All posts tagged: electromagnetism

How the electromagnetic spectrum opened our eyes to the universe

How the electromagnetic spectrum opened our eyes to the universe

Published by skeptic

Telescopes at the Square Kilometre Array SKAO The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we dive into fascinating ideas from around the universe. You can sign up for Lost in Space-Time here. My first encounter with invisible light came in my early years, and I thought it was magic. Radios filled every room of my childhood home: the kitchen, bedrooms, even the hallway. I would slowly turn the dial on older sets, listening as music and voices emerged from the static before fading away again as I surfed the radio waves. Long before I understood I was tuning into part of the electromagnetic spectrum, I felt the wonder of sensing something my eyes couldn’t see. Human eyes evolved to detect only a narrow band of light – enough to navigate landscapes and recognise danger – but the universe shines across a vast spectrum stretching from gamma rays to radio waves. Different wavelengths of light interact with matter in different ways, meaning each reveals a different side of the world, and universe, around us. We …

Can we harness quantum effects to create a new kind of healthcare?

Can we harness quantum effects to create a new kind of healthcare?

Published by skeptic

If you have even a passing interest in your health, you can’t spend long on social media before the algorithm brings you into contact with the infamous Q-word. Are you in touch with your quantum energy fields? Could you benefit from a consultation with a quantum dietician? A dismissive snort is fully justified. But all the woo around “quantum therapies” can make it hard to talk about science that is much more serious. In recent years, clinical research has suggested that exposure to light, as well as electric and magnetic fields, could help to treat everything from acne and hair loss to wounds and cancer. These therapies don’t necessarily involve quantum mechanics in any meaningful way. Still, there are hints from parallel experiments in test tubes that life might respond to electricity and magnetism via quantum effects – at least on some level. “We have something that works; we don’t really know why,” says Margaret Ahmad, a photobiologist at Sorbonne University in France who studies how electromagnetic fields affect living organisms. All this ties into …

Why do particle physicists like spending time in fields?

Why do particle physicists like spending time in fields?

Published by skeptic

There is more than once kind of field Bennekom/Alamy When we were first preparing to launch my column for New Scientist, my editor asked me what I would like to call it. “Field notes from space-time,” I said. This title has a bit of a double entendre that might not be obvious, but was fun for me as a physicist. It is a reference to the scientific idea of taking notes while out in the field – a lab notebook of sorts. Simultaneously, it alludes to a specific concept that is very important in particle physics: the field itself. You might think that a field is a big open space you find on a farm, but in physics it is more abstract. Essentially, a field is a mathematical relation that assigns a number to each point in space and time. The intention is to characterise some physical phenomenon at that location. For example, when you feel the pull of a fridge magnet close to a refrigerator door, there is a magnetic force working between the …