Saturday, December 14, 2013

"Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics"

"Physicists reported this week the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality."

"The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression."                                                                        (via Instapundit)

It all sounds so sentimental... but

15 comments:

bagoh20 said...

Everything about that performance blows away all the imitations done since. The girl was good at what she did. Real good.

Oh yea, Quantum Physics. That jewel hidden in the center was revealed to me in 1981 at a Dead concert via a cocktail of Ripple and mushrooms. I had no idea it was a secret. Nobody ever asks me this stuff. Sheese!

rhhardin said...

It's more of a formalism, noticing that something gathers up all the terms you need in the form of computing a volume.

rcocean said...

Hate to sound like a philistine but So what?

That effects us how exactly?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

That effects us how exactly?

We maybe getting closer to living for ever?

I went to a wake on Wednesday. I had seen the deceased last Saturday morning, the guy looked fine, he was joking around.

I got the call he had a hart attack that Saturday afternoon.

He was there in the morning, gone in the afternoon.

At the wake, he looked like he was asleep.

Revenant said...

That effects us how exactly?

If the findings hold, it means there is a highly efficient replacement for Feynman diagrams. Roughly speaking that means work in the fields that directly or indirectly gave us most of the major technological advancements of the last half-century can now be done much more quickly.

How will that affect you, personally? Cheaper goods and services, and access to goods and services that otherwise wouldn't have existed at all until after you were dead.

Methadras said...

Considering that some new observations reinforce that the universe might be nothing more than a holographic projection only means that this current finding is just embedded in the holographic model which if that's how it holds up means that this universe is deliberately constructed.

Revenant said...

You think "holographic universe" implies "constructed universe"?

I can't imagine what your reason is there. Explain?

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Methadras lost me at "nothing more than."

chickelit said...

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.
~Niels Bohr

The jewel is a metaphor used to describe something complex and unseen having symmetry. The discovery means that somebody realized a better way to calculate. Comparisons to theoretical refinements made regarding electrons and atoms are probably apt, but this goes deeper. Often, practical consequence come later as I suspect will be the case here.

bagoh20 said...

I'm betting there is a jewel inside that jewel.

Speaking of jewels and there valuable application: The natural creation of diamonds is an incredible process, but think how much more incredible it is that a lifeform would evolve over millions of years in just such a way that he would then create difficult technology that can manufacture diamonds so that they can be used to entice a female to mate, but if she finds out the diamond is the product of this much more amazing history of human evolution and technology, she is disappointed, and will look for a guy who pays someone to just dig one out of the ground. That seems unjust.

chickelit said...

That seems unjust.

Even more unjust if she prefers a perfect diamond contaminated with boron or nitrogen atoms.

bagoh20 said...

It's also unjust that English has homophones which itself is probably a homophone if gays have special phones (I don't know), but I feel that if two words sounds the same then we should be able to spell them either way. If you were just talking to someone you would not have to tell them which word you mean, so what's up with that their bullshit?

deborah said...

Rev, instead of lengthy equations, the jewel structure can be used as shorthand? Can you give a physical metaphor I can wrap my mind around?

And can you give an example of what products will be brought more quickly to the market?

Revenant said...

Can you give a physical metaphor I can wrap my mind around?

Say you want to determine the volume of an irregularly-shaped object such as a crown. You can take a lot of the parts of the crown and add them up, or you can use the trick Archimedes discovered, and just dunk the crown in water and measure the volume of water displaced by it. That's a rough metaphor for what's being reported here -- replacing a lot of arduous calculations with a single one.

And can you give an example of what products will be brought more quickly to the market?

I would expect gains in anything that relies on chemistry or electronics.

deborah said...

Thanks, Rev.