phenomon was. All you need to show String theory outside the lab, is a observiable phenomonon that you can see in liquid Helium. Bring me 2 glasses of Super Fuild Helium.
Sturred, not shaken. ( Round of Applause. )
Anyone knows about the works of Burkhard Heim? That guy developed a theory which seems to be capable of predicting the mass of all particles, for example, among other things. Yet it is virtually unknown, partly because of it being written in German and not released for public peer-reviewing (it is being translated in English now), partly because of its formidable math. The AIAA awarded his paper as the "paper of the year 2005". Early mistakes as of it being unable to predict the top quark apparently have been fixed. Anyone got more? While he did release his work on a esoteric publisher, I do think his work has some relevance.
Why I mention that? His physics address the same thing as superstrings, the Theory of Everything.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/parodies/s tuperspace.pdf
After watching that Nova special, I'm left wondering what the market for "I am Sparticle" T-shirts would be in the physics community.
"...utilizing Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). A one-dimensional BEC in an optical lattice is rapidly rotated, causing a quantized vortex to form. The bosonic part of the superstring consists of this vortex line. Inside the vortex, they would trap an ultracold cloud of fermionic..."
Yes, of course! Just like general relativity and the uncertainty principle, this is one of those things that feels just SO obvious in retrospect.
STRING THEORY IS NOT A THEORY, IT MAKES NO PREDICTIONS
This may not be fair, but Greene struck me as kind of sleazy. Notice how he is both the narrator of the show, and also one of the people being interviewed. Also notice how he breezes past making concrete predictions.
Maybe this criticism isn't fair, and this is how all revolutionary theories look when they are young. But it just struck me that Greene was presenting this stuff as though it was allready laid in stone. He basically tells the narrative story of the triumph of string theory, going from a graduate students pet theory to... a bunch of theorists' pet theory.
String theory hasnt triumphed, isnt even in a position that it is possible for it to triumph yet. So what is Greene praising so boldly? A highly speculative area which is at this point only of interest to pure theorists, since it has (as of yet) zero predictive powers.
At one point I think the lack of evidence gets so painful that he points out that there are alot of researchers working in the field of string theory now. The number is just kind of dropped vaguely like "hundreds of researchers".
The best argument he has for its validity is that it looks promising to alot of people. After all this talk about how modern physics is so confusing and counter-intuitive he circles around and uses intuition (admittedly professional intuition)to justify why this new way of doing things is better.
STRING THEORY IS NOT A THEORY. A THEORY MAKES PREDICTIONS
String theory is just a bunch of theoretical constructs which may some day be put together into something useful.
Imagine the concept of "forces" without F=ma. "All the motion we see is actually caused by these things called forces, really. Every time something moves a force was involved."
Pretty useless, it basically is just a tautology: small things aren't electrons and quarks etc, they are actually strings. Every time you see anything it isn't what you think it is, it is really a string or group of strings which happen to behave exactly like what you think it is. Great. So... what?
Alot of people seem to be excited because of the mathematical richness of this area. I am not even nearly competent to evaluate this directly, but thinking back to basic proofs that everyone has done in highschool, if you slip up you end up proving something like "0=0". Maybe this promising mathematical complexity is purely in the math and has no physical meaning. The 21st century equivalent of epicycles.
There's no BEC in one dimension.
Can anyone say "Black Mesa?"
I swear the submitter should start writting scripts for Star Trek or something.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Incorrect! He'll feel electromagnetic fields coursing through his body
Are you forgetting wave-particle duality? The electromagnetic force is transmitted by electrons, which are subatomic particles. Along with gluons and photons they are bosons, IIRC.
OK, I've just finished watching BBC documentary few seconds before this slashdot post.
And it sure seamed to me they figured it all out. First there was mighty elegant string theory, and everyone went down that path becouse it was soooo beautyfull. Few strange math calculations later, ups there were 10 dimensions and 5 string theories, so everyone thought "i've just spent 10 years of my life on something completely useless". However there was one lonely sad looking guy pursuing something he called Supergravity, essentially an abandoned concept, and he was saying all the time that there are 11 dimensions, of course, being ridiculed by all the others. But when shit started to happen with string theory, someone said, OK, lets try this puppy in 11 dimensions, and everything started to magically work then, with 5 different String theories being just different manifestation of one when looking from 11th dimension. There was one problem though, Strings sitting in 11 dimensions arent strings at all, they are actually (mem)branes. So, here comes "M" theory, Membrane, Mystical, Mother,even Mad theory.
Then one chick comes, and with nothing else smarter to do in her life, starts to investigate why oh why is gravity so weak. Logical and obvious answer is that there are parallel universes. Now everybody shouts "aaaaahhh" and starts putting parallel universes into their equations, and all those equations look simple and more beautifull than ever, and here we have a Multiverse, with our universe beeing mere one of infinite number of bubbles in it.
Now, that wasn't enough, of course, and someone had to ask "can this super elegant "M" theory tell me what exactly happened BEFORE and DURING Big Bang", and they all turned their heads to that supersmart, once sad and lonely Supergravity-universe-is-made-of-11-dimensions guy, and there was he with and obvious answer: (mem)branes DO NOT float peacefully in 11th dimension, they are more like a wild ocean, and when they touch (colide?), a big bang is triggered, and there we have another Universe. Which, of course, doesn't have to have the same laws of physics as our own.
And then there was a young weird geeky looking guy in his basement with a computer, that started to explein how he and one of his friends decidet to try to build an universe of their own in their basement, and that it is completely doable, and actually pretty safe (so we can all try this at home).
So, in short, after watching all that, I thought that they are pretty sure everything is in its place now, however it is so strange it is better to keep it secret, thats why probably one Japanese bloke was skating all the way through the show, which is what I'll be learning now I know the truth about our pshysicall reallity.
I pooped my pants
To a scientist it would, to a silopsist it wouldn't.
You recall incorrectly. Not insightful, sorry
The world is everything that is the case
For once, they actually posted 'news for nerds'. And, if you're receptive to the idea that the universe is made out of these superstrings, as opposed to say, god-breath, it's 'stuff that matters' as well.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
But do the Bosons write poetry?
Hire me...
A one-dimensional BEC in an optical lattice is rapidly rotated, causing a quantized vortex to form.
It'll be years before they discover the PICKLE matrix!
This is correct, if you take "Relativistic Physics" to mean "general relativity". Special relativity and quantum mechanics have been consistent since the 1950s - that's what quantum field theory is. In fact, quantum electrodynamics (the relativistic theory of electromagnetism) is the most precise theory in science, predicting certain numbers correctly to something like a dozen decimal places.
The problem is general relativity, the profound extension of special relativity to produce a relativistic theory of gravity. This has serious problems meshing with quantum mechanics, and this is what string theory is supposed to address.
I agree with the post, just trying to clarify!
Scientific results are testable to see if they are correct or not. Until recently superstrings were so exotic, or had so many free parameters to fit any data, that they could neither be verified or discounted. Hopefully an experiment like this can test the hypothesis of superstrings.
IIRC the presence of the sign change (in the composite wavefunction) means that the original particle and the "interchanged" particle are distinguishable (by their sign). Whereas in the case where no sign change occurs, we have nothing to tell us that the particle is different from the original.
That is, what is the physical meaning of doing that?
790: It makes little difference whether or not you destroy this planet. It is a classic type 13 planet, which typically destroys itself at this stage of its development.
Xev: How?
790: Sometimes through war, often through environmental catastrophe. But more commonly, a type 13 planet is inadvertently collapsed into a pea-sized object by scientists attempting to determine the mass of the Higgs boson particle.
Yeap, someone gave "The Compleat Beatles" to me as a gift. Though I don't have them anymore I used to have a collection of Beatles LPs, most of them. My fav was probably the "White Album".
FalconShould there be a Law?
Remember The Stranglers "Quark Stangeness and Charm"?
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Electromagnetic force is transmitted by photons (remember those wavy lines between interacting electrons' pathes on Feinman diagrams?)
About electrons being bosons. We have elements with different chemical properties precisely because any two electrons being fermions can not share the same quantum state inside the atom (Pauli's Principle,) which forces them to occupy states with higher and higher energies thus giving rise to the chemical diversity.
Finally, wave particle-duality has nothing to do with the particle being bosons or fermions. It arises from combination of two simple formulae E=mc^2 and E=h nu. Solve them for nu, then divide speed of light c by it and you'll get the corresponding wavelength. Using this simple procedure you can find wavelengthes of anything (even your boss - just to show her how insignificant she is as a wave :).
Still doesn't make sense though...
A recipe for making strings in the lab
11 May 2005
Theoretical physicists in the Netherlands have proposed a way to make g-strings in the laboratory. If their idea can be put into practice, it would allow aspects of string theory to be explored in an experiment for the first time. The new approach relies on exploiting the properties of ultracold atomic gases (arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0505055).
String theorists attempt to explain all the fundamental particles as vibrations on tiny strings on length scales of about 10-33 metres. The theory naturally includes "supersymmetry" - a symmetry that connects particles with integer spin, known as bosoms, to particles with half-integer spin, which are known as females. The particles that carry the fundamental forces of nature, such as the photon and the gluon, are bosoms, while the quarks and leptons that make up matter are females. Although g-string theory is the leading candidate for a theory of everything, there is no experimental evidence to date for strings or supersymmetry.
Now Michiel Snoek, Masudul Haque, Stefan Vandoren and Henk Stoof of Utrecht University have proposed making a "non-relativistic Green-Schwarz g-string" by trapping an ultracold cloud of femaleic atoms along the core of a quantized vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). A BEC is a special state of matter in which all the particles are in the same quantum ground state. bosomic atoms such as rubidium-87 can enter such as state because, unlike females, they do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle.
The bosomic part of the g-string would consist of a vortex line created by rapidly rotating a one-dimensional BEC in an optical lattice (see figure). Next, a gas of female atoms, such as potassium-40, would be trapped within this vortex, which is possible under certain conditions. Snoek and colleagues say that it should be possible to observe the supersymmetry between the females and bosoms by carefully tuning the interactions between the two types of atom with a laser.
Quantized vortices were first seen in superfluid helium. They are formed inside a rotating superfluid when it begins to spin faster than a certain critical speed. In the mid-1990s it was suggested that these vortices could simulate the formation of cosmic strings in the early universe.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
In other words, be careful, folks... you're playing in God's realm, and He might not like that.
And if they should happen to prove the string, then give it a tug, would our little corner of the multiverse start to unravel?
I'm going to go wallow in the welcome mundanity of warm cookies and cold milk now...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Quick, somebody get me a pre-schooler to explain that to me. I can't make heads or tails of it.
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley