#virtual particles

[aneonlion]

Virtual Particle #1

[startswithabang]

Quantum Fluctuations Were Experimentally Proven Way Back In 1947

“The issue is that the atom itself is always present, and it exerts an electromagnetic force: the Coulomb force, for electrostatic attraction. The quantum fluctuations in the field cause electron fluctuations in its position, and that causes the average Coulomb force to be slightly different from what it would be without these quantum fluctuations. Because the geometry of the 2S and 2P orbitals are slightly different from one another, those quantum fluctuations — which show up as virtual photons from the charged particles in the atom — affect the orbitals differently, resulting in the Lamb shift.

There are differences between the shift of a bound electron and a free electron, but even free electrons interact with the quantum vacuum. No matter where you go, you cannot escape the quantum nature of the Universe. Today, the hydrogen atom is one of the most stringent testing grounds for the rules of quantum physics, giving us a measurement of the fine structure constant — α — to better than 1-part-in-1,000,000. The quantum nature of the Universe extends not only to particles, but to fields as well. It isn’t just theory; our experiments have demonstrated it for more than 70 years.”

Have you ever thought about virtual particles, and then dismissed them as “not even real?” It would make sense if you did: we can’t interact with them, scatter real particles off of them, or get them to show up in our experimental detectors. But their effects are very real, and we detected those effects way back in 1947: before we even had working, accurate quantum field theories. 

Here’s how we learned about them, and you might come away with a new appreciation for a brilliant experiment that never gets its due: the experiment behind the Lamb shift.

[art-of-mathematics]

Escaping Gödel's Incompleteness - running into meta levels (actually it will only lead to running from the outside of a klein bottle into its inside, and vice versa, hence "escape" is merely used as irony...)

© Dywiann Xyara 2019

Art series: Toroidal Hypersphere

[ghastmaskzombie]

something you might not know about quantum mechanics: it’s not hard because it’s complicated. in the grand scheme of physics, the math of it is quite well understood. it’s hard because it’s weird. turbulence is complicated. misplace the last digit of a very long number and your whole simulation comes out different eventually. but it’s intuitive. it makes a kind of natural sense. quantum mechanics is cheap to compute, and with all the randomness most errors you could make were on the table already. but it is so fucking bizarre. it’s the kind of thing that seeing isn’t enough to believe. it presents a world where something can be thrown off course by its other self that could have been but wasn’t. a world where things can exist in hindsight without ever having existed in the present. a world where you shine a light through two slits and spend 200 years arguing about what the fuck happened and how many universes it involved. it’s just weird, okay?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

How do you think the universe was made? I am not a religious person trying to mock you and I swear i am not trying to argue or anything, I am just looking for a scientific perspective. Thank you

Virtual particle, singularity, expansion, cooling, gravity, more cooling, more expansion, more forces, particles form, etc, etc.

I’m definitely not an expert in this area. That’s just my high-level understanding of what cosmology has determined. Same people who figured out the universe is expanding at the speed of light.

https://www.space.com/13352-universe-history-future-cosmos-special-report.html

[startswithabang]

Ask Ethan: Do Virtual Particles Really Exist?

“[you've written about] how virtual particles have real observable effects and how Quantum Fluctuations were experimentally proven a long time ago... and when [Neil de Grasse] Tyson explained nothing, he talks about how virtual particles appear and disappear, but other quantum mechanics shows like PBS space time has said they are calculatory tools, so which is it? There are so many conflicting statements that I don’t know which is right.”

So, you've heard of virtual particles: these particle-antiparticle pairs that pop in-and-out of existence, even in empty space. Do they really exist?

This isn't an esoteric question; this is physics! And what we can do is settle it with tests: measurements, experiments, and observations. Here's what they tell us.

[aneonlion]

Virtual Particle #2

[startswithabang]

Heisenberg's Astrophysics Prediction Finally Confirmed After 80 Years

“Heisenberg and Euler made this prediction all the way back in 1936, and it's gone completely untested until now. Thanks to this pulsar, we have confirmation that light polarized in the same direction as the magnetic field has its propagation affected by quantum physics, in exact agreement with the predictions from quantum electrodynamics. A theoretical prediction from 80 years ago adds another feather in the cap of Heisenberg, who can now posthumously add "astrophysicist" to his resume.”

Empty space, according to quantum mechanics, isn’t exactly empty. Take away all the matter, radiation and anything else you can have populating your space, and you’ll still have some amount of energy in there: the zero-point energy of the Universe. One consequence of quantum electrodynamics is that this sea of virtual particles is always present, and a strong magnetic field can lead to some really bizarre behavior. Known as vacuum birefringence, it was theorized by Werner Heisenberg and Hans Euler more than 80 years ago, as these electron/positron pairs get yanked along the magnetic field lines. In theory, this should polarize the light from photons passing through fields that are strong enough, but we’ve never been able to observe it. Until now. Thanks to the VLT and light from a neutron star, the prediction is confirmed for the very first time.

Come learn the incredible science 80 years in the making, and how we’re poised to learn even more about this fascinating property of light and empty space moving forward!