A while ago, I read this article on battling those who believe that the Earth is flat but forgot to highlight it here. I won't say much more about it other than have you read it for yourself.
But one quote stood out with me, because it sums up not just the way it describes why flat-earthers believe in what they believe in, but also a reflection on the issues of vaccines, face masks, etc. that we have been facing with during this pandemic and these fake-news stupidity. The quote is attributed to Lee McIntyre of Boston University:
Flat-Earthers seem to have a very low standard of evidence for what they
want to believe but an impossibly high standard of evidence for what
they don’t want to believe.
Replace "Flat-Earthers" in the quote above with any of the conspiracy theory believers and you have the gist of why they believe in the crackpottery.
But the question that I have is, has anyone ever mention THIS to the flat-earthers themselves? Are they self-aware that this is what they are doing?
This news report on The Telegraph written by Joe Pinkstone about the James Webb Space Telescope reaching its final position has a basic flaw that should be easily spotted by any intro physics student who has understood basic central force/circular motion topic.
It will stay at its current position, Lagrange 2 (L2), for its entire
operational lifespan, which is expected to be around 20 years. L2 is a
gravitational stable point on the other side of the Earth from the Sun,
where the pull of the two bodies cancels out.
No, the pull due to the Earth and the Sun does NOT "cancels out", because if it does, then there is no centripetal force to keep the telescope to orbit around the sun!
Rather, this is the location where the sum of the gravitational forces from the Sun and the Earth provides just the right centripetal force to keep the telescope in orbit around the Sun at the same angular speed as the Earth. It will always be on the opposite side from the Sun with respect to the Earth. You can read more explanation on what is this Lagrange2 (L2) point at the NASA website here.
This is the type of mistake that we expect to see in General Physics classes, not in major news media.
This is not a critique of the winning photo. Rather, it is an example of a "click bait", where the news report tries to entice you to read it because the title is so astounding. I guess it worked on me.
This news report, purportedly from Popular Mechanics, is highlighting a winning science/engineering photo of a single strontium atom being held in an ion trap. But what it says is a bit misleading:
Now, we have a photograph that shows a single atom floating in an electric field, and it's large enough to see without any kind of microscope.
This is wrong. It is not "large enough" to be seen.
They corrected this somehow later in the article, but it still does not dispel the error that this has nothing to do with size, and it requires a bit of elementary knowledge of atomic energy level to realize that the earlier description is a mistake.
The strontium atom in the photo is hit by a high-powered laser, which
causes the electrons orbiting the strontium atom to become more
energized. Occasionally, these energized electrons will give off light.
With enough energized electrons giving off enough light, it's possible
for an ordinary camera to image the atom.
In other words, the strontium atom was excited and this then causes it to emit light. This process is no different than the light that you see from neon signs or your fluorescent light bulb that has mercury vapor. The unique part about this setup is that you are seeing light from a single atom, whereas in your neon signs, you are seeing the light from many, many atoms. But the process is identical! Yet, we don't go ga-ga and proclaim that we can see an atom with our naked eye.
Just be clear, you are not seeing the atom in the normal sense. You are seeing the light from an atomic transition of this strontium atom. The fact that this is made by a captured single atom is remarkable. The fact that we can detect light from this atom with our "naked eye" does not mean that we are "seeing" the atom in the normal sense that most people understand it.
I chat often with my colleagues from the English and other departments. I often envy them because many of their assignments have the ability to incorporate the hot topics of the day. They often assign tasks such as essay writing that involves subject matter that are relevant for the current times, such as writing about Black Lives Matter movement, the pandemic, etc.
While I always want to do the same, it is less obvious and not so straight-forward in bringing the same thing into a physics lesson. I had managed to incorporate some over the years (direct observation of blackhole in an IR image while we were studying EM waves as an example). But to incorporate topic-of-the-day to match the topic of the lesson is not that easy.
But this time, I managed to do it, and it was a doozy. We were about to dive into the topic of magnetism and electromagnetic field when I stumbled upon a goldmine. It is the claim that the COVID vaccine can cause one to become magnetized!
Now, my class is still being done remotely, so I make extensive use of the discussion forum as one means of student engagement. When the subject of magnetism comes up, the topic of discussion that I created was for the student to read a couple of news reports on this claim being made. The task is not to either belittle or make fun the claim or the people who made them. Rather, it is to rationally examine the claim and use well-established scientific facts to analyze the validity of such a claim. The students had to do this based on what they have learned about magnetic field, the type of magnetism in a material, and what type of materials are attracted to a magnet.
They were encouraged to make their own at-home observation. Everyone had refrigerator magnets, and I asked them to try and stick various items to the magnet, especially the ones that had been used in the testimony reported in the news article. A student also had the bright idea to use a compass that she had and see if the compass needle changes direction if she brought it against her skin (she's fully vaccinated) or her parents' skin. She cleverly argued that if something has a strong enough magnetic field to attract a spoon, it should cause a noticeable deflection in the compass needed.
This ended up being a lively discussion topic in the discussion forum, with students posting pictures, videos, etc. either one something they found, or something they did. It forced them to sift through what they read in the news to find the details that they can analyze and compare with what they learned about magnetism. They studied the validity of the claim only from the scientific point of view without passing any judgement on politics or personal beliefs.
The whole thing went better than I expected. The students were engaged because this was a current and relevant topic, and they get to see first hand how something that they just learned was actually useful enough to be used to analyze a news item. They get to see that a physics topic is not just something esoteric with little direct practical use in everyday life.
Oh, I should also mention that this is an algebra-based General Physics course that is tailored to life-science/pre-med/biology/kinesiology major. Many of the students are quite familiar with the human body and biological functions, so their discussion included several possible explanations on why something would or would not stick to a human skin without any consideration about magnetism.
It is on days like these that I get great joy in being a teacher.
Hey, you should read this blog post by Tommaso Dorigo. It touches upon many of the myths regarding particle physics, especially the hype surrounding the name "god particle", as if that means something.
I've touched upon some of the issues he brought up. I think many of us who are active online and deal with the media and the public tend to see and observe the same thing, the same mistakes, and misinformation that are being put in print. One can only hope that by repeatedly pointing out such myths and why they are wrong, the message will slowly seep into the public consciousness.
Often times, popular accounts of physics and physics discoveries/advancements are dramatized and sensationalized to catch the eyes of the public. I'm all for catching their attention in this day and age, but really, many of these are highly misleading and tend to over-dramatize certain things.
This is one such example. It started off with an eye-catching title:
"Energy Efficiency Breakthrough Defies 156-Year-Old Law of Physics"
Really? Do we have a Nobel Prize already lined up for these people? After all, what could be more astounding and impactful than a discovery that "defies" an old and established law of physics?
Turns out, as I suspected, that it is a new solution to the well-known Maxwell equation that had never been discovered before. But even if you don't know anything about Maxwell equation and what the discovery is all about, if you pay attention to what they wrote, you would have noticed something contradictory to what the title claimed:
The first several efforts were unsuccessful until the team
conceived of using an electrical conductor in movement. They proceeded
to solve Maxwell’s equations analytically in order to demonstrate that
not only could reciprocity be broken but that coupling could also be
made maximally asymmetric.
Notice that they USED Maxwell's equations (i.e. the 156-year-old law of physics) and found new solutions that hadn't been thought to be possible. So how could they be defying it when they actually used it? They may have defined previous notion that there are no solutions of that type, but they did not defy Maxwell equations, not in the least bit!
Sussex University press office needs to get their act together and not go for such cheap thrills. And I'm surprised that the researchers involved in this actually let a title like that go through.
Edit 11/29/2018: THIS is how this discovery should have been reported, as done by Physics World. Notice that nowhere in there was there any claim of any laws of physics that has been violated!
OK, no one tell any of my friends that, or I'll be going to the movie alone from now on.
This article interviews professors Maxim Sukharev and Michael Dugger of the Applied Physics Lab at Arizona State University on the physics that they noticed in the movies. The article focuses on light, as in lasers, since these scientists are experts on them.
“Lightsabers? I don’t know what those are supposed to be,” said
Dugger in puzzlement, as the two settled into Siskel and Ebert mode. “If
that’s a laser, particles of light would never just stop abruptly like
that."
“Of course, if you see somebody on the big screen with
a Russian accent doing science, that person will turn out to be a bad
character,” Sukharev said with a chuckle. He completed a doctorate in
the Department of High-Power Lasers in the General Physics Institute of
the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. “But what’s really laughable
to me is when a spacecraft is shown speeding through the vacuum of deep
space and yet we hear, ‘Zoom, zoom.’
I'm not that critical of the scientific mistakes or outrageous applications of science in the movies. They are, after all, fiction. But I can suspend my disbelief only so much, and if a movie takes too many liberties and transgression against science, then the movie is not longer that credible, because one can just make things up without regards to anything.
A lot of people use Khan Academy's video lessons. I know that they are quite popular, and I often time get asked about some of the material in the video, both by my students and also in online discussions. Generally, I have no problems with their videos, but I often wonder who exactly design the content of the videos, because I often find subtle issues and problems. It is not unusual for me to find that they were inaccurate in some things, and these are usually not the type of errors that say, an expert in such subjects would make.
I was asked about this photoelectric effect lesson by someone about a month ago. I've seen it before but never paid much attention to it till now. And now I think I should have looked at it closer, because there are a couple of misleading and inaccurate information about this.
Here is the video:
First, let's tackled the title here, because it is perpetuating a misconception.
Photoelectric effect | Electronic structure of atoms
First of all, the photoelectric effect doesn't have anything to do with "structure of atoms". It has, however, something to do with the structure of the solid metal! The work function, for example, is not part of an atom's energy level. Rather, it is due to the combination of all the atoms of the metal, forming this BANDS of energy. Such bands do not occur in individual atoms. This is why metals have conduction band and atoms do not.
We need to get people to understand that solid state physics is not identical to atomic/molecular physics. When many atoms get together to form a solid, their behavior as a conglomerate is different than their behavior as individual atoms. For many practical purpose, the atoms lose their individuality and instead, form a collective property. This is the most important message that you can learn from this.
And now, the content of the video. I guess the video is trying to tackle a very narrow topic on how to use Einstein's equation, but they are very sloppy on the language that they use. First of all, if you don't know anything else, from the video, you'd get the impression that a photon is an ordinary type of "particle", much like an electron. The illustration of a photon reinforced this erroneous picture. So let's be clear here. A "photon" is not a typical "particle" that we think of. It isn't defined by its "size" or shape. Rather, it is an entity that carries a specific amount of energy and momentum (and angular momentum). That's almost all that we can say without getting into further complications of QED.
But the most serious inaccuracy in the video is when it tackled the energy needed to liberate an electron from the metal. This energy was labelled as E_0. This was then equate to the work function of the metal.
E_0 is equal to the work function of the metal ONLY for the most energetic photoelectrons. It is not the work function for all the other photoelectrons. Photoelectrons are emitted with a range of energies. This is because they came from conduction electrons that are at the Fermi energy or below it. If they came from the Fermi energy, then they only have to overcome the work function. These will correspond to the most energetic photoelectrons. However, if they come from below the Fermi energy, then they have to overcome not only the work function, but also the binding energy. So the kinetic energy of these photoelectrons are not as high as the most energetic ones. So their "E_0" is NOT equal to the work function.
This is why when we have students do the photoelectric effect experiments in General Physics courses, we ask them to find the stopping potential, which is the potential that will stop the most energetic photoelectrons from reaching the anode. Only the info given by these most energetic photoelectrons will give you directly the work function.
Certainly, I don't think that this will affect the viewers ability to use the Einstein equation, which was probably the main purpose of the video. But there is an opportunity here to not mislead the viewers and make the video tighter and more accurate. It also might save many of us from having to explain to other people when they tried to go into this deeper (especially students of physics). For a video that is viewed by such a wide audience, this is not the type of inaccuracies that I expect for them to have missed.
I love the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry (MSI). In fact, I am a member and a donor to the museum. So let's get that out of the way first.
Secondly, I know how difficult it is to explain scientific concepts to the public. The need to use simple words and terminology, AND, make it accurate can be a daunting task.
Still, I can't help but be a bit disappointed by this sign that I saw at MSI this past week. Granted, this was in the gift store, but still, for an institution promoting science, this falls a bit short.
The sign accompanies one of those "plasma arc ball" thingy that they were selling:
Here's what the sign says:
A plasma is a gas that has been heated to extremely high temperatures. At these high temperatures, the atoms are moving so fast that they lose their electrons, creating ionized particles. The electrons and ionized particles jump from one place to another to try and get as far away from each other as possible, creating a "lightening" effect.
There are problems with this description.
1. A plasma need NOT be only a gas that has been heated to high temperatures. I can create a plasma by blasting gas atoms with energetic electrons. In fact, when you have an electrical discharge, that is essentially what happens. The gas has not been heated by any means. So there are other means of creating a plasma beyond just heating. So a plasma is NOT defined as ".... a gas that has been heated to high temperatures...."
2. At high temperatures, the atoms lose their electrons not because they are moving "so fast". They lose their electrons because when they move "so fast", they also collide harder against other atoms, and collide more frequently. This tend to give each atom the energy to knock off one or more electrons, thus causing it to be ionized. Atoms do not lose electrons simply because they are moving "so fast".
3. The description that "... The electrons and ionized particles jump from one place to another to
try and get as far away from each other as possible, creating a
"lightening" effect.... " is extremely puzzling and, frankly, irrelevant to the description of what a plasma is. In fact, if you think about it, when an atom is ionized, it has a net positive charge. An electron, having a negative charge, would tend to want to go back to the positively-charged ion. So why would they want to "... get as far way from each other as possible..."?
4. The last part is trying to describe the creation of an electric discharge or an arc. This is superfluous, and is not part of the definition of a plasma. An electric discharge is a form of a plasma, but a plasma is not JUST an electrical discharge.
So what is a plasma? If, say, someone at MSI who isn't a physicist needed to make this sign, and Googled it, he/she will see several definitions. I'll pick one (the bold is mine).
Plasma
is the fourth state of matter. Many places teach that there are three
states of matter; solid, liquid and gas, but there are actually four.
The fourth is plasma. To put it very simply, a plasma is an ionized gas, a gas into which sufficient energy is provided to free electrons
from atoms or molecules and to allow both species, ions and electrons,
to coexist. The funny thing about that is, that as far as we know,
plasmas are the most common state of matter in the universe. They are
even common here on earth. A plasma is a gas that has been energized to
the point that some of the electrons break free from, but travel with,
their nucleus.
Gases can become plasmas in several ways, but all include pumping the
gas with energy. A spark in a gas will create a plasma. A hot gas
passing through a big spark will turn the gas stream into a plasma that
can be useful. Plasma torches like that are used in industry to cut
metals. The biggest chunk of plasma you will see is that dear friend to
all of us, the sun. The sun's enormous heat rips electrons off the hydrogen and helium molecules that make up the sun. Essentially, the sun, like most stars, is a great big ball of plasma.
The bold sentence, to me, is a sufficient definition of a plasma to be given to the general public. An ionized gas can be made up of equal parts of positive ions and electrons, unequal parts of positive ions and electrons, all ions, or all electrons, i.e. there are free charges floating around at a given time. This, to me, is a more accurate definition than what the MSI sign says.
I'm not sure how many of MSI guests paid attention to the sign or learned what a plasma is from that sign. But I hope those responsible for such signs pay closer attention to the accuracy of the info that they put out.
This would be funny if it wasn't so sad, and scary because these people presumably vote!
I read about this Flat Earth International Conference (honest!), and I can't believe the idiotic stuff that was written in the article. I'm going to ignore the paranoid claims about conspiracy and stuff. I'm not here to deal with their psychotic problems. However, I can deal with the science, and in particular, when idiots try to use physics to justify their stupidity.
Many flat-Earthers believe in testing the theory.
Darryle
Marble said he conducted his own in-flight experiment using a leveler
to test if the plane was flying parallel to a flat Earth.
"If
it were a sphere then the surface of the Earth still would have been
curving underneath the airplane while it's flying level," he reasoned.
"It’s so simple it'll go right over your head," he said adding that
people who have flown planes allegedly told him they "haven’t seen any
curvature."
First of all, they don't believe astronauts who have gone into space when they said that the earth is a sphere, but yet, they want to use human observation from airplane rides! This is an example of pick-and-choose.
Secondly, a leveler? Seriously?
Assuming that the plane is moving at a constant speed and at a constant altitude, this means that the plane is moving parallel to the earth's surface all the time. That's the definition of constant altitude. If the plane were to fly "straight with respect to the spatial coordinates", then it would be increasing in altitude! If that were to happen, the leveler will indicate several things (i) the acceleration due to the plan having to increase its altitude and (ii) gravity will act not straight down anymore. Any of these will affect the leveler.
But really, does the fact that if one head east continuously and end up at the same position later while in the plane, means nothing to these people?
There are many evidence that the earth is a sphere, and many of these are plain obvious. The fact that different parts of the earth having opposite seasons at a given time of the year is one clear example. A flat earth will not result in different parts of the earth having different daylight hours and different seasons.
But there is another clear test here that have been too obvious: using a Faucault pendulum. How would these idiots explain not only the change in the plane of oscillation of the Faucault pendulum over a period of 24 hrs, but also the fact that (i) the change in the plane of oscillation is in the OPPOSITE direction for those having the opposite season (i.e. northern hemisphere versus southern hemisphere) and (ii) there is no change in the plane of oscillation at the equator.
Of course, to understand the significance of this observation, one actually must know the physics involved in a Faucault pendulum, and the conservation of angular momentum. But hey, maybe physics and all these conservation laws are also more conspiracies.
Again, to paraphrase Kathy Griffin: "These people are proud of their aggressive ignorance."
I've seen many crap being passed as scholarly works, but this one might take the cake.
Whitney Stark
argues in support of “combining intersectionality and quantum physics”
to better understand “marginalized people” and to create “safer spaces”
for them, in the latest issue of The Minnesota Review.
Because traditional quantum physics theory has influenced humanity’s
understanding of the world, it has also helped lend credence to the
ongoing regime of racism, sexism and classism that hurts minorities,
Stark writes in “Assembled Bodies: Reconfiguring Quantum Identities.”
And here's the best part:
Stark did not respond to multiple email and Facebook requests for comment from The College Fix. While she does not have any academic training in physics or quantum physics, she did complete a master’s degree in “Cyborg and Post Colonial Theory” at the University of Utrecht.
And that somehow makes her an expert in not only physics, but quantum physics and classical mechanics.
This is no different than the snake oil being peddled by the likes of Deepak Chopra. And the sad thing is, this is not new. Alan Sokal has battled this sort of thing in his attack on postmodernism philosophy. It included attacks in which the Theory of Relativity was considered to be male-biased!
But what is troubling here is that people who have only a superficial knowledge of something seem to think that they have the authority and expertise to criticize something, and all out of ignorance. And this seems to be a common practice nowadays, especially in the world of politics.
I've never heard of "fidget toys" before till after I read this piece. This one is describing a fidget toy that supposedly has "antigravity" effects that simulates the low gravitational field of the moon and Mars, making the object falls slower. The toy is called Moondrop.
Based around the principle of Lenz’s law — which *deep breath* states
that the current induced in a circuit due to a change or motion in a
magnetic field will create a field that opposes the charge that produced
it — Moondrop is a gravity-defying fidget desk toy that imitates the
differential gravitational free fall on Mars and the Moon.
OK, so immediately, there are two issues here:
1. Lenz's law is not a "quirk" of physics, as stated in the title of this report. In fact, it is quite a central phenomenon in physics that is responsible for power generators to create our household electricity! So how is that a "quirk"?
2. Any physics undergraduate can spot the error in the definition given for Lenz's law. Lenz's law is the effect whereby a magnetic field is generated to oppose the CHANGE in the external magnetic field. Maybe there is a typo in the definition given, that it should have been "change" instead of "charge". That one word (or in this case, one letter) change results in an astounding difference in the physics.
If I recall correctly, there are magnetic breaks that use the same principle. I remember reading something on roller coaster rides that made use of such magnetic breaks, so that it ensure that the vehicle can still be safely stopped even when the power goes off.
So the application of Lenz's law is neither that highly unusual, nor is it a quirk of physics.
My attention was brought to this via Hamish's blog at Physics World. He pointed out the sharp critique against Nye in Sabine Hossenfelder's "Back Reaction" blog entry. It all stemmed from Nye's video answering a question regarding quantum entanglement, where it appears that Nye got tangled in it himself.
You may read the criticism yourself (be warned, there are some "colorful" language being used in there).
I think that while Nye has done quite a bit in the media to popularize science, I often find his off-script or unscripted responses a bit suspect at times. This is another one such example. It is my impression that he knows the pop-science version of science, but not the intimate detail. Of course, you often do not need the intimate detail when dealing with the general public, which is why he could manage to do this for this long. But when confronted with something that requires a bit more in-depth knowledge, especially in physics, this is where he trips.
I don't know why he doesn't consult an expert when he responded to this person in this video clip. After all, I'm sure it isn't "live", and he could have easily checked if what he was saying was accurate, or nonsensical. Unfortunately, he went into the realm of nonsensical, and he didn't even realize it.
"... what would the law of physics say about such-and-such?"
I've heard of many dumb and stupid things online over the many, MANY years I've been on the 'net (since 1989, if you have to ask!), but somehow, this one caught my eyes more than others.
I'm not going to point out where I recently read it, but this issue is not about physics, but rather with how irrational certain things are, and how irrational people can be without realizing it. If you are in the US and being immersed in the General Election fever, I'm sure you'll understand this. But it doesn't lessen the impact and the surprise for me, because many of these things are so obviously ridiculous. But yet, the people who muttered them don't seem to care how foolish they sounded.
BTW, when this person in question was told that since he is discarding the laws of physics in the first place, why not make up any kind of rules that he wants? And guess what? He didn't want to. He still wanted a "rational" explanation on how physics would explain something that doesn't follow the laws of physics.
OK, before you send me hate mail and comments, I KNOW that I'm hard on this guy. He was probably trying to make a sincere and honest effort to explain something based on what he knew. And besides, this video is from 2009 and maybe he has understood a lot more since then.
But still, this video is online, and someone pointed this out to me. I get a lot of these kinds of "references" from folks online, especially with Wikipedia entries. And try as I might to ignore most of these things, they ARE out there, and some of these sources do have not only misleading information, but also outright wrong information.
This video, made presumably by a high-school science teacher, tries to explain what a particle accelerator is. Unfortunately, he described what a particle accelerator CAN do (i.e. use it in high energy physics colliders), but completely neglected the description of a "particle accelerator". This is a common error because most people associate particle accelerator with high energy physics, and think that they are one and the same.
They are not!
As I've stated in an earlier post, more than 95% of particle accelerators on earth has NOTHING to do with high energy physics. One of these things might even be in your doctors office, to generate x-rays to look at your insides. So using high energy physics experiment to explain what a particle accelerator is is like using creme brulee to describe what a dessert is. Sure, it can be a dessert, but it is such a small, SMALL part of a dessert.
A particle accelerator is, to put it bluntly, a device to accelerate particles! Period. Once they are accelerated, the charge particles can then be used for whatever they are needed for.
Now, that may sounds trivial to you, but I can assure you that it isn't. Not only does one need to accelerate the charge particles to a set energy, but in some cases, the "quality" of the accelerated particles must be of a certain standard. Case in point is a quantity called "emittance". If these are electrons, and they are to be used to generate light in a free-electron laser, then the required emittance, especially the transverse emittance, can extremely low (in fact, the lower the better). This is where the study of beam physics is crucial (which is a part of accelerator physics).
The point I'm trying to make here is that the word "particle accelerator" is pretty generic and quite independent of "high energy physics" or "particle collider". Many accelerators don't even collide these particles as part of its operation (in fact, many do NOT want these particles to collide, such as in synchrotron radiation facilities).
What this teacher neglected to describe is HOW a particle accelerator works. The idea that there are these accelerating structures with a wide range of geometries, and they can have either static electric field, or oscillating electric field insides of these structures, that are responsible for accelerating these charged particles, be it electrons, protons, positrons, antiprotons, heavy nucleus, etc... And even for high energy physics experiments, they don't usually collide with a "fixed" target, as implied in the video. Both LEP, the Tevatron, the LHC, etc. all collide with beams moving in the opposite direction. The proposed International Linear Collider is a linear accelerator that will collide positrons and electrons moving toward each other in opposite direction.
So while the intention of this video is noble, unfortunately, the information content is suspect, and it missed its target completely. It does not really explain what a particle accelerator really is, merely what it can be used for. It also perpetuates the fallacy that particle accelerators are only for these exotic experiments, when they are definitely not.
This is a report on a TED talk by a CERN physicist Harry Cliff. In it, he discussed the conundrum theoretical physicists are facing with the current knowledge of the Higgs and dark energy.
At the core of Cliff's argument are what he calls the two most dangerous
numbers in the universe. These numbers are responsible for all the
matter, structure, and life that we witness across the cosmos.
So in the attempt to make this story more "sexy", we of course have to make sound as if we are reaching an apocalyptic problem that will spell "the end of physics" (how many times have you heard that already?). There are several problems with this reporting:
1. The degree of certainty on the validity of ANY of these theories is LOW. Anyone wants to argue that? So while it is certainly important to pursue it, the TED talk can only be seen as being a very quick and superficial snapshot of an ONGOING and still preliminary investigation! Our knowledge of the Higgs and dark energy are still in the extreme infancy when compared to many of the more established areas. This is like groping in the dark and then pronouncing that we're doom because someone heard something moving.
2. The claim that "getting answers could be impossible" is false. In that section of the report, nothing that was described is impossible. The limit on the energy of the LHC isn't a limitation on the physics or our ability. We can certainly build a bigger, more energetic collider (the Superconducting Supercollider that was supposed to be built in Texas in the 80's would have had a higher energy than the LHC!). New research on advanced acceleration scheme, led by a slew of wakefield-type accelerators, has the potential of boosting particle energy even higher while making the accelerator more compact. So no, there is no ceiling yet, in terms of the physics, in going to higher and higher energies. What is hindering the building of such machines is the economics! This is not a physical impossibility, but rather a social "impossibility".
I am always skeptical whenever someone, or even a scientist, claim of "maybe" we might reach the end of something, or that we'll never get beyond such-and-such. Again, we seem to have never learned what happened when we claim that, with the state of our knowledge of superconductivity in the early 1980's being a prime example. Almost everyone thought that the field was fully matured, and that there's nothing left to discovery there other than refining our knowledge and the production of the material. Then high-Tc superconductors were discovered and all hell broke loose!
Scientists need to be aware that talks like this can be latched on by the public because news reporters like to over-emphasize the "dramatic" parts. Without intending it, something that many of us know to be still very much a "work in progress" becomes a "fact" to many people outside the field.
A lot of researchers and experts in other fields have tried to use various principles in physics in their own field. Economics have tried to invent something called Econophysics, to varying degree of success. And certainly many aspects of biology are starting to incorporate quantum effects.
Quantum mechanics has been used notoriously in many areas, including crackpottish application by the likes of Deepak Chopra etc. without really understanding the underlying physics. I don't know if this falls under the same category, but the news report out of The Atlantic doesn't do it any favor. I'm reading this article on quantum cognition, in which human behavior, and certain unpredictability and irrationality of human behavior, may be attributed to quantum effects!
Now, the reason why I don't think this article is that good is because it makes a number of either misleading, or strange errors.
Take, for example, the classic prisoner’s dilemma. Two criminals are
offered the opportunity to rat each other out. If one rats, and the
other doesn’t, the snitch goes free while the other serves a three-year
sentence. If they both rat, they each get two years. If neither rats,
they each get one year. If players always behaved in their own
self-interest, they’d always rat. But research has shown that people
often choose to cooperate.
Classical probability can’t explain this. If the first player knew
for sure that the second was cooperating, it would make most sense to
defect. If the first knew for sure that the second was defecting, it
would also make most sense to defect. Since no matter what the other
player is doing, it’s best to defect, then the first player should
logically defect no matter what.
A quantum explanation for why player one might cooperate anyway would be
that when one player is uncertain about what the other is doing, it’s
like a Schrödinger’s cat situation. The other player has the potential
to be cooperating and the potential to be defecting, at the same time,
in the first player’s mind. Each of these possibilities is like a
thought wave, Wang says. And as waves of all kinds (light, sound, water)
are wont to do, they can interfere with each other. Depending on how
they line up, the can cancel each other out to make a smaller wave, or
build on each other to make a bigger one. If “the other guy’s going to
cooperate” thought wave gets strengthened in a player’s mind, he might
choose to cooperate too.
So you tell me if that made any sense or if this person has actually understood QM beyond what he read in a pop-science book. First of all, when wave cancellation occurs, it doesn't "make a smaller wave". It makes NO wave at that instant and time. Secondly, this person is espousing the existence of some kind of a "thought wave" that hasn't been verified, and somehow, the thought waves from the two different prisoners overlap each other (this, BTW, can be described via classical wave pictures, so why quantum picture in invoked here?).
But the fallacy comes in the claim that there is no other way to explain why different people act differently here without invoking quantum effects. Unlike physics systems where we can prepare two systems identically, we can find no such thing in human beings (even with twins!). Two different people have different backgrounds and "baggage". We have different ethics, moral standards, etc. You'll never find two identical systems to test this out. That's why we have 9 judges on the US Supreme Court, and they can have wildly differing opinions on the identical issue! So why can't they use this to explain why people react differently under this same situation? Why can't they find the answer via the human psychology rather than invoking QM?
But it gets worse...
The act of answering a question can move people from wave to particle,
from uncertainty to certainty. In quantum physics, the “observer effect”
refers to how measuring the state of a particle can change the very
state you’re trying to measure. In a similar way, asking someone a
question about the state of her mind could very well change it. For
example, if I’m telling a friend about a performance review I have
coming up, and I’m not sure how I feel about it, if she asks me “Are you
nervous?” that might get me thinking about all the reasons I should be
nervous. I might not have been nervous before she asked me, but after
the question, my answer might become, “Well, I am now!”
Of course, this smacks of the crackpottery done in "The Secret". Let's get this straight first of all, especially those who do not have a formal education in QM. There is no such thing as "wave-particle duality" in QM! QM/QFT etc. describe the system via a single, consistent formulation. We don't switch gears going from "wave" to "particle" and back to "wave" to describe things things. So the system doesn't move "from wave to particle", etc. It is the nature of the outcome that most people consider to be "wave-like" or "particle-like", but these are ALL produced by the same, single, consistent description!
The problem I have with this, and many other areas that tried to incorporate QM, is that they often start with the effects, and then say something like "Oh, it looks very much like a quantum effect". This is fine if there is an underlying, rigorous mathematical description, but often, there isn't! You cannot says that an idea is "complimentary" to another idea the same way position and momentum observables are non-commuting. The latter has a very set of rigorous mathematical rules and description. To argue that "... quantum models were able to predict order effects shown in 70 different national surveys... " is not very convincing because in physics, this would be quite unconvincing. It means that there are other factors that come in that are not predictable and can't be accounted for. What is there to argue that these other factors are also responsible for the outcome?
Again, the inability to test this out using identical systems makes it very difficult to be convincing. Human behavior can be irrational and unpredictable. That is know. Rather than considering this to be the result of quantum effects, why not consider this to be the result of a chaotic behavior over time, i.e. all of the various life experiences that an individual had all conspire to trigger the decision that he/she makes at a particular time. The "butterfly effect" in an individual's time line can easily cause a particular behavior at another time. To me, this is as valid of an explanation as any.
So let me point out this news article first before I go off on my rant. This article describes an important application of particle accelerators that has an important application in national security via the generation of high-energy photons. These photons can be used in a number of different ways for national security purposes.
The compact photon source, which is being developed by Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, is tunable, allowing users to produce MeV photons within very specific narrow ranges of energy, an improvement that will allow the fabrication of highly sensitive yet safe detection instruments to reach where ordinary passive handheld sensors cannot, and to identify nuclear material such as uranium-235 hidden behind thick shielding. "The ability to choose the photon energy is what would allow increased sensitivity and safety. Only the photons that produce the best signal and least noise would be delivered," explains project lead Cameron Geddes, a staff scientist at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center.
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To make a tunable photon source that is also compact, Geddes and his team will use one of BELLA's laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) instead of a conventional accelerator to produce a high-intensity electron beam. By operating in a plasma, or ionized gas, LPAs can accelerate electrons 10,000 times "harder" or faster than a conventional accelerator. "That means we can achieve the energy that would take tens of meters in a conventional accelerator within a centimeter using our LPA technology," Geddes says.
Now, to my rant. I hate the title, first of all. It perpetuates the popular misunderstanding that accelerators means "high energy physics". Notice that the production of light source in this case has no connection to high energy physics field of study, and it isn't for such a purpose. The article did mention that this scheme is also being developed as a possible means to generate future high-energy electrons for particle colliders. That's fine, but this scheme is independent of such a purpose, and as can be seen, can be used as a light source for many different uses outside of high energy physics.
Unfortunately, the confusion is also perpetuated by the way funding for accelerator science is done within the DOE. Even though more accelerators in the US is used as light sources (synchrotron and FEL facilities) than they are for particle colliders, all the funding for accelerator science is still being handled by DOE's Office of Science High Energy Physics Division. DOE's Basic Energy Sciences, which funds synchrotron light sources and SLAC's LCLS, somehow would not consider funding advancement in accelerator science, even though they greatly benefit from this field. NSF, on the other hand, has started to separate out Accelerator Science funding from High Energy Physics funding, even though the separation so far hasn't been clean.
What this means is that, with the funding in HEP in the US taking a dive the past several years, funding in Accelerator Science suffered the same collateral damage, even though Accelerator Science is actually independent of HEP and has vital needs in many areas of physics.
Articles such as this should make it clear that this is not a high energy physics application, and not fall into the trap of associating accelerator science with HEP.
Zz.
The compact photon
source, which is being developed by Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, is tunable, allowing
users to produce MeV photons within very specific narrow ranges of
energy, an improvement that will allow the fabrication of highly
sensitive yet safe detection instruments to reach where ordinary passive
handheld sensors cannot, and to identify nuclear material
such as uranium-235 hidden behind thick shielding. "The ability to
choose the photon energy is what would allow increased sensitivity and
safety. Only the photons that produce the best signal and least noise
would be delivered," explains project lead Cameron Geddes, a staff
scientist at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center.
The compact photon
source, which is being developed by Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, is tunable, allowing
users to produce MeV photons within very specific narrow ranges of
energy, an improvement that will allow the fabrication of highly
sensitive yet safe detection instruments to reach where ordinary passive
handheld sensors cannot, and to identify nuclear material
such as uranium-235 hidden behind thick shielding. "The ability to
choose the photon energy is what would allow increased sensitivity and
safety. Only the photons that produce the best signal and least noise
would be delivered," explains project lead Cameron Geddes, a staff
scientist at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center.
Why is it that when some "morons" see something that they can't comprehend, they always claim that it violates physics, or can't be explained by physics, as IF they understand physics well-enough to make such judgement? I mean, c'mon!
This is the case here where this writer claims that Novak Djokovic ability to stop the ball coming at him with his racket somehow defy physics and turning it all into "a lie". (
Look, I know this is written probably in jest, and probably without giving it a second thought, but such stupid comments of journalism should really be stopped and called out. There's nothing that can't be explained here by physics. If Djokovic had held the racket with a stiff arm, he would not have been able to stop the ball the way he did. In fact, it would have bounced off the racket. But look at how he stopped it. He moved his arm back to "absorb" the impact, basically allowing the strings to absorb the momentum of the ball. This is called "Impulse", where the force on the ball to change its momentum to zero is spread out over a longer period of time. Thus, the force needed to slow it down is small enough that it doesn't cause it to bounce off the strings.
In other words, what is observed can easily be explained by physics!
BTW, Martina Navratilova had done this same thing a few times while she was an active player. I've witness her doing this at least twice during matches. So it is not as if this is anything new. Not only that, although it is less spectacular and easier to do, badminton players do such a thing numerous times as well when they are trying to catch a shuttlecock.
I applaud when news organization such as The Economist decides to give science some coverage. It is important because such magazine reaches out to an audience that many science journals and magazines do not usually get. So this criticism is not a knock on their science coverage and hopefully, will not discourage more of it on their pages.
Still, I find it very hard to accept that an article in a magazine as popular and prestigious as The Economist would not have had some sort of expert proof-reading before it is published. They can afford to at least hire a free-lance consultant to make sure there are any obvious errors or inaccuracies in such articles (I'm available!). Take this article on the neutrinos, for example, that Business Insider took from The Economist. There are minor quibbles here and there, but there are a couple of points in which someone who doesn't know much of the topic would have a very misleading or wrong idea about what is going on.
The first is this one:
Stand in front of it and you are standing in the path of the most powerful beam of neutrinos in the world, which is emerging from a nearby particle accelerator at Fermilab, America's main particle-physics laboratory.
With any other kind of accelerator, standing in the beam would have spectacular and fatal consequences. But your correspondent was not vapourised--nor, several weeks later, has he developed either cancer or superpowers.
Well, actually, you WILL die, because the "particles" in the accelerator are not neutrinos but rather, in this case, protons! That quoted passage made it sounds as if the neutrinos are the ones being directed by the accelerator. They are not. In fact, one doesn't control the path of neutrinos whatsoever once they are generated. So kids, if you think you can stand in the path of the particles generated in these accelerators, banish that thought!
The other one is a bit more severe:
But the details of oscillation remain incomplete, which is where Fermilab's neutrino beam comes in. By the end of July work should have finished on building NOVA, an experiment designed to pin those details down. The beam that passes through the white circle will carry on for 810km (500 miles) through the Earth to a detector in northern Minnesota. When it arrives, some of the muon neutrinos in it will have transformed themselves into electron neutrinos. NOVA will measure precisely how often this occurs.
This mistake is consistent with the previous one. The writer is still thinking that the neutrinos are the ones being accelerated, because if you read this, it somehow implied that these neutrinos go around the "white circle", and then proceed 810 km away to northern Minnesota. This, of course, is wrong. Protons in the main injector (the "white circle") are bombarded onto a target. The resultant is a bunch of particles, including muons. These muons then will decay rather quickly, and one of the decay products is a neutrino! These are the neutrinos that will shoot off to northern Minnesota. There are variation to such process, but the principles are similar. You do not start off with these neutrinos, accelerate them in the particle accelerator, and then shoot them off. There are just simply no way to do that!
I don't understand why magazines such as this do not seek an expert to do copy-reading to ensure the accuracy of these types of articles. Maybe most of the readers can't tell that there are inaccuracies, and those who do, seldom point them out. It is obvious that this method hasn't ruined their reputation or they would have done something.
