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POPSWhy nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws If so, then even perfect knowledge of the physics at one level would be inadequate for understanding organisation at higher levels. This conjecture has been debated ever since. Now Mile Gu at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues, claim that it may be possible to prove Anderson's idea. They studied a basic mathematical model called the Ising model, which is often used to study how magnetism arises in iron and other materials from the collective organisation of their atoms. Using the model, the team focused on whether the pattern that the atoms adopt under various scenarios, such as a state of lowest energy, could be calculated from knowledge of those forces. They found that in some scenarios, the pattern of atoms could not be calculated from knowledge of the forces - even given unlimited computing power. In mathematical terms, the system is considered "formally undecidable".
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POPSSuperholographic Model of the Universe An extraordinary article. The idea seems to hark back to Leibniz's monads which always seemed very strange but has followers in the philosophy world. The discoveries of science seem to be getting more counter-intuitive as time goes by
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POPS How A Catholic Priest Gave Us The Primeval Atom Theory
Returning to Belgium in 1925, where he worked at the Catholic University of Leuven as a part-time lecturer, his big break came two years later in 1927 when he proposed his theory of an expanding Universe to explain the movement of the galaxies, published in the Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels. Lemaitre was still pretty hazy about how the process of expansion could have begun. Like many scientists, he was still committed to the idea of a static Universe of unchanging size... Einstein, though interested, was largely dismissive, telling Lemaitre that, "Your calculations are good, but your physics is terrible". Einstein was also a little suspicious of the religious implications of these ideas. He declined to describe himself as an atheist (or a theist, or a pantheist) and liked to use the vocabulary of religion, most famously in his misguided rejection of much of quantum physics, "God does not play dice!" British physicist, Fred Hoyle coined the Big Bang term
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POPSPhysicists Seek Answers to Quantum Correlations The physicists ruled out several possible classical explanations for the instantaneous communication. For one thing, they showed that the photons did not share information before leaving Geneva, and so they didn´t travel knowing about each other´s properties. In another test, the scientists showed that no communication could have occurred through a different reference frame, as might happen because of the photons´ high speeds. According to Einstein´s theory of relativity, observers moving at high speeds can get different measurements of the same event because they have different reference frames. But, by performing tests over a complete rotation of the Earth, the researchers ruled out this possibility. "We think space and time are important because that´s the kind of monkeys we are,"
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POPSBuilding 'The Matrix' Feynman envisioned, a general purpose, programmable quantum computer could itself carry out quantum simulations. But such machines are still decades away, most researchers say, while machines designed only for quantum simulations may become available sooner.
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POPSSelf-love doesn't happen by luck or the grace of God I wanted to clip it all. Skipped over a lot.This is good to read several times. More of article: They argue that it's not loving to tell a sick person they had anything to do with creating their illness," he says. "Yet, by not owning their power when they are sick, they are consigning themselves to a life of being a victim of any virus or circumstance that comes their way. This powerlessness is the source of most depression, and it leads to more illness and problems such as overeating." http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20021203-000002.html
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POPSGood reference for Surface Physics John Venables website at ASU has lots of good information on surface physics, thin films, adsorption, characterization, etc. He has posted lectures from a couple of classes, undergraduate projects done for the REU program at ASU, and other links that are very helpful. Be sure to check it out in detail.
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POPSPhysicists Demonstrate How Information Can Escape From Black Holes Hawking's idea was generally accepted by physicists until the late 1990s, when many began to doubt the assertion. Even Hawking himself renounced the idea in 2004. Yet no one, until now, has been able to provide a plausible mechanism for how information might escape from a black hole. A team of physicists led by Abhay Ashtekar, Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics and director of the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, now has discovered such a mechanism. Broadly, their findings expand space-time beyond its assumed size, thus providing room for information to reappear.
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POPSDo parallel universes really exist? Something to ponder while you look up into the night sky. The best time is a campfire with some friends or family. Interesting conversation... To read the full article: http://science.howstuffworks.com/parallel-universe.htm
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