Mind Over Matter

Quantum Knowledge

Is Your DNA a Quantum Computer?

Could the DNA molecule actually be a miraculous ‘computer chip’ of sorts?

Is DNA a hyper-advanced technology, put right in front of our faces by a vast super-intelligence?

Has it been sitting there this whole time, just waiting for us to decode it — and develop unimaginably wonderful new technologies?

Could DNA be a ‘machine’ that is far more complex and difficult to reverse-engineer than silicon chips had been?

Wait a minute now. DNA is way too small to be a computer chip. The "base pairs" of the DNA molecule are built of single atoms!

Computer chips are certainly tiny, with millions of transistors printed on a single piece of silicon, but individual atoms are much, much, much smaller.

Click here for Divine Cosmos Article

In a parallel universe, this theory would make sense

If only we could prove that the multiverse was real, we could explain the contradictions of quantum mechanics
Yet another of my pens has just disappeared from where I swear I just left it and is probably already with my smug doppelganger in a parallel universe. We all have our favourite take on the existence of parallel worlds; it's a subject that has been fodder for science-fiction writers for quite a while now. The question is whether the idea has a place in serious scientific discourse.

Well, it seems the only known recordings of a physicist who predicted the existence of parallel universes have been found in his rockstar son's basement. The tapes document how quantum physicist, Hugh Everett III, developed a remarkable idea at the age of 24 while a graduate student at Princeton in 1957. The recordings are believed to have been made at a conference 20 years later, and were discovered during the making of a documentary in which Mark Everett, the physicist's son and singer of the band Eels, attempts to understand the work that consumed his father.

Click here for The Guardian article

A quantum computer breakthrough and dark matter stars

Two research groups have independently managed to experimentally solve a mathematical problem with light-based quantum computers. The simultaneous achievements appear to be the first experimental demonstrations of true (though rudimentary) quantum mechanical computations. Both groups manipulated quantum mechanically entangled photons to calculate the prime factors of the number 15.

Although the physicists could have gotten the answer to the problem much more easily by querying an average elementary school child, the method both groups used involved a quantum mechanical approach commonly known as Shor's algorithm. Previous theoretical work has shown that the algorithm could potentially crack cryptographic codes that are practically unbreakable with non-quantum mechanical (classical) computers.

Click here for full article

NIST on road to perpetual motion with 'superfluidity' demo

Perpetual motion is forbidden by the laws of classical physics, but in the quantum realm frictionless motion is possible. For instance, a closed loop of superconducting wire can exhibit perpetual motion, albeit only for electrons traveling around the frictionless loop of wire. If only such frictionless motion could be demonstrated for a fluid, then "superfluidity" could realize the frictionless motion of atoms around a torus, thereby enabling ultra-sensitive rotational sensors to be built.

Now the frictionless motion of superfluidity has been demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. True perpetual motion is still years away, but the agency recently demonstrated a proof-of-concept--what it called "persistent" motion--using an ultra-cold form of matter called a Bose"Einstein condensate. NIST predicts that eventually it will harness the quantum effects of superfluidity for the frictionless motion of matter, much like the frictionless motion of electrons in superconductors. Such superfluids could enable NIST to build ultra-sensitive navigation sensors not possible using classical materials.

Click here for full article

Evidence for a parallel Universe?

Last August, astronomers working on the analysis of data being acquired by NASA’s WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite announced that they found a huge void in the universe. A void is a region of space that has much less material (stars, nebulae, dust and other material) than the average. Since our universe is relatively heterogeneous, empty spaces are not rare, but in this case the enormous magnitude of the hole is way outside the expected range. The hole found in the constellation of Eridanus is about a billion light years across, which is roughly 10,000 times as large as our galaxy or 400 times the distance to Andromeda, the closest “large” galaxy.
The dimension of the hole is so big that at first glance, it results impossible to explain under the current cosmological theories, although scientists put forward some explanations based on certain theoretical models that might predict the existence of “giant knots” in space known as topological defects.

Click here for full story

Tape shows how physicist predicted parallel worlds

The only known recordings of a brilliant physicist who predicted the existence of parallel universes have been found in the basement of his rock star son's flat.

The tapes document how Hugh Everett, a quantum physicist, developed his idea at the age of 24, while a graduate student at Princeton University in 1957. Everett's theory gave rise to the concept of a multitude of universes, or a "multiverse", where all life's possibilities play out. It means that somewhere Elvis is still rocking, the Nazis won the second world war and England qualified for Euro 2008.

The recordings are believed to have been made in 1977, after a physics conference at which Everett's parallel worlds theory was resurrected after being shunned for two decades. The tapes were thought lost after his death at the age of 51 in 1982.

They were found during the making of a TV documentary in which Mark Everett, the physicist's son and lead singer of the US band Eels, attempts to understand the work that consumed his father. The programme, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, airs on BBC4 this evening.

Click here for full guardian article

Curiosity could 'wipe out universe'

Curiosity could end up killing far more than the proverbial cat, if a new theory is to be believed.

It might wipe out the entire universe.

Two scientists have come to the startling conclusion that the mere act of observing the cosmos too closely might bring it to an end.

By daring to measure dark energy, the mysterious force that is driving galaxies apart, astronomers may have begun the countdown to Armageddon.

The idea relates to a strange property of quantum systems which govern the fate of subatomic particles and possibly the whole universe.

Quantum systems can shift their energy state at random, as occurs when a radioactive atom decays.

Click here for full article

Small World: Quantum Identity Crisis Observed

A quantum enigma has been put to the test once again, but this time physicists have made the experiment smaller than it has ever been.

The classic double-slit experiment tests the behavior of light, electrons, atoms and some molecules as both particle-like and wave-like, a mysterious duality that has intrigued and puzzled scientists for more than a century.

Light or electrons are aimed at a solid plate with two parallel cuts in it, offering two choices: go through the slit on the left or the slit on the right. Subatomic particles will sometimes break the rules and go through both slits, just as a wave would.

The most bizarre aspect of this particle-wave duality is that it depends on how much an observer pays attention. The more carefully the observer measures whether it was the left or right slit, the more the object in question chooses a single slit, just as a particle would.

Now an international team of scientists has exhibited this quantum identity crisis using a single hydrogen molecule as their lab equipment.

Click here for full Live Science article

Schrödinger's kittens enter the classical world

Watch closely enough, and a compass needle might occasionally jump instantaneously between directions.

Theory shows how quantum weirdness could still be seen on a large scale.

The particles that make up the world obey the rules of quantum theory, allowing them to do counterintuitive things such as being in several different places or states at once, so why don’t we see this sort of bizarre behaviour in the world around us? The explanation commonly offered in physics textbooks is that quantum effects apply only at very small scales, and get smoothed away at the everyday scales we can perceive.

But that’s not necessarily so, say two physicists in Austria. They claim that we’d be experiencing quantum weirdness all the time — balls that don’t follow definite paths, say, or objects 'tunnelling' out of sealed containers — if only we had sharper powers of perception.

Click here for Nature News Article

Mystics and quantum physicists speak the same language

Quantum physicists have discovered to their amazement that, in the sub-atomic world, particles behave in very “unscientific and unpredictable” ways.

For example:

1. An observer watching a particle affects the way it behaves. It can appear as a particle (with a mass, static and at a specific location in space) or as a wave (nonlocal and dynamic).

2. A particle can affect the action or behavior of another at a distance.

3. A particle can revolve in an orbit at one time then suddenly disappear and appear in another.

4. Cause may occur at the same time as, not before, an effect.

5. The exact location of a particle cannot be pinpointed, only the probability.

6. A fourth dimension known as space-time exists.

7. Everything is constantly in a state of motion, never static. Therefore, everything is really energy.

In his best-selling book “The Dancing Wu Li Masters,” Gary Zukav says, “The new physics, quantum mechanics, tells us clearly that it is not possible to observe reality without changing it.”

Click here for the Inquirer article

You don't exist, so don't worry about it

What are you worried about right now? Well, it’s an almost guarantee that you are worried about nothing, for the very reason that you don’t exist! You have no worries because you have no mind or body or life to worry with — it’s all an illusion.

Click here for full article

The Secret- Deleted Scene

Embedded video has been disabled by utube but you can still see the clip here.