Mid-afternoon. Chores and prep for trip to Cleveland through Sunday. Stop for birthday dinner for Aunt Patsy on the way home. Carol has breakfast at the Otterbein Home, with retired teachers, one, Ann in her eighties, who just moved there with her husband recently.
After supper and the news you discovered a science article on Neutron and Gravity on BBC from a few days ago. It shows that scientists are on the verge of finding more details about gravity that have been known. You want to display the full article but here is my condensed version of it followed by it uses in the book.
17 April 2011 Last updated at 23:42 ET
Neutrons could test Newton's gravity and string theory
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
. . . A pioneering technique using subatomic particles known as neutrons could give microscopic hints of extra dimensions or even dark matter, researchers say.
The idea rests on probing any minuscule variations in gravity as it acts on slow-moving neutrons in a tiny cavity.
A Nature Physics report outlines how neutrons were made to hop from one gravitational quantum state to another.
These quantum jumps can test Newton's theory of gravity - and any variations from it - with unprecedented precision. The "quantum states" of atoms, light particles known as photons, molecules and even objects big enough to be seen have been extensively studied. . . . That work, by a group of researchers at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and published in a paper in Nature, used slow-moving neutrons falling due to gravity.
Now a team of researchers from the Vienna University of Technology have refined the technique at the ILL to examine and exploit gravity's quantum ways. . . .
The [neutrons] are gathered up and injected into the quantum experiment at speeds of around five meters per second - just a hundredth the speed of the molecules flying around in the air. The neutrons are shot between two parallel plates, one above another and separated by about 25 micrometres - half a hair's width. The upper plate absorbs neutrons, and the lower plate reflects them. As they pass through, they trace out an arc, just like a thrown ball falling due to gravity. If they hit the bottom surface before passing through, they are reflected off and absorbed at the top - and thus are not detected at the other end of the plates.
The new work has added what is known as a piezoelectric resonator to the bottom plate; its purpose is to jiggle the bottom plate at a very particular frequency. . . . The researchers found that as they changed the bottom plate's vibration frequency, there were distinct dips in the number of neutrons detected outside the plates - particular, well-spaced "resonant" frequencies that the neutrons were inclined to absorb.
These frequencies, then, are the gravitational quantum states of neutrons, essentially having energy bounced into them by the bottom plate, and the researchers were able for the first time to force the neutrons from one quantum state to another. The differences in the frequencies - which are proportional to energy - of each of these transitions will be an incredibly sensitive test of gravity at the microscopic scale. . . .
"With theory you can assume there's only purely Newton's gravity, then to make a transition you need a certain energy," study co-author Peter Geltenbort of the ILL told BBC News.
"Now we can compare this energy with what we've measured and if there is a deviation then it would be a hint that Newton's gravity on these short distances is not 100% valid."
Any such deviations could give hints of the postulated particle known as the axion, which could in turn prove the existence and nature of dark matter.
"The experiments in astrophysics and astronomy give limits [for the axion's existence] . . . . These are the same theories you would use to describe phenomena on a large length scale, but we have with our method the possibility to look for these axions on this short scale," Dr Geltenbort said.
The same holds true for supersymmetric particles, part of some formulations of string theory that suggest that many extra dimensions exist over tiny length scales, which would require the precision that is only now possible with the team's approach. . . .
From: BBC Science, 17 April 2011
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Can gravity absorb thought? Quantum waves of thought may also be supersymmetrical. What would be the difference if parallel waves of thought could be transposed into particles? If a thought is on a track of reason does that add or subtract dimensions from the original concept? Is that thought wave curved or straight? Does it float or flow? The reason for the questions is because the key to bringing the various cultures of the Dead together rests in the nature of the ‘metaphysics’ if you will of the River Styx. Remember, this is how the Dead arrive, or how some of the Dead assume they arrive at the Place of the Dead. Some say they ‘swim’ the river as a brain and spinal cord, as a kind of ‘mind-fish’.
The reasoning can make sense from the human perspective but it does not include (as an image) the heartansoul. What about the heart being a ‘charged state’ of human spirit and the soul being photon-like image that produces no shade? The gravity or depth, if you will, conditions as it is also conditioned. In other words, the water effects the fish just as the fish effects the water. – Amorella.
I have not thought such a thing. I will have to study the concept and ask Doug (and others) if it is reasonable to make such an analogy.
Fair enough. Tomorrow to Cleveland. Something to think about along the way. Post. Amorella.
You had sent a note to Doug about the article and here is his first response, for one, you are delighted to see his background on the subject.
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Dick,
Great article on gravity. Maybe we can get some where on dark matter soon. When I was at Notre Dame it appeared for a while that I had discovered the first excited state of the neutron. I later showed that it was not but many of the theoreticians there kept working on it any way. Those were heady times! These guys must be jumping for joy!
Thanks
Doug
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I am pumped. If anyone can help me see into this analogy (or lack of it) Doug is one man who can do it. – Reminds me of our high school days in chemistry lab (as he was my lab partner). Doug got me through the course. Now he helps me on the book. What a wonderful twist of friendship and fate.
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