Daily Archives: July 9, 2017

Milo Faust, 1, looks at a book from the Baby University series. Courtesy of Amber Faust hide caption

Milo Faust, 1, looks at a book from the Baby University series.

When Kelly Barrales-Saylor was a new mom, she got a lot of children's books as gifts. Most were simple books about shapes, colors and letters. There were none about science or math.

"My editorial brain lit up and said there must be a need for this," says Barrales-Saylor, who works as an editor for a publishing company outside Chicago.

Halfway across the world, Chris Ferrie was similarly unsatisfied.

When reading to his kids, Ferrie noticed that most books used animals to introduce new words. In today's world, that just didn't make sense to him.

"We're not surrounded by animals anymore," says Ferrie, a physicist and mathematician at a university in Sydney, Australia. "We're surrounded by technology." So he created some math and science books for his own children and self-published them online.

That's where Barrales-Saylor found them. And together, they designed a series of books aimed at toddlers and babies.

The books introduce subjects like rocket science, quantum physics and general relativity with bright colors, simple shapes and thick board pages perfect for teething toddlers. The books make up the Baby University series and each one begins with the same sentence and picture This is a ball and then expands on the titular concept.

In the case of general relativity: This ball has mass.

But some of the topics Ferrie covers are tough for even grown-ups to comprehend. (I mean, quantum physics? Come on.)

A firm grasp of rocket science isn't really the point, Barrales-Saylor says.

"We know toddlers aren't going to pick up the exact high-level concepts we're explaining," she says. "We're trying to introduce the small seeds of information meant for them to remember years later."

Some parents hope a happy primer to a complex subject will yield results later on. Take Amber Faust, 33, who lives in South Carolina.

Physics never came easily to her she got a "C" in her college class but that hasn't stopped her from introducing the science to her kids.

She reads Ferrie's Baby University series with sons Oliver, 2, and Milo, 1. Then, they "act it out."

"We make funny noises and run through the house," Faust says. "The 2-year-old is a crazy active baby, so anything we read we have to act out."

Connecting the books to the real world is the best thing parents can do, says Jeff Winokur, an early education and elementary science instructor at Wheelock College in Boston.

"It's important to give kids physical experiences and a chance to talk about them," says Winokur, who remembers learning to dislike science by reading about it.

According to Winokur, what kids and parents need is to accompany their reading with an experiment. It could be as simple as asking the question: "What happens when I roll this ball down a hill?" he says.

Children would do better to engage with physical objects rather than static pictures on a page that way, they bring the subjects to life.

And the idea that physics is incomprehensible to small children? Let's just say, the babies may know more than we think.

"Infants come into the world equipped with expectations that accord very closely to what we consider Newtonian physics," says Kristy vanMarle, who has been researching children's "intuitive physics" at the University of Missouri.

Children as young as 2 months comprehend that objects unsupported will fall and objects hidden will not cease to be, according to vanMarle's study.

"Of course, they can't talk about it, or explain it, but the knowledge in the form of expectations seems to be in place," vanMarle says.

As the children grow, so does their understanding. They learn the language to describe the phenomena they have experienced all their life

In Washington, D.C., Rosie Nathanson is trying to make Ferrie's physics books work for her two younger children.

At her home on Capitol Hill, Nathanson sits on the couch with Henry, 6, and Sylvie, 2 1/2, and reads Rocket Science for Babies:

"This is a ball. This ball is moving."

Henry has been learning about this concept flight in school.

Nathanson continues: "Air can't go through it."

" 'Cause it's aerodynamic," Henry responds. He's excited to hear words he understands.

But while Henry plunges through the books, his little sister grows restless. "I need water," says Sylvie, who's having a hard time grasping this intro to rocket science.

Her mom thinks she might be more interested in the books a year from now. Henry, meanwhile, gives the books a qualified endorsement.

"I like it half and I didn't like it half," says Henry. The half he didn't like? It's "for babies."

More here:

Something New For Baby To Chew On: Rocket Science And ... - NPR - NPR

An Alternative to Quantum Entanglement

The quantum world is full of phenomena scientists are still largely grappling with on a theoretical level. One such quantum theory is quantum entanglement. Although there are a number of tests that demonstrate what Einstein called spooky action at a distance, many merelyassume that it happens, without being able to explain how. At least not yet. But two physicists have proposed an alternative that might just be able to explain this quantum effect.

Essentially, quantum entanglement assumes that measurements of quantum properties within thestate of one entangled particle occurs simultaneously withits entangled pair, regardless of how far apart they are. There isnt any known mechanism that would explain that kind of influence, though, which is why physicists Matthew S. Leifer at Chapman University and Matthew F. Pusey at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have offered an alternative: the team has asserted theidea of retrocausality as a possible explanation for this spooky action. Theirfindings werepublished in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society Ain June.

There is a small group of physicists and philosophers that think this idea is worth pursuing, including Huw Price and Ken Wharton [a physics professor at San Jos State University], Leifer told Phys.org. There is not, to my knowledge, a generally agreed upon interpretation of quantum theory that recovers the whole theory and exploits this idea. It is more of an idea for an interpretation at the moment, so I think that other physicists are rightly skeptical, and the onus is on us to flesh out the idea.

Simply stated, retrocausality assumes that influences can travel backwards in time. When an experimenter decides how to measure a particle, that choice can influence the properties of that particle or,an entangled particle in the past. This, therefore, makes the action at a distance part of Einsteins definition unnecessary. Instead, the entanglement effect becomes retrocausal influence. That being said, its not the same thing as sending signals back in time.

Retrocausal theory, then, could offer a better quantum theory. The only options seem to be to abandon realism or to break out of the standard realist framework, Leifer explained. Abandoning realism is quite popular, but I think that this robs science of much of its explanatory power and so it is better to find realist accounts where possible. Retrocausality entails a number of assumptions, though:including one that reformulates the idea of time symmetry.

At any rate, Leifer and Pusey think that retrocausality can offer a generalized standard quantum theory. This might be needed to construct the correct theory of quantum gravity, or even to resolve some issues in high-energy physics given that the unification of the other three forces is still up in the air in the light of LHC results, Leifer added. Perhaps it could even help improve quantum computing technology.

Needless to say, as is the case with most everything in the world of quantum physics, the work is largely theoretical. As far as direct experimental tests of retrocausality go, the status is not much different from other things in the foundations of quantum mechanics, Leifer said. We never test one assumption in isolation, but always in conjunction with many others, and then we have to decide which one to reject on other grounds.

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Physicists May Have Discovered One of the Missing Pieces of Quantum Theory - Futurism

One of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics could be explained by an equally weird idea that causation can run backwards in time as well as forwards.

What Einstein called "spooky" action at a distance could theoretically be evidence of retrocausality, which is the particle equivalent of you getting a stomach ache today thanks to tomorrow's bad lunch.

A pair of physicists from the US and Canada took a closer look at some basic assumptions in quantum theory and decided unless we discovered time necessarily ran one way, measurements made to a particle could echo back in time as well as forward.

We all know quantum mechanics is weird. And part of that weirdness comes down to the fact that at a fundamental level, particles don't act like solid billiard balls rolling down a table, but rather like a blurry cloud of possibilities shifting around the room.

This blurry cloud comes into sharp focus when we try to measure particles, meaning we can only ever see a white ball hitting a black one into the corner pocket, and never countless white balls hitting black balls into every pocket.

There is an argument among physicists over whether that cloud of maybes represents something real, or if it's just a convenient representation.

A physicist by the name of Huw Price claimed back in 2012 that if the strange probabilities behind quantum states reflect something real, and if nothing restricts time to one direction, the black ball in that cloud of maybes could theoretically roll out of the pocket and knock the white ball.

"Critics object that there is complete time-symmetry in classical physics, and yet no apparent retrocausality. Why should the quantum world be any different?" Price wrote, paraphrasing the thoughts of most physicists.

Matthew S. Leifer from Chapman University in California and Matthew F. Pusey from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario also wondered if the quantum world might be different when it comes to time.

The pair exchanged some of Price's assumptions and applied their new model to something called Bell's theorem, which is a big deal in this whole spooky action at a distance business.

John Stewart Bell said that the weird things that happen in quantum mechanics can't ever be explained by actions taking place nearby. It's as if nothing is causing the multitude of billiard balls to take such varied paths. At a fundamental level, the Universe is random.

But what about actions taking place somewhere else... or somewhen else? Can something far away influence that cloud without touching it, in a way that Einstein called "spooky"?

If two particles are connected in space at some point, measuring a property of one of them instantly sets the value for the other, no matter where in the Universe it has moved to.

This 'entanglement' has been tested over and over again in light of Bell's theorem, plugging loopholes that might show they are really interacting on a local level in some way, in spite of what seems to be a distance.

As you might guess, the Universe still seems pretty spooky.

But if causality ran backwards, it would mean a particle could carry the action of its measurement back in time to when it was entangled, affecting its partner. No faster-than-light messages needed.

That's the hypothesis Leifer and Pusey were going by.

"There is a small group of physicists and philosophers that think this idea is worth pursuing," Leifer toldLisa Zyga atPhys.org.

By reformulating a few basic assumptions, the researchers developed a model based on Bell's theorem where space was swapped for time. By their reckoning, unless we can show why time must always tick forward, we run into some contradictions.

Needless to say, the idea of retrocausality is a fringe idea.

"There is not, to my knowledge, a generally agreed upon interpretation of quantum theory that recovers the whole theory and exploits this idea. It is more of an idea for an interpretation at the moment, so I think that other physicists are rightly sceptical, and the onus is on us to flesh out the idea."

Now keep in mind, this kind of backwards time travel isn't the sort that would allow you to go back in time and consciously change the present, sorry to say. Future scientists also won't be able to encode lottery numbers into entangled electrons and mail them back to their younger selves.

In any case, the idea of anything trickling backwards in time might not be an appealing one, but let's face it, when it comes to phenomena like entanglement, nearly any explanation is going to sound downright insane.

This research was published in Proceedings of The Royal Society A.

See the original post here:

This quantum theory predicts that the future might be influencing the ... - ScienceAlert

New theoretical evidence may show an influence on time, proving that the field of quantum physics can be an incredibly tricky place.

Quantum physics can be confusing to the point of a headache.

To be fair, there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to quantum physics. Weve been studying it since the days of Einstein, and by all accounts, we have barely scratched the surface.

One debate in the field is centered around an idea called retrocausality, something many physicists remain skeptical of. You cant blame them, Einstein himself described the property as spooky. If we learned anything from Scooby Doo, its that spooky things can be a lot of trouble.

Recently, the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society published a paper by physicists Matthew S. Leifer and Matthew F. Pusey regarding retrocausality. The paper gives some theoretical support for retrocausal elements of quantum theory, something which might pique the interest of physicists everywhere.

So, lets clear up the concept of retrocausality because it can get pretty confusing.

An influence cant go back in time due to thermodynamic reasons, but that doesnt mean that the past cant be influenced. With retrocausality, a measurement made in the present can influence the properties of a particle in the past.

Previously, retrocausality didnt have a lot of theoretical support. For most, the famous Bell tests didnt deal in retrocausal influences. For Leifer and Pusey, however, the Bell tests can be interpreted as evidence for retrocausality.

The Bell tests were meant to show the existence of entanglement. It showed that there were unknown properties that allowed for action-at-a-distance. With Leifer and Puseys research, there is a new theory thrown into the hat.

Just allow for the possibility that the measurement of one particle can retrocausally influence another, and you dont need action-at-a-distance. You just need retrocausality.

Mind you, were talking about a field where much is still unknown, so Leifer and Pusey are only convinced that these are potential interpretations rather than facts. That being said, if this research helps us fill in some of the unknowns behind quantum physics, then it is a step in the right direction.

If retrocausality is an element of quantum physics, it will ripple through the entire foundation of quantum theory.

But that might be a good thing because we dont completely understand quantum theory. Retrocausality wont show us the entire picture, but it is one more puzzle piece that we didnt have before.

The research seems to imply that different interpretations of quantum physics are in order. According to Leifer, This might be needed to construct the correct theory of quantum gravity, or even to resolve some issues in high-energy physics given that the unification of the other three forces is still up in the air in the light of LHC results.

So far, there is no word on any actual experimentation to test retrocausality. Instead, it might be more valuable to apply it existing models within quantum physics. That way we can see if it helps to explain those models in theory.

And there is plenty of data for that task. With the amount of information we are getting from the large hadron collider over at CERN, researchers may have all the data they need.

So, it isnt quite the flux capacitor we were all hoping for, but the edge of quantum physics is still showing us some mind-bending stuff. If you want more details, click here.

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Quantum Physics Provide Evidence that the Future Influences the Past - Edgy Labs (blog)

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When Kelly Barrales-Saylor was a new mom, she got lots of childrens books aspresents.

Most were simple books about shapes, colors,letters.

I realized there wasnt really any science available nothing about math, nothing about science, she said. And my editorial brain lit up and said there must be a need forthis.

Barrales-Saylor is an editor at Sourcebooks. She did some research and found Chris Ferrie, who had self-published some math and science books for kids online. Ferrie, a physicist and mathematician at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, first created the books for his ownchildren.

When reading to his kids, Ferrie noticed that most books used animals to introduce new words. In todays world, that just didnt make sense tohim.

Were not surrounded by animals anymore, Ferrie said. Were surrounded bytechnology.

Barrales-Saylor worked with Ferrie to design a series of books aimed at toddlers and babies. What they came up with were sturdy, board books with bright colors and simple shapes introducing subjects like Rocket Science, Quantum Physics and GeneralRelativity.

Jeff Winokur, an early education and elementary science instructor at Wheelock College, argues books like these ought to go hand-in-hand with real-worldexperience.

I learned to dislike science by reading about it, using textbooks where I had no way in, Winokur said. Its important to give kids physical experiences and a chance to talk aboutthem.

When theyre little, that could mean doing experiments or asking questions like What happens when I roll this ball down ahill?

Amber Faust of Tennessee is doing justthat.

She reads the Baby University series with her sons, Oliver, 2, and Milo, 1. Then, they act itout.

We make funny noises and run through the house, Faust said. The two-year-old is a crazy active baby, so anything we read we have to actout.

Kristy vanMarle has been researching childrens intuitive physics at the University ofMissouri.

Infants come into the world equipped with expectations that accord very closely to what we consider Newtonian physics, she said. Of course, they cant talk about it, or explain it, but the knowledge in the form of expectations seems to be inplace.

For older children, the concepts carry greatermeaning.

Six-year-old Henry and two-and-a-half-year-old Sylvie listen to their mother, Rosie Nathanson read Ferriess Rocket Science for Babies.

This a ball. This ball is moving. Air cant go throughit.

Cause its aerodynamic, Henry said.

Henry had learned about flight in school. He was excited to hear words heunderstood.

But while Henry plunged through the books, his little sister grew restless.

I need water, Sylvie said.

At two-and-a-half, Sylvie is having a hard time grasping theconcepts.

VanMarle said, at those ages, children would do better to engage with physical objects instead of static pictures on apage.

The books are really just an introduction to scientific and mathematical words, Barrales-Saylorsaid.

We know toddlers arent going to pick up the exact high level concepts were explaining, Barrales-Saylor said. Were trying to introduce the small seeds of information meant for them to remember yearslater.

Nathanson thinks her daughter might be more interested in the books a year from now. Henry, meanwhile, gives the books a qualified endorsement.

I like it half and I didnt like it half, Henry said. The half he didnt like: its for babies.

Read more:

Physics For Toddlers . News | OPB - OPB News

July 4, 2017 by Lea Kivivali Credit: Swinburne University of Technology

By gently prodding a swirling cloud of supercooled lithium atoms with a pair of lasers, and observing the atoms' response, researchers at Swinburne have developed a new way to probe the properties of quantum materials.

Quantum materialsa family that includes superfluids, superconductors, exotic magnets, ultracold atoms and recently-discovered 'topological insulators'display on a large scale some of the remarkable quantum effects usually associated with microscopic and subatomic particles.

But, while quantum mechanics explains the behaviour of microscopic particles, applying quantum theory to larger systems is far more challenging.

"While the potential of quantum materials, such as superconductors, is undeniable, we need to fully grasp the underlying quantum physics at play in these systems to establish their true capabilities," says Chris Vale, an Associate Professor at the Centre for Quantum and Optical Science, who led the research. "That's a big part of the motivation for what we do."

Associate Professor Vale and his colleagues, including Sascha Hoinka and Paul Dyke, also at Swinburne, developed a new way to explore the behaviour of this family of materials. They detected when a 'Fermi gas' of lithium atoms, a simple quantum material, entered a quantum 'superfluid' state.

New system checks theories against experiment

Their system allows theories of superconductivity and related quantum effects to be precisely checked against experiment, to see whether the theories are accurate and how they could be refined.

The researchers' advance was based on the fact that quantum materials' special properties emerge when their constituent particles enter a synchronised state. The zero-resistance flow of electrons through superconductors, for example, emerges when electrons can team up to form 'Cooper pairs'.

The team's sophisticated experimental set-up allowed this co-ordinated quantum behaviour to be detected. By fine-tuning the interaction of their lasers with the Fermi gas, Associate Professor Vale and his colleagues were for the first time able to detect the elusive, low energy Goldstone mode, an excitation that only appears in systems that have entered a synchronised quantum state.

"Because our experiment provides a well-controlled environment and the appearance of the Goldstone mode is very clear, our measurements provide a benchmark that quantum theories can be tested against before they're applied to more complex systems like superconductors," Associate Professor Vale says.

"By developing methods to understand large systems that behave quantum mechanically, we're building the knowledge base that will underpin future quantum-enabled technologies."

The team's research has been published in the online journal Nature Physics.

Explore further: Frequency modulation accelerates the research of quantum technologies

More information: Sascha Hoinka et al. Goldstone mode and pair-breaking excitations in atomic Fermi superfluids, Nature Physics (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nphys4187

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Solitary waves known as solitons appear in many forms. Perhaps the most recognizable is the tsunami, which forms following a disruption on the ocean floor and can travel, unabated, at high speeds for hundreds of miles.

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Supercool breakthrough brings new quantum benchmark - Phys.org - Phys.Org

Posted July 06, 2017 17:20:11

At what age should your kids start learning about science?

For Dr Chris Ferrie, a senior lecturer in quantum physics at the University of Technology, Sydney, no child is too young.

Dr Ferrie bills himself as a scientist by day and father by night, who occasionally moonlights as a children's book author.

He has written multiple children's books on subjects ranging from relativity to rocket science after noticing there were not many science books for kids in bookstores.

In 2015, Dr Ferrie reached internet fame when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was pictured reading one of his books, Quantum Physics for Babies, to his young daughter.

With his new book, Goodnight Lab a playful rewriting of children's classic Goodnight Moon he hopes to spark an early interest in science and technology.

"The point of books is to make sure that that variety is out there so that every possible topic that someone might be interested in is represented," Dr Ferrie said.

The father of four does not accept that big words like voltmeter and liquid nitrogen should be banished from books for children.

"I doubt any of them are ever going to see an elephant and that has many syllables, yet they all seem to know what an elephant is and what it sounds like and what it does.

"They'll certainly see scientific instruments. Many of them will miniaturised and inside of a phone, but they're there."

Despite all the attention, Dr Ferrie cannot see himself giving away his career as a researcher any time soon.

"I enjoy my research, it's my real passion. If I was employed as a book author, I think I would stop writing books," he said.

"I do it because it's sort of a hobby and if it became my livelihood, then it wouldn't be as exciting as it is now."

Sunita Oberholzer and her three young boys are fans of Dr Ferrie's work.

"The youngest really loves maths and they love science," Ms Oberholzer said.

"We went to Questacon in Canberra, which they didn't want to leave they could have spent the whole day there.

"They definitely enjoy it even if they don't know it's science that they're looking at."

Ms Oberholzer said she cannot see any reason why children should not be exposed to scientific concepts from a young age.

"I mean, you talk about whether things are heavy or light, or things floating in the bath," she said.

"Uou can do that when they're babies really."

Even if children do not quite understand the science, many like 10-year-old Finn Warner simply enjoy engaging in it.

"Goodnight liquid nitrogen, goodnight compressed air, goodnight scientists everywhere," he said, reading from the book.

"I don't know all of [the words], I don't know what spectrometer means. It's quite funny."

Topics: science, children, science-and-technology, human-interest, sydney-2000, australia

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How young is too young to talk to kids about science? Never, says one quantum physicist - ABC Local