https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-9565/ac8ecd

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-9565/ac8ecd/pdf

From counterportation to local wormholes

Abstract

We propose an experimental realisation of the protocol for the counterfactual disembodied transport of an unknown qubit—or what we call counterportation—where sender and receiver, remarkably, exchange no particles. We employ cavity quantum electrodynamics, estimating resources for beating the classical fidelity limit—except, unlike teleportation, no pre-shared entanglement nor classical communication are required. Our approach is multiple orders of magnitude more efficient in terms of physical resources than previously proposed implementation, paving the way for a demonstration using existing imperfect devices. Surprisingly, while such communication is intuitively explained in terms of 'interaction-free' measurement and the Zeno effect, we show that neither is necessary, with far-reaching implications in support of an underlying physical reality. We go on to characterise an explanatory framework for counterportation starting from constructor theory: local wormholes. Conversely, a counterportation experiment demonstrating the traversability of space, by means of what is essentially a two-qubit exchange-free quantum computer, can point to the existence in the lab of such traversable wormholes.

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>>18519626

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0

Evidence of near-ambient superconductivity in a N-doped lutetium hydride

Abstract

The absence of electrical resistance exhibited by superconducting materials would have enormous potential for applications if it existed at ambient temperature and pressure conditions. Despite decades of intense research efforts, such a state has yet to be realized1,2. At ambient pressures, cuprates are the material class exhibiting superconductivity to the highest critical superconducting transition temperatures (Tc), up to about 133 K (refs. 3,4,5). Over the past decade, high-pressure ‘chemical precompression’6,7 of hydrogen-dominant alloys has led the search for high-temperature superconductivity, with demonstrated Tc approaching the freezing point of water in binary hydrides at megabar pressures8,9,10,11,12,13. Ternary hydrogen-rich compounds, such as carbonaceous sulfur hydride, offer an even larger chemical space to potentially improve the properties of superconducting hydrides14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21. Here we report evidence of superconductivity on a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride with a maximum Tc of 294 K at 10 kbar, that is, superconductivity at room temperature and near-ambient pressures. The compound was synthesized under high-pressure high-temperature conditions and then—after full recoverability—its material and superconducting properties were examined along compression pathways. These include temperature-dependent resistance with and without an applied magnetic field, the magnetization (M) versus magnetic field (H) curve, a.c. and d.c. magnetic susceptibility, as well as heat-capacity measurements. X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) and theoretical simulations provide some insight into the stoichiometry of the synthesized material. Nevertheless, further experiments and simulations are needed to determine the exact stoichiometry of hydrogen and nitrogen, and their respective atomistic positions, in a greater effort to further understand the superconducting state of the material.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/faint-gravitational-waves-may-be-from-primordial-fractures-in-space-time/ar-AA18G6HC

Faint gravitational waves may be from primordial fractures in space-time

The team, who reported their results recently in a paper submitted for publication in the Journal of Computational Astrophysics and published on arXiv.org, claim that they have seen evidence for so-called domain walls in the early universe.

When our universe was incredibly young, it was also incredibly exotic. The four forces of nature were bound up into a single, unified force. We do not know what that force looked like or how it operated, but we know that as the universe cooled and expanded, that unified force fractured into the four familiar forces we have today. First came gravity, then the strong nuclear force splintered off, and lastly, the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces split from each other.

The team, who reported their results recently in a paper submitted for publication in the Journal of Computational Astrophysics and published on arXiv.org, claim that they have seen evidence for so-called domain walls in the early universe.

When our universe was incredibly young, it was also incredibly exotic. The four forces of nature were bound up into a single, unified force. We do not know what that force looked like or how it operated, but we know that as the universe cooled and expanded, that unified force fractured into the four familiar forces we have today. First came gravity, then the strong nuclear force splintered off, and lastly, the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces split from each other.

With each of these splittings, the universe completely remolded itself. New particles arose to replace ones that could exist only in extreme conditions previously. The fundamental quantum fields of space-time that dictate how particles and forces interact with each other reconfigured themselves. We do not know how smoothly or roughly these phase transitions took place, but it's perfectly possible that with each splitting, the universe settled into multiple identities at once.

This fracturing isn't as exotic as it sounds. It happens with all kinds of phase transitions, like water turning into ice. Different patches of water can form ice molecules with different orientations. No matter what, all the water turns into ice, but different domains can have differing molecular arrangements. Where those domains meet walls, or imperfections, fracturing will appear.

Probing the GUT

Physicists are especially interested in the so-called GUT phase transition of our universe. GUT is short for "grand unified theory," a hypothetical model of physics that merges the strong nuclear force with electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. These theories are just beyond the reach of current experiments, so physicists and astronomers turn to the conditions of the early universe to study this important transition.

The GUT phase transition, which occurred when the universe was the barest fraction of a second old, may very well have left behind domain walls, a network of boundaries between different configurations of space-time. These defects could not have lasted long, however. If they persisted for a few seconds, or even minutes, their intense energies would have thrown off the process of nucleosynthesis, which gave rise to all of the primordial hydrogen and helium in the universe or distorted our images of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the leftover radiation from the Big Bang.

So this interconnected set of domain walls had to decay into other particles — either normal particles, like electrons or quarks, or more exotic particles, like some form of dark matter. Either way, that decay process, coupled with the undulating motion of the domain walls themselves, would have released a flood of gravitational waves that could persist to the present-day universe.

Surveying the domain

Those gravitational waves would be incredibly weak, and impossible to detect with existing ground-based gravitational wave facilities. But for over a decade, several teams of astronomers around the world have instead been looking to pulsars to map gravitational waves sloshing through the universe.

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>>18519703

Pulsars are incredibly precise timekeeping objects, able to maintain their rhythm down to less than a millionth of a second. If a gravitational wave passes between us and a set of pulsars, however, that will subtly affect the period of pulsation. By studying large numbers of pulsars for long periods of time, we can hope to find signals of a background frothing of gravitational waves.

These pulsar timing arrays, like the NANOGrav experiment and the European Pulsar Timing Array, have already found hints of a signal. Most astronomers believe this signal is due to the combined action of millions of supermassive black holes colliding with each other over billions of years.

But the new study presents a different picture. The team argues that the signal also could be explained by domain walls decaying in the early universe. Their models allow for the domain walls to decay fast enough to not violate other observations, like the CMB, while still providing a strong enough signal to explain the pulsar-timing-array data.

Because the signals in the data are very faint and not confirmed to come from any particular source, there's room for this kind of radical proposal. The team argues that future pulsar timing measurements should be able to distinguish their model of decaying domain walls from the traditional picture of colliding supermassive black holes. Also, if their model is accurate, the domain walls should decay into either normal or exotic particles. Either way, that should be detectable with future, much more sensitive CMB measurements.

If the result holds up, it will be a major win for physics: The first time we've discovered concrete evidence for GUT phase transitions and the beginnings of a new understanding of physics.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.

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>>18519706

Inception.

Sorcery.

Mind werk.

What Every Doctor Should Know About Medical Misinformation

https://edhub.ama-assn.org/pages/what-every-doctor-should-know-about-medical-misinformation

AMA Public Health March 15, 2023

How should physicians contend with the proliferation of medical misinformation? Anti-science and anti-vaccine rhetoric are not new, but as noted in this JAMA Viewpoint, factors such as distrust in institutions, a polarized political climate, fractured media ecosystem and worsening economic inequality have given rise to new, highly transmissible “variants” of a longstanding problem. Fueled by social media, false or misleading information has spread farther and faster than accurate information during the COVID-19 pandemic, posing an ongoing threat to public health. Following are some key considerations for doctors when confronting medical misinformation.

>>18519757

False information has a novelty factor.

Understanding how false news spreads is key to mitigating it. In 2018, researchers at MIT Sloan conducted the largest-ever longitudinal study of the spread of false news online. The study found that falsehoods are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth. Why is this? Researchers hypothesize that “the degree of novelty” plays a significant role. Recipients of false news may have a greater emotional reaction to novel information, and thus are more likely to share it, whether it's true or not. Knowing this, clinicians may consider new ways of communicating facts, including a narrative approach. “Instead of dealing in principles, lecturing patients on the data and the numbers, perhaps we should concentrate on stories instead,” suggests this physician-authored essay in JAMA. “After all, that's how we ourselves learn: medical students may be trained in theory, but practicing physicians are educated by anecdote.”

Communication skills must be honed.

As discussed in this Stanford Medcast: COVID-19 Mini-Series, better communication training is needed in general to combat the rising tides of misinformation, false information and disinformation. “When we think about the way that we design medical education, communications is a soft science…[considered] not as important as, for example, teaching a resident how to do a lumbar puncture,” says Dr. Seema Yasmin, a journalist, physician and author of Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them. But knowing how to communicate effectively with patients during clinical encounters—listening with empathy, using accessible language, and directing patients to evidence-based sources of information—helps engender trust.

Understand health care’s breaches of trust.

Speaking of trust, any efforts to counteract misinformation and support evidence-based medicine must acknowledge the ways in which patient trust has been compromised. This includes unethical medical experimentation—from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to the more recent Baltimore Lead Paint Study, to cite a few U.S.-based examples—and substandard care for people from racial and ethnic minority groups. This module from the AMA Center for Health Equity, developed in collaboration with COVID Black, explores how institutional racism fosters medical mistrust and distrust, as well as questions to consider when striving for trustworthiness. Bear in mind that addressing misinformation—whether related to vaccination, reproductive health, causes of cancer or other topics—requires sensitivity to patients’ diverse concerns, backgrounds and experiences.

Combatting misinformation takes a village.

Pointing patients toward credible information “isn’t the job of any one clinician to do alone,” notes communication science expert Brian Southwell, PhD‚ in this interview with JAMA. Efforts must be made within health care organizations to ensure patients are getting reliable information, whether that’s routinely updating a Frequently Asked Questions section on the organization’s website, improving their social media presence, or partnering with community groups to develop effective public health messaging. For its part, the American Medical Association recently adopted a new policy to combat health-related disinformation specifically disseminated by health care professionals—a small number of individuals who undermine public health efforts by making unscientific claims and pushing untested treatments.

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The rampant spread of medical misinformation is an escalating issue. Time-pressed physicians can’t entirely fix the problem at the clinical level, but by understanding how falsehoods spread, acknowledging the causes of medical mistrust, and communicating clearly and with compassion, they can be an essential part of the solution.

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>>18519754

galactic current sheet.

NCSWIS

>>18519868

>I'm pretty sure snakes aren't immortal

the sperm you (all man) started physical life in is no more, yet here he is reading these words.

Blueprint of a Quantum Wormhole Teleporter Could Point to Deeper Physics

https://www.sciencealert.com/blueprint-of-a-quantum-wormhole-teleporter-could-point-to-deeper-physics

Transferring information from one location to another without transmitting any particles or energy seems to run counter to everything we've learned in the history of physics.

Yet there is some solid reasoning that this 'counterfactual communication' might not only be plausible, but depending on how it works could reveal fundamental aspects of reality that have so far been hidden from view.

Counterfactual physics isn't a new thing in itself, describing a way of deducing activity by an absence of something. In one sense, it's pretty straight forward. If your dog barks at strangers, and you hear silence when the front door opens, you've received information that says a familiar person has entered your house in spite of the absence of sound.

Yet there in recent years, the question of a quantum version of this form of transfer has arisen, with physicists exploring the possibility of quantum information being carried without a particle being exchanged.

The concept isn't merely theoretical. Ghost imaging uses a separated pair of engtangled photons to deduce information about an object without it absorbing and transmitting either of the particles.

One leading researcher in the field has proposed an experimental blueprint for testing the physics behind a kind of exchange-free communication, a method which he calls counterportation.

As you might expect given the nature of the physics involved, quantum computing plays a part. The proposal uses qubits – the probability-based versions of classical binary carriers of information – to transfer information from one location to another without ever interacting.

Salih's prior research involves light being separated through complex arrays of splitters and detectors, demonstrating a non-intuitive outcome of information arriving at a destination in spite of there being no particle to carry it.

What the physicist is proposing is a new computing scheme based on his previous theoretical protocol published in 2013.

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>>18519957

As you might expect given the nature of the physics involved, quantum computing plays a part. The proposal uses qubits – the probability-based versions of classical binary carriers of information – to transfer information from one location to another without ever interacting.

Salih's prior research involves light being separated through complex arrays of splitters and detectors, demonstrating a non-intuitive outcome of information arriving at a destination in spite of there being no particle to carry it.

What the physicist is proposing is a new computing scheme based on his previous theoretical protocol published in 2013.

"While counterportation achieves the end goal of teleportation, namely disembodied transport, it remarkably does so without any detectable information carriers traveling across," says physicist Hatim Salih, from the University of Bristol in the UK.

"If counterportation is to be realized, an entirely new type of quantum computer has to be built: an exchange-free one, where communicating parties exchange no particles."

Teleportation is a well established means of transferring a quantum state from one place to another. Though the details are complex, it involves entangling several objects and then separating them an arbitrary distance, before gently measuring the entangled objects in one location in a very particular way. Only once the separated object is also measured against the findings, communicated via old fashioned methods, is the act of teleportation realized.

The end result isn't the transfer of a solid object, as such, but rather a very specific quantum state. Completing the measurements on the original object effectively destroys it, meaning that state has effectively jumped from one place to another.

Counterportation is a quantum form of counterfactual communication that results in the transfer of quantum information, much like teleportation (only without the added bother).

The obvious question is how. This is where a particular kind of Einstein–Rosen (ER) bridge or wormhole comes in, one hypothesized to represent the overlap or connection between entangled objects.

According to Salih, this kind of local wormhole could act as the medium through which counterportation happens.

While wormholes have been theorized about in terms of black holes, it's possible that they describe entangled phenomena on smaller scales too. If wormholes do indeed exist, their description could help fill in gaps in our knowledge on the fundamental nature of matter.

"The goal in the near future is to physically build such a wormhole in the lab, which can then be used as a testbed for rival physical theories, even ones of quantum gravity," says Salih.

"Our hope is to ultimately provide remote access to local wormholes for physicists, physics hobbyists, and enthusiasts to explore fundamental questions about the Universe, including the existence of higher dimensions."

We should note that this is all theoretical for now – and based on foundations that not all scientists agree on – but it adds another layer of intrigue to the scientific discussion going on about quantum counterfactual communication and its potential role in research.

"This is a milestone we have been working towards for a bunch of years," says Salih. "It provides a theoretical as well as practical framework for exploring afresh enduring puzzles about the Universe, such as the true nature of space-time."

The research has been published in Quantum Science and Technology.

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