Category Archives: Quantum Physics

The origin of the Universe the beginning of everything is one question where scientific and religious narratives sometimes get blurred. This is not because they approach the problem in the same way; clearly they do not. It is because the question being asked of both is the same. We want to know how everything came to be. We want to know, because otherwise our story would be incomplete. We are creations of this Universe, and the story of the Universe is fundamentally our story, too.

There is no question that modern cosmology and astronomy have produced a remarkable narrative of the Universes early history.But can science really provide an answer?

Like you and me, the Universe has a birthday. We know that it started 13.8 billion years ago, and we can describe with confidence how the young Universe evolved starting from a hundredth of a second after the Big Bang, although there are a few important gaps in the history we have yet to fill.

That knowledge is a phenomenal achievement. But the question that lingers is how close to the source science can get.

Things quickly get complicated if we persist with the birthday analogy. You and I have parents. Our parents also have parents, and so on. We can trace this continuity back to the first living entity, what we call our last common ancestor probably a bacterium that lived over 3 billion years ago.

Once we find that ancestor, we face another tough question: How did this first living entity come to be if there was nothing alive to birth it? The only acceptable scientific explanation is that life must have come from nonlife. It arose at least 3.5 billion years ago from the increased complexity of chemical reactions among the biomolecules present in primordial Earth.

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What about the Universe? How did it come to be if there was nothing before?

If the origin of life is mysterious, the origin of the Universe is infinitely more so. After all, the Universe, by definition, includes all there is. How can everything come from nothing?

Sciences job is to develop explanations without recourse to divine intervention. We use the laws of Nature as our blueprint. This limitation makes it a huge conceptual challenge for science to describe the origin of the Universe. This problem is known in philosophy as the First Cause. If the Universe emerged by itself, it was caused by an uncaused cause. It kicked into existence without a source to precede it. Science operates within clear conceptual boundaries. To explain the origin of everything, science would need to explain itself. And to do this, we would need a new mode of scientific explanation.

Current descriptions of the origin of the Universe rest on the two pillars of 20th century physics. The first pillar is general relativity Einsteins theory that gravity is due to the curvature of space caused by the presence of mass. The second pillar is quantum physics, which describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles. Combining the two is quite reasonable, given that in its infancy the whole Universe was small enough for quantum effects to be important. Current models of the origin of the Universe from string theory to loop quantum gravity to quantum cosmology to a Universe that bounces between expansion and contraction use the bizarre effects described by quantum physics to explain what seems to be unexplainable. The issue is to what extent they can truly explain the First Cause.

In the same way that a radioactive nucleus spontaneously decays, the entire cosmos could have emerged from a random energy fluctuation a bubble of space that appeared from nothing, the quantity physicists usually call the vacuum.

The interesting thing is that this bubble could have been a fluctuation of zero energy, due to a clever compensation between matters positive energy and gravitys negative energy. This is why many physicists writing for general audiences confidently state that the Universe came from nothing the quantum vacuum is that nothing and proudly declare that the case is closed. Unfortunately, things are not so simple.

This so-called nothing, the physicists quantum vacuum, is far from the metaphysical notion of complete emptiness. In fact, the vacuum is an entity filled with activity, where particles emerge and disappear like bubbles in a boiling cauldron. To define the vacuum, we need to start from many fundamental concepts, such as space, time, energy conservation, and gravitational and matter fields. The models we construct rely on natural laws that have only been tested for situations far removed from the extreme environment of the primordial Universe.

The quantum vacuum is already a structure of enormous complexity. To use it as a starting point is to begin the story of the Universe on the second page of the book.

Our attempts to understand how the Universe began require us to extrapolate what we know to energies 15 orders of magnitude above what we can test (thats a thousand trillion times). We hope that things will make sense, and currently we cannot predict that they wont. However, these predictions about the early Universe are based on what we can measure with our machines, and using current models of high-energy physics. Those models are also based on what we can measure, and on what we consider reasonable extrapolation. This is fine, and it is the approach we have to take in order to push the boundaries of knowledge into unknown realms. But we should not forget what this theoretical framework rests on and claim that we know for sure how to conceptualize the origin of the Universe. Mentioning the multiverse, stating that it is eternal, and concluding that our Universe is a bubble sprouting from it, does not bring us any closer to a real answer.

It does not seem to me that science as it is formulated now can answer the question of the origin of the Universe. What it can do is furnish models that describe possible scenarios. These models are excellent tools that we can use to push the boundaries of knowledge to earlier and earlier times, in the hope that observations and data will guide us further.

However, this is very different from explaining the origin of life through complex chemistry. To explain the origin of everything, we need a science capable of explaining itself and the origin of its laws. We need a metatheory that explains the origin of theories. A multiverse is not a way out. We still require the conceptual apparatus of space, time, and fields to describe it. Nor do we have any idea how the laws of Nature may vary among this multiverses different branches.

The infinite and its opposite, nothingness, are essential tools for mathematics. But they are very dangerous as concepts to describe physical reality. They are labyrinths where it is too easy to get lost, as Jorge Luis Borges reminds us in The Library of Babel.

To identify a conceptual scientific difficulty is often derided as taking a defeatist position. The rhetorical question that follows is, Should we give up then? Of course we should not. Knowledge only advances if we push it forward and take risks doing so. There is no fault in our drive to make sense of a deep mystery through reason and scientific methodology. This is what we do best. What is a fault is to claim that we know much more than we do, and that we have understood things that a moments reflection will tell us we are very far from understanding. There are many questions that call for intellectual humility, and the origin of the Universe is foremost among them.

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Can science explain the beginning of the Universe? - Big Think

Saving energy via environmental conditioning in cars is extremely important. Running the air conditioning or heater is inefficient, and in EVs, it's an even bigger factor in terms of energy loss. It's why automakers are using heat pumps as range extenders on battery-electric vehicles to retain said energy for propulsion. Now, a very cool (literally) bit of quantum physics means a film coating on the dash and roof of a car could work similar to a black hole, and replace air conditioning by using the energy from sunlight to cool things down.

If that sounds impossible then allow me to explain: an Israeli startup called SolCold has managed to find a way to use anti-Stokes fluorescence, which is a phenomenon where (under some very specific circumstances) photons can react with a surface that makes them leave with more energy than they encountered it with. So basically it beams the energy from sunlight back stronger, turning energy loss into a cooling process.

The thing is, anti-Stokes fluorescence isn't very easy to make happen. It's one of those laboratory and space tech things that doesn't really get out into the wild because it requires some very specific conditions. Needless to say, I was pretty amazed to see that SolCold had manufactured a film coating that produces the phenomenon and can be laid onto the roof and dash of a regular old VW hatchback, as the video below shows.

If you don't want to get into the physics bit then here's all you need to know: when the film coating was put on the VW Polo, in a partnership with Volkswagen's Konnekt research, SolCold took the specially coated car and two control vehicles out into the Israeli desert. In full sunlight, the coating achieved a cooling effect between 53.6 and 57.2 Fahrenheit, compared to the uncoated car.

Amazingly, the coating kept the car sitting in direct sun cooler than the car placed in the shade; that's a very real, very rad cooling effect that could transform the need to have the aircon blasting when you're driving down a highway on a hot day. SolCold told me that depending on the size of the car's cabin, it could reduce the temperature inside by as much as 20 to 70 percent.

Alright, for the nerds still with me let's get excited about this. The film coating is already in a prototype phase and SolCold told me that it can head for production later this fall. Of course, SolCold couldn't tell me what they're using to make the film but they did confirm it has no hazardous stuff and no rare earth materials, which is a win in these metal-and-mineral-strapped times.

Developing the film took three years of lab research and this is just the first generation, reaching roughly 100W of cooling per 3.3 square feet. SolCold told me the idea is to make a more effective film as well as develop it into different products, like a yarn that could be used to make fabrics. Imagine getting into your car after it's been sitting in a sunny lot and not immediately burning your butt off.

The really cool bit is that the SolCold film partially does what it does with technology from black holes. A "perfectly black body," in physics terms, is something that absorbs so much of the energy around it that it works a little bit like a tiny black hole. SolCold's film uses three layers of smart filtration, black body emissivity, and the anti-Stokes conversion layer, working on different wavelengths to do what it does.

And no, just because it's talking about fluorescence doesn't mean it's going to reflect stuff back in your eyes. Each photon hits a different nanostructure and then flies off again in any direction, so the energy is diffused without any dazzling.

Volkswagen has already committed to using the SolCold film in a concept car and with production so close this could be something in production cars really soon, though probably in limited quantities at first.

Got some cool edge-of-physics stuff that relates to cars? Definitely tell me about it: hazel@thedrive.com

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Nanotech Coating Inspired by Black Holes Can Keep Cars Cooler Without AC - The Drive

Jacinda Ardern is right to draw attention to the fragile nature of democracy (New Zealand PM addresses Harvard on gun control and democracy, 27 May). In rewriting the ministerial code, Boris Johnson is making a blatant attempt to save his own neck (Boris Johnson accused of changing ministerial code to save his skin, 27 May). How long before he changes other cornerstones of British democracy? Why bother with the scrutiny of select committees? Why go through the difficult and expensive process of election? Why not appoint a prime minister for life?

Johnson is as grubby a man who ever set foot in politics, but the electorate need to look at the equally grubby band of sycophantic enablers who keep him in post. If we stand by as Johnson and his cronies stealthily undermine our democracy, future generations may find themselves negotiating a very different political landscape: one that cannot be easily overthrown.Lynne CopleyHuddersfield, West Yorkshire

The shenanigans in Downing Street, and the apparent absolution of the chief political protagonist after police inquiries (barring one fixed-penalty notice), seemed to me to be reminiscent of Bullingdon Club behaviour. Rich kids get drunk, trash the place, abuse the servants, ignore the laws that are for the little people and are let off by a spineless police service after heavy action by expensive lawyers.

That seemed bad enough, but now it seems that Boris Johnson has decided to use his power to protect himself by changing the ministerial code. So much for our unwritten constitution, British values and the rule of law. I am incandescent with rage at this shamelessness.Anne CarslawGlasgow

So much of the UK constitution, based in convention as much as law, is reliant on the integrity of its government. It follows that a rogue prime minister, lacking integrity and with a servile majority in the Commons, can alter this uncodified constitution to his own advantage, more or less at will. This government has a long track record of changing, and attempting to change, both convention and law, of which the alterations to the ministerial code of conduct are but the most recent example. It is what makes this government so dangerous. It is accentuating the trend to an unaccountable elective dictatorship. We should not be complacent about the weaknesses of our much-lauded democracy.Roy BoffySutton Coldfield, West Midlands

Marina Hyde likens the cabinets Partygate comments to quantum physics (No drive, no spine, very little vision: even science cant explain the creatures clinging on to Johnson, 27 May), but it is equally Marxist. Groucho, when chairing a meeting in the film Duck Soup, does not allow a point to be raised because the current agenda item is old business. He immediately moves on to new business, but disallows the previous point again because thats old business already.Joe LockerSurbiton, London

Marina Hyde could have found a word in another science, biology, to account for Boris Johnson and the weird creatures who cling to him: atavism. An atavism is a characteristic thought to have disappeared from the genome of a species many generations in the past, only to suddenly reappear usually to the detriment of the species as a whole.Pauline CaldwellDerby

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Democracy is in danger as Boris Johnson rips up the rulebook - The Guardian

Patrick Xhonneux (SVP marketing EMEA & APAC for SAS) believes that the best drivers of innovation and transformation are marketing leaders who know their limits and empower others to take the initiative.

The field of physics known as quantum mechanics could be said to come down to knowing what you cant know but doing your best to quantify it anyway. It turns uncertainty about how subatomic particles really behave into probabilities about what theyre likely to do and predictions and experiments that hold true with a high degree of accuracy. For Patrick Xhonneux, SVP Marketing EMEA & APAC at the business analytics software provider SAS, its fuelled a lifelong fascination with a pretty intimidating branch of science. Its also provided a valuable way of thinking about the impact of marketing.

Id love to say its easy to calculate something like customer value with a mathematical formula but just as with quantum physics, you have a lot of uncertainties, he says. At SAS, weve become pretty good at computing the quantitative elements, but part of that is agreeing on how youre going to weight the formula to take account of the intangibles as well.

Xhonneux has identified perceived customer value as one of the crucial ways that marketing contributes to growth. Some, such as demand generation marketing and its contribution to pipeline, are relatively easy to quantify. Others, like brand marketing, have to be differentiated and explained to stakeholders as manifesting themselves in different ways. And some, such as the customer value on which revenues and growth for a software provider depend, are shaped and influenced by marketing but cant be entirely controlled.

The engagement whereby marketing creates and reinforces customer value is so important in todays world, he says. However, that value is influenced by all of the divisions of the company, not just sales, marketing or customer success. You can have the best product, price and sales team, but if your financial processes or shipments are too slow, you are undermining that value.

Its perhaps not surprising that a marketer whose career has included roles as director of strategy and director of government affairs should take a broad, business-wide view of what it takes to build a compelling SAS brand. The role of brand marketing has become more important with digital buyer journeys, but so have aspects like social selling, influencer advocacy, organic communication and search engine optimization, he says. You dont change perceptions in the market overnight, and its not enough to build awareness. You want to make sure that people can find you, that they can recognise you, that theyre very clear about the particular value you represent and that they can relate to it.

For Xhonneux, maintaining that clear sense of value throughout increasingly rapid, increasingly digital buyer journeys has to be a driver of continuous transformation for marketing and the wider business.

Whether were consumers or B2B customers, we want things faster and we want them more personalized, he says. The technology and skills required to engage with customers are rapidly changing. In todays world, excellent organizations dont believe in excellence. They only believe in constant improvement and constant change. Its about managing change for senior leaders and keeping modernization going. On a higher level that means: keeping curiosity within the organization high as it is a key driver for innovation. Being (or staying) curious greatly helps to deal with ever and rapidly changing customer needs and preferences. This is not a mere assumption, but has recently been shown by the Curiosity@Work report from SAS.

If marketing is to play this kind of role as a transformation driver, then marketing departments need to be designed with innovation in mind and led in a way that identifies and responds to new ideas. Xhonneux has developed a shared service and network organization for his EMEA marketing team, that does away with traditional hierarchical structures, embeds marketers alongside sales in different markets, empowers their creativity, and then swiftly scales the best ideas to avoid duplication of effort.

Im very proud of the organization that weve created, he says. It means that people can specialize in different areas of marketing wherever they are in the world. It makes sure that we use the creativity and innovation that comes from people in the field to accelerate transformation while empowering future leaders and better serving our customers. I see it as a real source of competitive advantage, and something that will help us retain and develop talent, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z.

Its also a structure that works best when its led by someone whos comfortable with the limits of what they know. The idea that leaders are supposed to know everything is foolish today because everything is evolving so fast, says Xhonneux. You need to trust and support the creativity, the intelligence and the connection with customers at every level to accelerate the pace of innovation within the company.

As a transformative marketing leader, you may not know exactly where the next valuable idea will appear. Like a good quantum physicist though, you can predict with confidence that its on its way.

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Patrick Xhonneux on marketing uncertainties, brand marketing and the value of curiosity - The Drum

UCLA has received a $5 million pledge from Boeing Co. to support faculty at the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering.

The center, which is jointly operated by the UCLA College Division of Physical Sciences and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, brings together scientists and engineers at the leading edge of quantum information science and technology. Its members have expertise in disciplines spanning physics, materials science, electrical engineering, computer science, chemistry and mathematics.

We are grateful for Boeings significant pledge, which will help drive innovation in quantum science, said Miguel Garca-Garibay, UCLAs dean of physical sciences. This remarkable investment demonstrates confidence that UCLAs renowned faculty and researchers will spur progress in this emerging field.

Harnessing quantum technologies for the aerospace industry is one of the great challenges we face in the coming years, said Greg Hyslop.

UCLA faculty and researchers are already working on exciting advances in quantum science and engineering, Garca-Garibay said. And the divisions new one-year masters program, which begins this fall, will help meet the huge demand for trained professionals in quantum technologies.

Quantum science explores the laws of nature that apply to matter at the very smallest scales, like atoms and subatomic particles. Scientists and engineers believe that controlling quantum systems has vast potential for advancing fields ranging from medicine to national security.

Harnessing quantum technologies for the aerospace industry is one of the great challenges we face in the coming years, said Greg Hyslop, Boeings chief engineer and executive vice president of engineering, test and technology. We are committed to growing this field of study and our relationship with UCLA moves us in that direction.

In addition to its uses in aerospace, examples of quantum theory already in action include superconducting magnets, lasers and MRI scans. The next generation of quantum technology will enable powerful quantum computers, sensors and communication systems and transform clinical trials, defense systems, clean water systems and a wide range of other technologies.

Quantum information science and technology promises society-changing capabilities in everything from medicine to computing and beyond, said Eric Hudson.

Quantum information science and technology promises society-changing capabilities in everything from medicine to computing and beyond, said Eric Hudson, UCLAs David S. Saxon Presidential Professor of Physics and co-director of the center. There is still, however, much work to be done to realize these benefits. This work requires serious partnership between academia and industry, and the Boeing pledge will be an enormous help in both supporting cutting-edge research at UCLA and creating the needed relationships with industry stakeholders.

The Boeing gift complements recent support from the National Science Foundation, including a $25 million award in 2020 to the multi-university NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Present and Future Quantum Computation, which Hudson co-directs. And in 2021, the UCLA center received a five-year, $3 million traineeship grant for doctoral students from the NSF.

Founded in 2018, the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering draws from the talents and creativity of dozens of faculty members and students.

Boeings support is a huge boost for quantum science and engineering at UCLA, said Mark Gyure, executive director of the center and a UCLA adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Enhancing the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering will attract additional world-class faculty in this rapidly growing field and, together with Boeing and other companies in the region, establish Los Angeles and Southern California as a major hub in quantum science and technology.

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$5 million from Boeing will support UCLA quantum science and technology research - UCLA Samueli School of Engineering Newsroom

Rochester Institute of Technology students can soon begin earning a minor in an emerging field that could disrupt the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. RIT students can now take classes toward a minor in quantum information science and technology.

This is a hot field garnering a lot of attention and we are excited to offer students a chance to gain some technical depth in quantum so they can take this knowledge and go the next step with their careers, said Ben Zwickl, associate professor in RITs School of Physics and Astronomy and advisor for the minor. It will provide a pathway for students from any STEM major to take two core courses that introduce them to quantum and some of its applications, as well as strategically pick some upper-level courses within or outside their program.

Quantum physics seeks to understand the rules and effects of manipulating the smallest amount of energy at the subatomic level. Scientists and engineers are attempting to harness the strange, unintuitive properties of quantum particles to make advances in computing, cryptography, communications, and many other applications. Developers of the minor said there is a growing industry that will need employees knowledgeable about quantum physics and its applications.

Were seeing a lot of giant tech companies like IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Google get involved with quantum, but theres also a lot of venture capital going to startup companies in quantum, said Gregory Howland, assistant professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy. Howland will teach one of the minors two required courses this fallPrinciples and Applications of Quantum Technology. You have both sides of it really blossoming now.

The minor, much like the field itself, is highly interdisciplinary in nature, with faculty from the College of Science, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, College of Engineering Technology, and Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences offering classes that count toward the minor. The minor grew out of RITs Future Photon Initiative and funding from the NSFs Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes program.

Associate Professor Sonia Lopez Alarcon from RITs Department of Computer Engineering will teach the other required courseIntroduction to Quantum Computing and Information Sciencestarting this spring. She said taking these courses will provide valuable life skills in addition to lessons about cutting-edge science and technology.

Theyll learn more than just the skills from the courses, theyll learn how to get familiar with a topic thats not in the textbooks officially yet, said Lopez Alarcon. Thats a very important skill for industry. Companies want to know theyre hiring people with the ability to learn about something that is emerging, especially in science and technology because its such a rapidly changing field.

The faculty involved noted that they hope to attract a diverse group of students to enroll in the minor. They said that although the disciplines feeding into quantum have struggled with inclusion related to gender and race and ethnicity, they will work with affinity groups on campus to try to recruit students to the program and ultimately advance the fields inclusivity.

To learn more about the minor, contact Ben Zwickl.

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RIT offers new minor in emerging field of quantum information science and technology | RIT - Rochester Institute of Technology

3 Tech Trends That Are Poised to Transform Business in the Next Decade

By Mike Bechtel and Scott Buchholz

Covid-19, while profoundly disruptive, didnt create new enterprise technology trends so much as catalyze those already underway.

Organizations fast-tracked multi-year technology roadmaps for major investments like artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and cloud, completing them in months or even weeks. The result? Many organizations have arrived at their desired futures ahead of schedule.

But the future is still coming. Todays innovations will be our successors legacy. So executives must be mindful of meaningful advances and capabilities forecast for the decade aheadto ride tailwinds, dodge headwinds, and forestall, or at least minimize, the interest payments due on their eventual technical debt.

But the signal-to-noise ratio in most projections of future tech is abysmal, introducing an anxiety-inducing blizzard of buzzwords every year. Thats why our futures research gets right down to identifying the subset of emerging technology innovations that can create better customer experiences, modernize operations, and drive competitive advantage.

Three classes of emerging tech are poised to transform every aspect of business in the next decade: quantum technologies, exponential intelligence, and ambient computing. These field notes from the future can give business leaders a strategic view of the decade ahead to help them engineer a technology-forward future.

Quantum Technologies

I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once said.

To eschew the physics lesson: quantum-powered solutions exploit the quirky properties of subatomic particles to allow us to solve seemingly intractable problems using physics instead of mathematics. Quantum represents as big a leap over digital as digital was over analog.

As quantum R&D turns the corner from R to D, the race among technology giants, governments, and early-stage startups will quickly find commercial applications.

Three areas to watch:

Quantums appeal to techies is clear, but business leaders must consider its potential to deliver specific competitive advantages against discrete business needs. Its spoils will first accrue to those who figure out in advance which problems they need quantum to solve.

Exponential Intelligence

Traditionally, the most widely adopted business intelligence solutions were descriptive: discovering and surfacing hidden correlations in data sets. The last 15 years saw the rise of predictive analytics: algorithms that could further extrapolate whats likely to happen next.

Most recently, AI-fueled organizations have used machine intelligence to make decisions that augment or automate human thinking.

This escalation of next-generation intelligencefrom analyst to predictor to actorwill increasingly access human behavioral data at scale, so that it better understands and emulates human emotion and intent. Enter the age of affective or emotional AI.

To a machine, a smile, a thoughtful pause, or a choice of words is all data that can, in aggregate, help an organization develop a more holistic understanding of customers, employees, citizens, and students. Its data organizations can further use it to develop classes of automated systems that better connect the dots among their financial, social, and ethical objectives.

For customer service representatives, caregivers, sales agents, and even stage actors, the business cases for these creative machines are compelling. But its imperative that leaders recognize the importance of committing to trustworthy AI practices to reduce any risk of bias, both tacit and explicit, in the training data, models, and resulting systems. As the authors of Technology Futures, a recent report from Deloitte and the World Economic Forum, put it: We must teach our digital children well, training them to do as we say, not necessarily as weve done.

Ambient Experience

The past 20 years of human-computer interaction might be summed up as an ever-bigger number of ever-smaller screens. With powerful mobile devices and advanced networks now ubiquitous in our workplaces and homes, were literally surrounded by digital information.

Ambient experience envisions a future beyond the glass when our interaction with the digital world takes place less through screens than through intuitive, out-of-the-way affordances that more naturally cater to our needs.

Recent advances in digital assistants and smart speakers light the way. These language interfaces generally speak only when spoken to and dutifully respond. Increasingly, devices will anticipate our intentions and offer help based on their understanding of content and context.

The other side of the coin: an unlimited reality. Virtual reality (VR) is not new, but enterprises increasingly turn to VR as a tool instead of a toy to support functions as varied as training, team building, and remote operations truck driving.

These ambient experiences could drive simplicity, reducing friction in the user experience. As technology develops, a voice, gesture, or glance could signal intent and initiate an exchange of business-critical information. Tomorrows digital concierges could handle increasingly complex routines in smart homes and citieswithout any logins or other traditional steps for activation.

Foresight is 80/20

These three field notes from the future are not an admonition to drop todays plans in favor of whats next. Rather, they are an encouragement to keep going.

Todays investments in cloud, data, and digital experiences lay the groundwork for opportunities in quantum technologies, exponential intelligence, and ambient experience.

Research indicates that leading organizations put 80 percent of their technology budgets toward existing investments and 20 percent toward emerging tech.1 By keeping their eyes on the future and their feet in the present, organizations can start creating tech-forward strategies todayso they can compete, lead, and advance their businesses tomorrow.

Read Field Notes from the Future in the Deloitte Tech Trends 2022 report and contact our subject matter experts for further discussion.

Mike Bechtel, Chief Futurist, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Scott Buchholz, Emerging Technology Research Director and Government & Public Services Chief Technology Officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP

1Mike Bechtel, Nishita Henry and Khalid Kark, Innovation Study 2021: Beyond the buzzword, September 30, 2021

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3 Tech Trends That Are Poised to Transform Business in the Next Decade - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DELOITTE - HBR.org Daily

This years World Chess qualifying tournament brought a new twist: the heart rates of the players were broadcast live, with the help of AI software, so viewers could (supposedly) gain insight into the players emotions during a match. But can emotions be detected from mere heartbeats? When your own heart pounds wildly in your chest like a sledgehammer, does it necessarily mean youre frightened? Angry? Excited? Full of joy? What if youve just finished a strenuous workout or knocked back a bit too much espresso?

When it comes to the question of what your heart rate means, psychologically speaking, the scientifically correct answer is: it depends. Thats because physical signals from within your body have no inherent psychological meaning. A particular heart rate does not indicate any particular emotional state. Its not the case, say, that 100 beats per minute is happiness and 150 beats per minute is anger. The pounding in your chest during instances of both emotions can be physically identical. More specifically, your heart rate may vary just as much among different instances of anger as it does between instances of anger and happiness. Ditto for every spurt of cortisol, every trickle of dopamine, and every other electrical or chemical change in your body. What differs is the meaning that your brain makes of the physical signals in a particular context.

The same is true of physical signals from the outside world. When a tree falls in the forest and slams into the ground but no one is present, it does not make a sound. It does produce a change in air pressure. That change becomes meaningful to you as a sound only when it reaches sensory surfaces inside your ear (your cochlea), producing a different physical signal that travels to your brain, where it meets an ensemble of other signals that represent your knowledge of falling trees and what they sound like. You dont hear with your ears; you hear with your brain. If that same change in air pressure encounters your rib cage rather than your cochlea, you may feel a thudding in your chest rather than hear a sound.

Light waves similarly exist in the physical world, whether or not a human is present. But color is a feature constructed as your brain weaves those signals together with others of its own creation. So a statement like, The rose is red, is more precisely stated as, I experience the wavelengths of light reflecting from the rose as red. The redness isnt in the rose. The light waves detected by the sensory surface in your eye (your retina) modulate signals along the optic nerve that encounter other signals in your brain that reassemble past experiences and give those incoming signals psychological meaning and voila, you experience the rose as scarlet, ruby, or some other variety of red.

Your brain constantly runs a model of your body as it moves through the world. You come to know that world only through your cochlea, retina, and the other sensory surfaces of your body. Their signals, along with those streaming from within your body, continuously confirm or correct the ongoing signals in your brain. The implication is a bit startling: You cannot experience the world, or even your own body, objectively. Your experience is always from a particular perspective, and no perspective is universal.

Your brains internal model is formed from ensembles of sensory signals from your past, sourced from the body it is attached to, the world that surrounded it, and the other people who curated and inhabited that world. Their words and actions wired your brain with the concepts of your culture, empowering your brain to see red in a rose, hear trees fall, and understand your racing heart as joy in one situation and sorrow in another.

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This idea, called relational meaning, is familiar in quantum physics. As Carlo Rovelli beautifully explains in his latest book Helgoland, nature is not filled with permanent objects but with relations between quantities. When an electron is not interacting with anything, it has no physical properties. An electron only has a position or velocity relative to something else. The same is true for signals that arrive at the sensory surfaces of your body, whether the signals originate within your body or outside it. They become psychologically meaningful only in relation to the electrical and chemical activity in your brain a brain that continually creates a culturally-infused internal model of your body as it moves through the world.

Some experiences, like imagining the future and reliving events from the past, are constructed completely by the signals within your brain. Even some sensations are entirely your brains constructions. An example is the feeling of wetness. Your skin has no sensors for moisture, so how is it that you feel wet when you take a swim or get caught in the rain? Your brain constructs this sensation by combining physical signals from sensory surfaces for temperature and touch, and entwining them with other signals that reassemble your knowledge of what wetness feels like.

Everything you see, hear, smell, or taste; every touch you feel; and every action you take arises from a complex web of interwoven signals, and some of the most important signals are found only in your brain. Your brain does not detect features in the world and body; it constructs features to create meaning. Some constructed features are closer in detail to raw sensory data, such as lines and edges and color. Scientists call them physical features. Mental features are more abstract. When you appreciate a beautiful painting, the beauty is not in the painting; its created in your brain. When you eat a delicious dinner, the deliciousness is not in the meal but constructed in your head. The same goes for the last jerk who cut you off in traffic: You did not detect the drivers jerkiness; your brain constructed it as an ensemble of signals.

Relational meaning also holds a key to understanding how emotions work. If you watch a World Chess match and see a player scowl, it may seem that you are detecting anger in their face, but really you are experiencing that chess player as angry. That experience is constructed in your brain by giving meaning to sensory signals that have no objective emotional meaning of their own. Pursed lips, flushing skin, and of course, a rapid heart rate are not inherently emotional. These physical signals take on emotional meaning only in relation to other signals, some of which are your past experiences that have been wired into your brain by other people in your culture. In this complex web of context, a grandmasters scowl might mean anger (about 30% of the time, studies show), but the same scowl can also mean that they are concentrating hard or even that they have bad gas.

Magnus Carlsen. (Credit: Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images)

If you find some of these ideas unintuitive, Im right there with you. Relational meaning the idea that your experience of the world says as much about you as it does about the world is not extreme relativism. It is a realism that differs from the usual dichotomy drawn between materialism (reality exists in the world and you are just a spectator) and idealism (reality exists only in your head). It is an acknowledgment that the reality you inhabit is partly created by you. You are an architect of your own experience. Meaning is not infinitely malleable, but its much more malleable than people may think.

So, what does all this mean for everyday life? If physical signals from your body and the world only become meaningful to you in relation to signals created in your brain, this means you have a bit more responsibility than you might realize for how you experience and act in the world. For the most part, meaning-making is automatic and outside your awareness. When you were a child, other people curated the environment that wired experiences into your brain, seeding your brains internal model. Youre not responsible for this early wiring or the meanings it engenders, of course, but as an adult, you have the capacity to challenge those meanings and even change them. That is because your brain is always tweaking its internal model, creating the opportunity for new meanings with every new ensemble of signals it encounters.

To influence your internal model, you can effortfully seek out new meanings. You can expose yourself to people who think and act differently than you do, even if its uncomfortable (and it will be). The new experiences that you cultivate will manifest as signals in your brain and become raw material for your future experiences. In this way, you have some choice in how your brain gives meaning to a racing heart, whether its a chess champions or your own.

You dont have unlimited choice in this regard, but everyone has a bit more choice than they might realize. By embracing this responsibility, you grant yourself more agency in how you automatically make meaning and therefore over your reality and your life.

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Are you a spectator to reality? Or are you its creator? - Big Think

Theres a new sci-fi book series thats taking the young adult genre by stormthe first book,The Upper World, written by Femi Fadugba has already caught the eye of studioexecutives, and Netflix has acquired the film rights[and] Queen & Slims Daniel Kaluuya [is] attached to produce and star.

Fadugbas debut novel was alsorecentlyshortlisted for the Waterstones Childrens Book Prizein the Older Readers category in addition to being longlisted for the 2022 Branford Boase Award which is given annually to the author of an outstanding debut novel for children.

One review attributed thenovelsunusual credibility to the fact that Fadugba is a real-lifephysicistand has based his ideas about time travel on real science, including Einsteins theories(even if you dont grasp it at all). Fadugba wrote the novel after many conversations about with people who would ask him to explain quantum physics. Theyd always be super fascinated and wanted me to recommend a book, but I couldnt find one that I could put my hand on my heart and say: Youll dig this, he toldThe Guardian.

Fadugba, 35, who splits time between the UK and the US, sat down with ESSENCE to discuss his inspiration for writing the book, his career path and meteoric rise to fame, as well as his upcoming projects.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ESSENCE: What inspired you to writeThe Upper World?

Its a complicated one because it has a few different angles. I went to university, and I ended up doing quantum physics, quantum computing, specifically and I thought I was going to be an academic physicist at that point. I published an article at PRL, which is the same publication that Einstein published a lot of his stuff in, so that was kind of like the peak of my career. I was looking for whats next, but the academic route just felt a little bit abstract.

As a Black African boy in the UK, there are lot more serious problems faced by people than partial differential equations. So, I decided, let me go into working world and see what impact I can have, and I went into business, I did solar energy. But it just wasnt quite cutting it. I felt like I hadnt found my voice and didnt have a platform. I started digging into things that excited me when I was younger, and I rediscovered my love for physics, and especially about time travel. In many ways the genesis of the book was after reading pretty much 100 books on relativity to thinking, how do I explain this in a way that 16-year-old me would have not only understood it, but also have a reason to give a st.

Thats why I ended up putting it into a narrative, because people like stories, thats how we learn things. Look at the book of Genesis, thats a story about nature. Its a story about physics in many ways and how the universe came to be, it told a story because thats how we absorb things, and I think the other side of my motivation was because of the actual story part, the specific characters I chose, the location, the theme I explored. Again, I think for me it was about writing the kind of book that teenage me would have fked with basically. A big part of that was, I dont want to lecture the kids. How do I meet young Black boys where theyre at and then give them a story that combines philosophy, physics, real-life st and elevate the conversation and never at any point underestimate their curiosity?

ESSENCE: How many drafts were there? How long, and what was the process like?

I would say that theres only four words that matter in your first draft: good enough and the end. When I started writing, I assumed that the world consisted of people were born good writers and people who were essentially not so good, and I thought I was in the second category. I had this moment, and I think it was partly from speaking with a couple of people who said, Oh, no everybody starts off rubbish, and then you practice and then you end up good. So I accepted that I was a rubbish writer and as long as I made improvement every day and I came to the page every day, I was gonna get a little bit better every day. It actually kind of worked, I mean, if you see the difference between different drafts, youd be amazed honestly. It came along, and I think there was something about that sort of amateur mindset where I was a nobody. I didnt have the weight of being a somebody, with the expectations of being a good writer. I was in a writing group with a bunch of people who were much better writers than me, and I found that most of them struggled to write a lot because they get to the end of just a couple of sentences or a chapter, or a paragraph and they will decide that its not good enough, there was that perfectionist kind of thing that made them just keep revising the first paragraph. Whereas I knew that my paragraphs were rubbish, so I just finished the draft and then went back and started again.

It took two and a half years from first words to pressing send to publishers. I think thats probably another thing that I did right in the first the first go-round when I was writing the first book, because I didnt have too much of an ego back then, so I just told people, Hey, Im not a writer, just read this. What do you think? I gave it to a lot of people, my wife read pretty much all eight drafts, whatever I produced. I probably sent it to like 10 other people, just friends, and I think the key thing for me was basically making it safe for them to tell me that my baby was ugly. Instead of just saying What do you think, which they probably would have said Its great, I asked, Did you care about the character? At what page were you hooked? What questions do you have in your mind? Does it make sense? Just basically digging for a no, rather than digging for a yes.

ESSENCE:The Upper Worldis being adapted by Netflixhow did that happen?

This all happened during June of 2020. The book went out to publishers, and out of nowhere, theres like essentially a bidding war, which was fking mental to be honest. Im just doing all these Zoom calls, with different publishers, and then maybe two weeks later the book leaked to Hollywood, I dont even know what that means. It leaked to a bunch of film studios, both in the UK and the US. And so, literally two, three weeks after the publishing thing closed, I was having calls with a bunch of the big studios and production houses. Then, Netflix came along, Daniel Kaluuyas agent got a hold of the script and then he read itI think pretty much in a dayand he said Yeah, Im keen to be involved. Its so sick, it just came together perfectly to be honest.

ESSENCE: You mentioned that you hoped for this book to be something that your teenage self would have wanted to read. Are there any other things that you hope the legacy of your book to be?

Im writing the sequel right now, literally just before I hopped on the call, burning through it. I had so many ideas, but I was surprised by how different my headspace was writing the second one versus the first one. I want the book to be a two-part booka duology. I think one of my inspirations isThe Godfather: Part II. Its a prequel sequel, and we essentially take the events in book one and then we go back in time, and we look at where Esso comes from, which takes us back to Africa, to Benin specifically, and we look at the mythology and the history of that country, and how it interweaves with the upper world. We also go forward, and we pick up from where we left off Rhia. Esso left off in the 2030s where Rhia is now going to uni and is facing a whole new host of challenges, both personally and with upper world and a maniac on the loose, whos trying to kill her and has ambitions on conquering the multiverses himself.

I mean, I think its part of a bigger story. Im really excited for you to have a look at the second book once its out and see, and we can have a discussion then on how it compares. My background, my life has been kind of strewn all over the place, and Ive seen a lot of different environments. One big contrast that I had growing up was going back and forth between Oxford and Peckham and then my parents were in Rwanda. One of the big things is showing people different worlds, just letting people imagine beyond what they see. Theres a practical aspect of that, which is literally showing different environments. In book two, youll definitely get that, in terms of going back to Africa and Rhia going to Cambridge. I think the other aspect of the legacy I hope for by the time Ive wrapped up, is that people who are religious will see just how similar they are to people who are atheists and scientists, and people who are just interested in how the world works, and what storytelling and metaphors mean and have a unified vision. I know thats a very abstract way to describe it. In book one, you saw a glimpse, where I combined physics with a concrete story in Peckham, and in book two I want to take it a bit further and incorporate Africa and religion into that.

I think for me, the biggest joy of writing is just the opportunity it gives me to like find my own joy, and also just share that with other people.

TOPICS: afrofuturism black authors

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Femi Fadugba Talks Netflix Grabbing His Debut Novel, Writing And Meeting Black Boys Where They Are - Essence

This address was given by President Christopher L. Eisgruber during the Class of 2020's Commencement ceremony in Princeton Stadium on Wednesday, May 18, 2022.

Remarks as delivered

As you know from prior experience, Princeton tradition allows the University president to say a few words to each graduating class at its Commencement exercises. Giving that address is a special privilege, and one that I cherish.

That privilege today feels even more extraordinary than usual, since this ceremony is unprecedented in the Universitys history. No class since World War II has had to wait two years for an in-person graduation. No previous class has shown your unique combination of persistence, achievement, and patience. The undergraduate and graduate alumni who make up the Great Class of 2020 will always have a special place in Princetons history.

This graduation speech is also different from others that I have given for another reason, which is that I have already had an opportunity to address the Class of 2020 at your virtual ceremony two years ago. I am honored, but also slightly daunted, by the opportunity to speak to you for a second time. What wisdom can I hope to offer to a class that has already heard one round of graduation speeches?

After considering this challenge for some time, I decided to share with you a quirky Princeton story that may perhaps, with some imagination, provide insight into what you have experienced over the last two years, and what you will experience in the years ahead.

The story begins in 1935, when Albert Einstein and two post-doctoral researchers named Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen published one of the most famous papers in the history of physics. All three were appointed at the Institute for Advanced Study, temporarily housed in what is now Jones Hall on the Princeton campus.

The paper was about quantum science, and it discussed a phenomenon that Einstein would later mock as spooky action at a distance. Quantum mechanics, the authors pointed out, rests on an other-worldly idea called superposition, which says that physical systems can be in a combination of two inconsistent states at once. A particle can be, for example, in a combination of an up state and a down stateit is both and neither, but if someone observes it, it immediately becomes either up or down, but not both.

In their paper, Einstein and his co-authors argued that these strange concepts led to the bizarre conclusion that observing a particle in one placefor example, right here on the Commencement stagecould instantly affect the state of another particle somewhere elsefor example, at the opposite end of this stadium, or in Hawaii, or, for that matter, out by some distant star.

Podolsky annoyed Einstein by leaking the paper to theNew York Times.Lots of professors, I can assure you, would love to leak their papers to theNew York Times. In general, theTimesdoes not care. But a paper by Einstein was a different matter.

TheTimesran the story on page 11 under the headline Einstein Attacks Quantum Theory. Podolsky told theTimesthat Einstein and his co-authors had proven that, even if quantum mechanics made plenty of correct predictions, its consequences were too strange to provide a complete description of the physical world.

Everything in that bold and controversial 1935 paper has proven correctexcept for its conclusion. What Einstein derided as spooky action at a distance, and what scientists now call quantum entanglement, is a feature of the physical worldone with increasingly important practical applications. When people talk about quantum computing, for example, they are talking about devices that use spooky action at a distance.

There is something marvelous in the fact that one of the most exciting and practically important fields of 21stcentury science depends on something that Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest scientist of the 20thcentury, got emphatically wrong in one of his most famous papers.

That insight should give us all a dose of humility when we are tempted to declare, as Einstein did, that some novel idea is too bizarre to be true. And, conversely, we can perhaps all draw inspiration from the fact that new and genuinely strange ideas, beyond the ken of the greatest thinkers the world has known, sometimes contain profound truths.

Quantum mechanical properties apply at the microscopic level; we do not see them in our ordinary lives. But I sometimes thinkand here is where I need to call upon your imaginationsthat the strange metaphysics of the quantum world can provide an alternative perspective on the paradoxes and ambiguities that color our lives.

Take, for example, the idea of superposition, which says that a physical system can be a combination of two inconsistent states: up and down at the same time. Could one say that about what you have experienced over the past two years? In your senior spring, you were both at Princeton and not at Princeton. You graduated, and yet you did not. You were together, still Princetons Great Class of 2020, and yet you were apart.

And though it does not technically count as what Einstein would call spooky action at a distance, were you not throughout this period, are you not now, sublimely entangled with one another and with Princeton? You dispersed throughout the country and the world, yet you were also connected by shared challenges, memories, and your identity as a class. What happened here, and what happened to each of you, affected all of you.

Though I recognize that not every member of your class can be with us today, I hope that this day and this week nevertheless help to resolve the pandemics strange superposition of states so that we can now say emphatically: yes, the Great Class of 2020 is not only connected but together! Yes, the Great Class of 2020 has graduated in every sense of the word! And yes, the Great Class of 2020 is here, observed and observable, roaring like Tigers on this campus once again!

I hope, too, that you remain entangled with Princeton and with each other. All Princeton classes are, in my thoroughly biased opinion, great classes, but they are also distinct. They acquire their own identities and personalities. Some people speculate that the events of the last two years might weaken the bonds that tie you together. I predict the opposite: that your resilience and your creativity will make your connections to each other and your entanglement with Old Nassau ever stronger.

We shall see. For now, just let me say, on behalf of the faculty and administration, we are so glad that you are here! Welcome back! And to everyone in the Great Class of 2020, undergraduate and graduate alumni, I say congratulations, and I hope to see you back on this campus many times in the years to come. 2020: Congratulations!

Originally posted here:

Class of 2020 On-Campus Commencement Address by President Eisgruber 'Entangled with Princeton' - Princeton University