All posts tagged: physics

QBox theory may offer glimpse of reality deeper than quantum realm

QBox theory may offer glimpse of reality deeper than quantum realm

Published by skeptic

There may be a layer of reality even deeper than the quantum realm Cappan/iStockphoto/Getty Images Physicists are making new inroads into the world of post-quantum theories, uncovering what reality may look like on a level deeper and stranger than the already infamously odd quantum theory. In the 1920s, physicists had several extremely useful theories for how the world works, yet they kept uncovering situations where those theories didn’t work. Through these holes in so-called classical physics, they glimpsed a deeper layer of the world that underlies everything – the quantum realm. Now, physicists are having déjà vu. Quantum theory works incredibly well, but it also has gaping holes when confronted with cosmically large objects controlled by gravity. What sort of post-quantum world could reveal itself through that hole? James Hefford at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology and Matt Wilson at Paris-Saclay University, both in France, have now developed a mathematical sketch of one plausible post-quantum world, possibly the deepest layer of reality yet. “Quantum theory doesn’t describe the entire universe,” …

Strange Physics: Why Wi-Fi and radio waves can pass through walls but light can’t

Strange Physics: Why Wi-Fi and radio waves can pass through walls but light can’t

Published by Jenni Sidey

A closed door feels absolute. Light stays in one room, darkness settles in the next, and the boundary seems obvious enough to stop thinking about. Yet the same wall that blocks the glow from your kitchen barely slows the Wi-Fi signal drifting through it. That mismatch feels strange for a reason. Visible light and radio waves belong to the same family. They are both electromagnetic waves. They follow the same basic physics. James Clerk Maxwell tied that picture together in the 19th century, and nothing in modern physics has overturned it. So the real puzzle is not why Wi-Fi moves through walls. It is why a wall treats two versions of the same phenomenon so differently. The answer has less to do with the wall being a barrier and more to do with the wall acting like a very selective filter. A popular explanation makes this sound simpler than it is. Radio waves have long wavelengths, people say, so they somehow slip through. Visible light has shorter wavelengths, so it gets blocked. That picture feels …

I didn’t expect my phone to pull off this physics experiment, but it did

I didn’t expect my phone to pull off this physics experiment, but it did

Published by skeptic

There are only a handful of smartphone components the average user cares about, and the list usually starts with the processor, battery, and screen. While virtually no one thinks about niche sensors like a gyroscope or proximity sensor, they’re some of the most important parts of your device. They power key features that you don’t even realize, such as when your screen orientation auto-rotates or when your screen goes black after pressing a phone against your ear for a call. Aside from these vital features we take for granted, your smartphone’s sensors double as hidden tools you can use to solve daily problems or test real-world experiments. Third-party apps like Physics Toolbox or Phyphox unlock these tools, allowing you to deploy them however you’d like. I tested it myself, and I couldn’t believe that my smartphone could use Sonar — yes, that Sonar — to identify the distance of objects using the speed of sound. With two phones, you can even gauge how fast sound waves travel using Phyphox’s Acoustic Stopwatch tool. Both Sonar and …

Our Large Hadron Collider results hint at undiscovered physics

Our Large Hadron Collider results hint at undiscovered physics

Published by skeptic

Recent findings from research we have been carrying out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern in Geneva suggest that we might be closing in on signs of undiscovered physics. If confirmed, these hints would overturn the theory, called the Standard Model, that has dominated particle physics for 50 years. The findings suggest the way that specific sub-atomic particles behave in the LHC disagrees with the Standard Model. Fundamental particles are the most basic building blocks of matter – sub-atomic particles that cannot be divided into smaller units. The four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force – govern how these particles interact. The LHC is a giant particle accelerator built in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border. Its main purpose is to find cracks in the Standard Model. This theory is our best understanding of fundamental particles and forces, but we know it cannot be the whole story. It does not explain gravity or dark matter – the invisible, so far unmeasured type of matter that …

Physics claims the past and future are identical — so why do we age

Physics claims the past and future are identical — so why do we age

Published by Jenni Sidey

A glass slips from a hand, hits the floor, and bursts into fragments. The sound fades quickly. Heat spreads into the room. Nothing about the scene looks reversible. Yet, in the language of physics, it is. That tension sits at the center of one of the oldest questions in science. The equations that govern motion, energy, relativity, and even quantum behavior do not prefer a direction. Run them forward or backward, they still work. But daily life insists on a different story. Glass breaks but does not rebuild. Coffee cools but never reheats itself. Memory points backward, never forward. You do not wake up younger than you were the night before. Cells wear down. Age accumulates in one direction. No one lives Tuesday, then Monday, then Sunday. In ordinary life, time has a grip. It leaves marks on faces, joints, skin, memory, and muscle. That one-way quality feels so natural that it hardly seems like a mystery until physics says it should not be. Somewhere between clean mathematics and lived experience, time seems to pick …

Einstein claims the past and future are identical – then why do we age

Einstein claims the past and future are identical – then why do we age

Published by Jenni Sidey

A glass slips from your hand, hits the floor, and shatters into pieces. The sound fades quickly. Heat spreads into the room. Nothing about the scene looks reversible. Yet, in the language of physics, it is. That tension sits at the center of one of the oldest questions in science. The equations that govern motion, energy, relativity, and even quantum behavior do not prefer a direction. Run them forward or backward, they still work. But daily life insists on a different story. Glass breaks but does not rebuild. Coffee cools but never reheats itself. Memory points backward, never forward. You do not wake up younger than you were the night before. Cells wear down. Age accumulates in one direction. No one lives Tuesday, then Monday, then Sunday. In ordinary life, time has a grip. It leaves marks on faces, joints, skin, memory, and muscle. That one-way quality feels so natural that it hardly seems like a mystery until physics says it should not be. Somewhere between clean mathematics and lived experience, time seems to pick …

How Can Astronauts Tell How Fast They’re Going?

How Can Astronauts Tell How Fast They’re Going?

Published by skeptic

Let’s use our car again, but this time we’ll get real numbers from the accelerometer in our smartphone. Say we start at a red light and then accelerate at 2 m/s2 (meters per second squared) for five seconds. From the equation above, Δv1 would be 2 x 5 = 10 m/s, so that’s our velocity. Now, after cruising for a while, we accelerate again at 1 m/s2 for five more seconds. Δv2 is then 1 x 5 = 5 m/s. Adding these two changes, our velocity is now 15 m/s. And so on. The only problem is that inertial measurement isn’t as accurate as the Doppler method over long periods, because small errors will keep accumulating. That means you need to recalibrate your system periodically using some other method. Optical Navigation On Earth, people have long navigated by the stars. In the northern hemisphere, just find Polaris. It’s called the North Star because Earth’s axis of rotation points right at it. That’s why it appears stationary, while the other stars seem to revolve around it. …

The stunning physics of Project Hail Mary go back to ancient China

The stunning physics of Project Hail Mary go back to ancient China

Published by skeptic

Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary Jonathan Olley / Amazon Content Services LLC Part-way through watching Project Hail Mary in a full IMAX theatre, I let out a solitary gasp. Wondering why nobody else was shocked about what I had just seen, I realised it was because I am a physicist. Let me explain, with an extremely mild spoiler: there’s a scene in the middle of the film where the Hail Mary spaceship suddenly lurches forward. Ryan Gosling’s character, Ryland Grace, is not strapped into his seat and his head smacks sideways into the screens in front of him. If this had been real, he would have certainly died. Of course, I see films all the time where people get thrown around and punched in the face and dropped from heights that would shatter their bodies, but they survive. Usually, I am able to suspend disbelief. What made this viewing experience different was the careful attention to getting the science of motion in outer space right. Instead of asking their science …

God and the Quantum Mechanic

God and the Quantum Mechanic

Published by Jenni Sidey

You’d be forgiven for thinking that I am an expert in philosophy. I am only a humble physicist. And while physics can instruct us on the merits of one philosophy over another, it cannot necessarily point us to the right one. It is rather the reverse: Every physicist, deep down, has a philosopher struggling to get out because, without philosophy, we are merely wranglers of equations, slingers of predictions, and collectors of measurement data. Without philosophy, physics is just shutting up and calculating. Now, I love a good calculation, but at the end of the day, to understand what that calculation means, I need philosophy. The philosophy I choose can have vast repercussions on how I interpret findings, what theories I find most appealing, and what direction I want my research to take. In this way, physics is not that different from theology. But whereas theologians have great respect for philosophy, physicists have a tendency to treat it like a waste of time. This is even though all of the most fundamental concepts in physics: …

How a century-long argument over light’s true nature came to an end

How a century-long argument over light’s true nature came to an end

Published by skeptic

Light is both a wave and a particle, and we know it for sure now Anna Bliokh/Getty Images 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. When physicist Clinton Davisson received the Nobel prize in 1937 for discovering that electrons, which had been considered to be particles, could sometimes unexpectedly behave like waves, he made a point of taking a jab at light. He said, “the perfect child of physics [had] been changed into a gnome with two heads”. It was already known to not be one or the other, but both wave-like and particle-like. Physicists used to think that being a particle and being a wave was mutually exclusive, yet here we had, in light and now also electrons, two examples contradicting that. Somewhat baffled, Davisson couldn’t help but reach for a grotesque metaphor. He was in good company – 10 years earlier, Albert Einstein had a famous argument with Niels Bohr over this seeming absurdity. …