Monthly Archives: April 2021

Professor of Particle Physics, University of Liverpool I was head of Particle Physics at Liverpool, from 2011-2019. My aim was to support the group to tackle the most fundamental of problems in Physics.

The group has experiments at CERN, Fermilab and in Tokai (Japan) as well as SNOlab in Canada. We work at the energy frontier (ATLAS) and precision frontiers (LHCb) at CERN and g-2 (FNAL). We have a program understanding the properties of neutrinos at T2K and HK (Japan), Proto-Dune and DUNE. The group has played in important role in terrestrial measurements of Dark Energy/Matter and Gravitational Waves using Quantum Technologies and has joined the MAGIS experiment at FNAL and LZ experiment for DM (dark matter). All these experiments should lead us to a better understanding of the nature of matter (luminous and dark), to understand the predominance of matter over anti-matter, to understand the properties of neutrinos, and to make first measurements of DE. I initiated Liverpool's muon program which now includes mu2e and mu3e as experiments.

I strongly believe that the group must be involved closely with both theoretical developments and enabling technologies and am actively involved in building relationships between our engineering departments and CERN and other international partner laboratories.

From 1997-2011 my LHCb group to build the VELO detectors which is one of the highest precision detectors at the LHC and has enabled the LHCb experiment to make critical measurements of the properties of B meson days. Previously I was a member of the DELPHI group where I made precision measurements of B-lifetimes and WW couplings.

I am currently working on the LHCb upgrade due to take data early 2022. I am also working on the g-2 experiment at FNAL, where Liverpool built the tracking detectors, and hopes is studying the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and its electric dipole moment (EDM). I am also trying to build a small lab experiment to attempt to look for evidence of the foam like nature of space and time at the Planck scale.

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Professor of Particle Physics, University of Liverpool - Singularity Hub

INTERNET

SpaceX a Handful of Starlink Launches Away From Blanketing Earth in BroadbandEric Mack | CNETIn the next few months, SpaceX could have more than 1,600 of itsStarlink satellitesin low-Earth orbit, and that may be enough for thenascent broadband service to reach just about anywhere in the world. After about 28 launches, well have continuous coverage throughout the globe, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Tuesday during an online panel discussion for the Satellite 2021 LEO Digital Forum.

The Big Advance in Elon Musks Pong-Playing Monkey Is What You Cant SeeJohn Timmer | Ars TechnicaOn Thursday, one of Elon Musks companies, Neuralink,posted a videoshowing a monkey playing Pong using nothing but a brain implant connected wirelessly with the computer hosting the game. While its a fantastic display of the technology, most of the individual pieces of this feat have been done beforein some cases, over a decade before. But Neuralink has managed to take two important steps: miniaturizing the device and getting it to communicate wirelessly.

A Tiny Particles Wobble Could Upend the Known Laws of PhysicsDennis Overbye | The New York TimesEvidence is mounting that a tiny subatomic particle called a muon is disobeying the laws of physics as we thought we knew them, scientists announced on Wednesday. The best explanation, physicists say, is that the muon is being influenced by forms of matter and energy that are not yet known to science, but which may nevertheless affect the nature and evolution of the universe.

SpaceX Landed a Rocket on a Boat Five Years AgoIt Changed EverythingEric Berger | Ars TechnicaOcean-based landings have proven a remarkably enabling technology. Of SpaceXs 10 orbital rocket launches in 2021, every one of them rode to orbit on a previously flown first stage. Some returned to space within four weeks of a previous launch. By landing its first Falcon 9 rocket at sea, SpaceX began a revolution in launch. No longer is reusing rockets a noveltyits considered an essential part of the business.

NFTs Werent Supposed to End Like ThisAnil Dash | The AtlanticThe idea behind NFTs was, and is, profound. Technologyshould be enabling artists to exercise control over their work, to more easily sell it, to more strongly protect against others appropriating it without permission. But nothing went the way it was supposed to. Our dream of empowering artists hasnt yet come true, but it has yielded a lot of commercially exploitable hype.

The Long Lost Lord of the Rings Adaptation From Soviet Russia Is a Glorious Fever DreamJames Vincent | The VergeRather than the epic Hollywood fantasy captured so well by Peter Jackson, this adaptation feels like a weird fairy tale told by a pipe-smoking madman in the woods. In other words: it captures a completely legitimate aspect ofThe Lord of the Rings, just not one were necessarily used to.

Human Actors Bring an AI-Written Script to LifeMatthew Gault | MotherboardThe results are a fascinating mix of human creativity and the limits of machine learning. The most striking film is the most recent,Date Night, which begins with a nightmarish date between a young couple. It involves hypnotism, screaming, and wine. At the end, the camera pulls back and the script gets meta.

How to Survive a Killer AsteroidCody Cassidy | WiredThe day the Chicxulub asteroid slammed into what is now a small town on Mexicos Yucatn peninsula that bears its name is the most consequential moment in the history of life on our planet. Could you survive it? Maybe. If you make camp on the right continent, in the right environment, and you seek out the right kind of shelter, at the right altitudes, at the right times, you might stand a chance, says Charles Bardeen

Genesis Broke a World Record for Most Drones in the SkyJ. Fingas | EngadgetThis is a publicity stunt, of course, and it wont be surprising if another company finds a way to one-up Genesis before long. It shows how much drone shows have advanced in just a few years, though, and could easily fuel competition among companies determined to put on robotic extravaganzas.

Image Credit:Meritt Thomas / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 10) - Singularity Hub

Genealogy services have grown in popularity in recent years. Ancestry.com and 23andMe let users analyze their DNA to show their ethnic makeup, connect with relatives they didnt know they had, create online family trees, and search databases for information about ancestors. Now a third service, called MyHeritage, has added a particularly unique feature to this list: bringing photos of your deceased relatives alive by adding animations like blinking, nodding, head-bopping, and a number of other gestures.

The feature is called Deep Nostalgia, and it was launched in late February of this year. It initially let users animate one person in a photo for a few seconds, in a way that made it seem like you could see their face right before or after the photo was takensort of like the iPhones live photos feature. Photo subjects would move their heads, blink, or smile in a way that looked pretty darn realistic. Far from being weirded out, MyHeritage users seemed to embrace the feature wholeheartedly; the site claims that in just five weeks, people created over 72 million photo animations.

This week MyHeritage added 10 new drivers, or videos of actions you can make the pictures do, to the Deep Nostalgia service; people in photos can now be made to blow a kiss, nod approval, and bop their heads in a dance-y way, to name just a few.

Deep Nostalgia uses a deep learning algorithm created by a company called D-ID, short for de-identification. The software analyzes a photo to determine which way the subject is looking and which direction their head is facing. Then it finds a compatible drivera video of a face doing whatever the person in the photo will end up doingto guide how the photo is animated.

You can use Deep Nostalgia for free to animate up to five photos if you have a MyHeritage account. The sites blog says its users were moved to tears to see their ancestors look around and smile at them. Though its on a whole different level, this brings to mind the chatbots or digital avatars of deceased people that can be created using their old texts, emails, and recorded conversations.

We can call these things bizarre, creepy, or ethically questionable, as theyre using technology to play to peoples emotions with products that, at the end of the day, arent real. But if they make people feel good or help ease the loss of a loved one, perhaps theyre not all bad (the chatbot is up for debate, IMO). Many MyHeritage users tweeted their photo animations and expressed how moved they were by them.

The animated photos dont quite qualify as deepfakes. Deepfakes typically map someones facial expressions (e.g., an actor) onto someone else to make it seem like the person said or did something they did not in fact say or do. In this case, theres no actor and no intention to deceive. But Deep Nostalgia shows how this sort of technology is slowly creeping into unexpected places; whod have thought youd ever be able to make a photo of your great-grandmother wink at you?

Some uses of the technology, like this one, will be fun and harmless. While we enjoy these, we must also be cautious of applications that are meant to deceive, and keep a close eye on whether even the harmless uses are emotionally healthy for us.

In the meantime, why limit the photo animations to deceased relatives? They seem like the perfect way to spice up a school picture, add some flare to a birthday or anniversary card, or just make someone laugh.

Image Credit: MyHeritage

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'Deep Nostalgia' Uses AI to Make Old Photos of Your Relatives Wink, Nod, Dance, and More - Singularity Hub

Seven years ago, a huge magnet was transported over 3,200 miles (5,150km) across land and sea, in the hope of studying a subatomic particle called a muon.

Muons are closely related to electrons, which orbit every atom and form the building blocks of matter. The electron and muon both have properties precisely predicted by our current best scientific theory describing the subatomic quantum world, the standard model of particle physics.

A whole generation of scientists have dedicated themselves to measuring these properties in exquisite detail. In 2001, an experiment hinted that one property of the muon was not exactly as the standard model predicted, but new studies were needed to confirm. Physicists moved part of the experiment to a new accelerator, at Fermilab, and started taking more data.

A new measurement has now confirmed the initial result. This means new particles or forces may exist that arent accounted for in the standard model. If this is the case, the laws of physics will have to be revised and no one knows where that may lead.

This latest result comes from an international collaboration, of which we are both a part. Our team has been using particle accelerators to measure a property called the magnetic moment of the muon.

Each muon behaves like a tiny bar magnet when exposed to a magnetic field, an effect called the magnetic moment. Muons also have an intrinsic property called spin, and the relation between the spin and the magnetic moment of the muon is known as the g-factor. The g of the electron and muon is predicted to be two, so g minus two (g-2) should be measured to be zero. This is whats were testing at Fermilab.

For these tests, scientists have used accelerators, the same kind of technology CERN uses at the LHC. The Fermilab accelerator produces muons in very large quantities and measures, very precisely, how they interact with a magnetic field.

The muons behavior is influenced by virtual particles that pop in and out of existence from the vacuum. These exist fleetingly, but for long enough to affect how the muon interacts with the magnetic field and change the measured magnetic moment, albeit by a tiny amount.

The standard model predicts very precisely, to better than one part in a million, what this effect is. As long as we know what particles are bubbling in and out of the vacuum, experiment and theory should match. But, if experiment and theory dont match, our understanding of the soup of virtual particles may be incomplete.

The possibility of new particles existing is not idle speculation. Such particles might help in explaining several of the big problems in physics. Why, for example, does the universe have so much dark mattercausing the galaxies to rotate faster than wed expectand why has nearly all the anti-matter created in the Big Bang disappeared?

The problem to date has been that nobody has seen any of these proposed new particles. It was hoped the LHC at CERN would produce them in collisions between high energy protons, but theyve not yet been observed.

The new measurement used the same technique as an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, at the beginning of the century, which itself followed a series of measurements at CERN.

The Brookhaven experiment measured a discrepancy with the standard model that had a 1 in 5,000 chance of being a statistical fluke. This is approximately the same probability as throwing a coin 12 times in a row, all heads up.

This was tantalizing, but way below the threshold for discovery, which is generally required to be better than one in 1.7 millionor 21 coin throws in a row. To determine whether new physics were in play, scientists would have to increase the sensitivity of the experiment by a factor of four.

To make the improved measurement, the magnet at the heart of the experiment had to be moved in 2013 3,200 miles from Long Island along sea and road, to Fermilab, outside Chicago, whose accelerators could produce a copious source of muons.

Once in place, a new experiment was built around the magnet with state of the art detectors and equipment. The muon g-2 experiment began taking data in 2017, with a collaboration of veterans from the Brookhaven experiment and a new generation of physicists.

The new results, from the first year of data at Fermilab, are in line with the measurement from the Brookhaven experiment. Combining results reinforces the case for a disagreement between experimental measurement and the standard model. The chances now lie at about one in 40,000 of the discrepancy being a flukestill shy of the gold standard discovery threshold.

Intriguingly, a recent observation by the LHCb experiment at CERN also found possible deviations from the standard model. Whats exciting is that this also refers to the properties of muons. This time its a difference in how muons and electrons are produced from heavier particles. The two rates are expected to be the same in the standard model, but the experimental measurement found them to be different.

Taken together, the LHCb and Fermilab results strengthen the case that weve observed the first evidence of the standard model prediction failing, and that there are new particles or forces in nature out there to be discovered.

For the ultimate confirmation, this needs more data both from the Fermilab muon experiment and from CERNs LHCb experiment. Results will be forthcoming in the next few years. Fermilab already has four times more data than was used in this recent result, currently being analyzed, CERN has started taking more data and a new generation of muon experiments is being built. This is a thrilling era for physics.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Fermilab/Reidar Hahn

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Scientists Found Hints of New Particles or Forces of Nature, and It Could Change Physics - Singularity Hub

This may be the era of the home run. But in one way roster construction five American League teams are summoning the ghosts of the MLB dead ball era.

The Orioles, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Mariners, and Rangers all entered play Friday carrying just a dozen position players on their 26-man roster. Subtracting 14-man pitching staffs plus their regulars and their DH, that leaves the managers of those teams with just three every-day substitutes.

Thats the kind of roster constriction big league managers havent faced since the days when clubs traveled by rail, only washed woolen uniforms twice a week, and drew crowds of a few thousand to wooden stadiums.

Just one week into the season, teams are already beginning to see the kinds of problems those roster limitations can create.

Toronto Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo faced that circumstance for the first but likely not the last time Thursday in the teams home opener in Dunedin. Facing the Los Angeles Angels, Montoyo began the game with only outfielder Jonathan Davis, backup catcher Alejandro Kirk and DH Rowdy Tellez available to him.

Virtually from the outset of what developed into a tight 5-5 battle, the limited options appeared to influence Montoyos decisions. After Joe Panik led off the seventh inning with a double, Montoyo held off pinch hitting for his ninth hitter catcher Danny Jansen who is hitting .143 not wanting to burn his limited options too quickly. Jansen grounded out, Panik did not advance and the Jays did not push across the lead run.

Two innings later, the game still tied, Montoyo made his move. With none on and two out, he sent Tellez up to pinch hit for Jansen in the hope of averting extra innings. Then when Tellez walked, he burned Davis as a pinch runner. That move backfired when Angels pitcher Steve Cishek picked Davis off to send the game into extra innings.

After the Angels failed to score, Montoyo used his final option, pinch running Kirk for Davis at second base. But the Jays could not move Kirk, sending the game to an 11th inning with Montoyo out of substitutes.

The Angels scored twice in the 11th and won the game 7-5.

All five of the teams operating with just three every-day subs are applying essentially the same formula: One extra catcher, one utility infielder and a fourth outfielder. They are all carrying 14 pitchers, one more than the 13 being carried by most teams.

The spare infielder can almost always play multiple positions, and the spare outfielder sometimes packs a first basemans glove.

The Los Angeles Angels are also carrying 14 pitchers, but of course one of them is Shohei Ohtani, who theoretically could play in the outfield. That singularity gives Angels manager Joe Maddon four available bodies, typically catcher Kurt Suzuki, infielder Jose Rojas, outfielder Juan Lagares, and either Ohtani or Albert Pujols, whichever isnt in that days lineup.

One has to go back nearly 90 years to find a successful team that carried that few bench regulars. During his teams 1929 World Championship run, Athletics manager (and team owner) Connie Mack often traveled with as few as 18 players, 11 regulars and seven pitchers.

That year only nine non-pitchers catcher Mickey Cochrane, first baseman Jimmie Foxx, second baseman Max Bishop, shortstop Joe Boley, third baseman Sammy Hale, outfielders Al Simmons, Bing Miller, and Mule Haas, and utility man Jimmy Dykes got as many as 90 plate appearances during the 154-game regular season. In that years World Series which Macks team won in five games he used just 11 regulars and six pitchers.

But to find a large group of teams as routinely personnel-strapped as those five AL teams are at present, it is necessary to go back to the first decade of the 20th Century. In 1902, only 186 non-pitchers on the 16 existing teams thats an average of about 11.6 per team got as many as 100 plate appearances.

While MLB plate appearances is an imperfect method of estimating normal roster size, its the best we have and it suggests that several current managers are dealing with the kinds of limited in-game personnel options that havent confounded their peers in more than a century.

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MLB roster moves: The vanishing bench player - Call to the Pen

Though we dont quite have the technology to make three-dimensional holograms a reality yet, companies like PORTL and Microsoft are working on it. But a third company decided to forego the traditional approach and came up with a whole new way to create 3D shapes made of light.

LED Pulse uses thousands of strings of LED lights to make volumetric displays that, while not technically holograms, look a lot like them. The latest iteration of their technology is called Dragon O, and it can be as big as a room and display any sort of content its creators can dream up.

Writing in Digital Trends, Luke Dormehl likens the setup to 100 beaded string curtains where every bead is a tiny light, with dozens of curtains positioned one in front of the other. The company calls the individual lights LED neurons, and compares their function to that of neurons in the human brain; both receive information through electrical impulses, and while capable of functioning independently, can only create an idea (or, in this case, an image) when working cohesively.

Our brain is a machine that constructs reality, selects and filters the necessary information, the companys website says. Similarly, the light displays they create can be configured to produce any sort of visual they choose, including moving images.

While LED neurons may be an interesting approximation, the lights can also be called voxels. You can think of a voxel as the 3D version of a pixel; if a pixel is a square or a point on a flat, two-dimensional image on a screen, a voxel is a point on a grid in three-dimensional space. Put in a way thats easier to picture, its a cube inside a 3D model. The layered setup of voxels means LED Pulses installations are truly three-dimensional; any different angle you view them from, youll see something different, same as viewing an object or a person in real life.

If you have a volumetric human made out of light, and you walk around the back, you will see their back. If you go to the left, you will see the left arm. Its all exactly how it would be in the real world, said LED Pulses founder, Danilo Grande. Every time we create an exhibition, we invite people to walk around, not to stay in one place only.

The company measures its light displays in cuboids (like cubes, except rectangular instead of square-shaped, meaning not all sides are the same length). Each cuboid has a volume of three cubic meters and contains 24,000 voxels. Cuboids can be put together to make larger displays, with the largest thus far consisting of 6 cuboids and a corresponding 144,000 voxels.

Dragon O has been used in a Lancome perfume launch, a game called Virus Killer, a nightclub in Berlin, and events in Shenzhen, Barcelona, and Munich.

The Munich event was an anniversary party for a German company called BrainLab, which makes hardware and software to enhance medical data collection and presentation. Dragon O created 3D images of the brain, exploring potential applications of its technology in scientific or medical fields.

Though Dragon O is, at the moment, mostly just an artistic experience, LED Pulse is optimistic about finding practical applications for its technology, including the same thing PORTL and Microsoft are working on: teleporting real-time 3D images of people to different locations to meet and collaborate with others.

In the meantime, as the world starts to open up again, we hope to see Dragon O lighting up the night (or day) at events and exhibitions around the world.

Image Credit: LED Pulse

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This Huge Hologram-Like 3D Display Is Made of Thousands of Tiny LED Lights - Singularity Hub

There are many methods that can be used to break people out of their comfort zones. What is not as common, are methods that achieve this while training teams and pulling people out of isolation. Techpreneur Marshall Moser has achieved all of the above thanks to virtual reality (VR).

After graduating from the University of Georgia in 2015 with a triple major in biology, psychology, and economics, followed by a masters degree in public health administration, Marshall put his impressive education to use in the tech sector. He participated in a program called Singularity Universitya joint venture between NASA and Googlewhere he build VR environments triggered by variations in heart rates. Marshall then tested this data to see if it could be used in adaptable VR adventure environments.

Fueled by this virtual innovation and his love for action sports, Marshall founded Vestigo. Though a young company, it boasts clients such as CNN, Microsoft, and Home Depot. Vestigo builds VR environments for intense and unconventional corporate leadership training. These environments mimic the worlds most challenging and inspiring sports adventures. Marshall has created these programs to help people overcome the innate human need for comfort and stability. In a business sense, this VR training results in greater team adaptability and innovation.

This falls in line with Marshalls deep desire to give back to his community. He was the VP of the Student Government Association at UGA and a guide for the colleges outdoor recreation program. He helps students step outside their comfort zones and overcome their limits through outdoor activities. Marshall, an avid adventure-sports athlete himself, maintains a mindset of peak performance and innovation through these sports. With Vestigo and the dedication to his alma mater, Marshall has turned his passions and mentality into a sought-after business service.

These VR adventures are also immensely helpful for helping people overcome isolation created by the COVID-19 pandemic. They can paraglide, snowboard, scuba dive, or explore caves without leaving their homes. As for corporate team training, Marshall has created environments where coworkers build trust and powerful relationships through walking a plank high above the ground and working together to detonate a virtual time bomb to hone communication skills when time is of the essence.

This permits socially distanced learning with not only excellent results, but the nature of the instruction makes what could be a mundane activity new, exciting, and memorable. The VR component tricks a persons mind into believing they are in an unknown and potentially uncomfortable situation, thus removing that person from their comfort zone. Obstacles can be treated as opportunities, and the element of the unknown requires innovative thinking. Together, these activities can increase performance and adaptability, two very desirable characteristics for almost any setting.

As for the reality of Vestigos VR experiences, participants are fully immersed thanks to small details that touch on all five senses. Marshall is currently developing two new environments, including a crevasse crossing on Mount Everest. If that doesnt help people overcome their desire for stability and comfort, the brilliant minds at Vertigo are up to the challenge of creating something that will.

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I want to help people overcome the biological desire for stability and co - The Jerusalem Post