Arvin Ash
Alcubierre Drive: Warp Speed - Star Trek fantasy or plausible?
updated
#bigbang #quantumphysics
Stuxnet was the world first known cyber weapon. It was a digital worm responsible for nearly destroying Iran's nuclear program. Although this worm did limited damage outside of nuclear facilities in Iran, it showed what is possible. It opened up a Pandora's box of potential threats. Nothing is off limits. Anything connected to the internet or a computer is susceptible to attack. A major attack on infrastructure is only a matter of time!
Stuxnet was the world's very first Cyber Weapon as far as we know. And it was used to destroy Iran's nuclear program. While it did not destroy it, it did delay their program by at least 2 years. And it may have averted a regional war. See the full video above for the fascinating story. This short is a clip from the longer video. Was it a virus or a worm? It was a worm.
#stuxnet
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REFERENCES:
How ChatGPT works: youtu.be/WAiqNav2cRE
CSOonline Stuxnet article: tinyurl.com/yovpvh5m
Anatomy of Stuxnet: tinyurl.com/2xjkpqxe
Medium article on Stuxnet: tinyurl.com/233j7dj8
Avast article on Stuxnet: avast.com/c-stuxnet
IEEE article: avast.com/c-stuxnet
Significance of Stuxnet: tinyurl.com/267jugyp
News Story about Nanatz attack: tinyurl.com/28kjgoe3
CHAPTERS:
0:00 How Stuxnet started
1:58 Who created Stuxnet & Why
3:54 How Stuxnet worked
6:33 How Stuxnet was detected
9:54 What Stuxnet implies for the future of hacking
11:44 ESET is a way to protect yourself (sponsor)
SUMMARY:
It is thought that a person working at an Iranian nuclear facility inserted a malware-infected USB drive into a computer. This malware is called Stuxnet and was developed by the USA and Israel specifically to damage Iranian centrifuges which were involved in enriching Uranium for development of a nuclear bomb. This set the Iranian nuclear program back by about 2 years.
This was the first known case of physical equipment being damaged by malware. It was the first case of cyber warfare.
The year was about 2005. This particular malware was designed in such a way that it mostly stayed dormant and made such subtle changes over such a long period of time, that no one noticed it for years.
#stuxnet
#virus
It was designed specifically to target PLCs, that is Programmable Logic Controllers. These are industrial computers that control industrial processes. In this case the target was centrifuges.
Iran had gone to great lengths to ensure security. For example the facility’s computers were not physically connected to any computer outside the facility. This is called an air gap. So there was seemingly no way to infiltrate these computers remotely via any kind of internet or extranet.
Stuxnet exploited at least 4 previously unknown Windows vulnerabilities. These are called zero day vulnerabilities – they are security flaws for which the vendor has not yet made a patch. Stuxnet was "discovered" in 2010, but it’s estimated that development on it probably began in 2005 under the George W Bush and Barak Obama administrations.
These administrations believed that if Iran were to develop atomic weapons, Israel would launch airstrikes against them, which could trigger a major conflict and destabilize the region. Developing and unleashing a cyberwarfare software weapon was seen as a nonviolent alternative. The program was labeled Operation Olympic Games.
It was designed to destroy the centrifuges that Iran was using to enrich uranium for its nuclear bomb program. Why is enrichment needed? Because Mined Uranium has only a small fraction of fissile U235 of 0.7%. It has to be at least 90% U235 in order to be used in a nuclear weapon. A centrifuge is used to spin uranium fast enough to separate the lighter U235 isotope from U238. The nature of these centrifuges is such that they tend to have a short lifetime. They get damaged in normal operation. But Stuxnet was able to damage many more than in normal operation.
Stuxnet altered Siemens PLC programming which caused the centrifuges to spin irregularly, damaging or destroying them more often in the process. And even more brilliantly, while this malfunction was happening, the worm used a vulnerability in the Siemens software to change the PLCs programming so that it would tell all the controlling computers that nothing was wrong. So it infected both the computer software and the control software running the PLCs.
How was the Stuxnet worm eventually detected? Only after it unexpectedly spread beyond the air gap of the Iranian nuclear facility. No one knows exactly how it got out.
Kaspersky lab estimates that it took a team of at least 10 developers 3 years to develop the worm.
Neither the US nor Israel have officially admitted to creating Stuxnet, and none of its developers have ever come forward.
Stuxnet showed, for the first time, that malware can actually affect the physical world, not just your PC or digital data. In this case it was destroying centrifuges. But subsequent cyberattacks have targeted other types of machines, for example Industroyer, developed by Russia-sponsored hackers, targeted industrial control systems and disrupted the Ukranian power grid in 2016. Stuxnet showed that almost nothing is off limits to hackers intent on malice. A hacker could conceivably take over and put such devices under the control of a malicious entity. Imagine someone taking over your IV drug dosage remotely while you’re in the hospital, or remotely driving your car.
This short video answers the question of why aren't all elements Noble elements. In other words, why aren't all elements the most stable ones? Why did the universe make any element other than the Noble elements?
In this video, I give the simple answer to why changing just one proton completely changes the chemical properties of an element. For a more detailed answer, please see full video. Link is above.
*NOTE - Erwin Schrodinger was Austrian-Irish, not Australian-Irish. We goofed in editing. Apologies to our proud Austrian viewers! And to our Australian audience, as much as you'd like to claim him, I'm afraid he belongs to a different continent.
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REFERENCES
Origin of all elements: youtu.be/wgUIB4tD0cM
How Quantum Mechanics predicts electron structure: youtu.be/wgUIB4tD0cM
How entropy drives all events: youtu.be/pvPxCtrXT1c
WHY IS SODIUM A METAL BUT ARGON IS A GAS?
Electron configuration determines this. Sodium atoms can form metallic bond because the positively charge cation K+ forms an electrostatic attraction with the delocalized electrons from the outer shell. Argon cannot form such bonds because there is no delocalized electron nor cation formed, since the electron structure of the atom is already stable.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Adding or subtracting one proton: drastic change
1:58 The simple answer
3:00 Soylent is best tasting
4:07 Why are elements not classified by electrons?
5:35 Number of protons can change, but not in chemistry
6:07 Why proton count is used to classify elements
6:50 Why are there orbitals and electron shells in atoms?
9:01 How chemistry works: all about energy
12:24 Why aren't all elements Noble elements?
SUMMARY
Why does changing just one proton in the nucleus of an atom make a different element? How can a single proton make such a huge difference in an element’s properties?
The simple answer is: The number of protons determines the number of electrons the atom needs in order to be neutral. The number and configuration of the electrons of an atom determines its chemical properties. So since the number of electrons is determined by the number of protons, changing even just proton will change an element's chemical properties.
If so, why don’t we classify elements based on their number of electrons instead of protons? The reason is because electron numbers for most atoms, can be changed by taking on or giving away electrons to and from other atoms. This is the basis of chemistry. But the change in electrons does not affect the element's essential nature. It still retains its atomic properties.
But the number of protons never changes for most elements. It remains the same because protons cannot be exchanged with other atoms like electrons can in chemical reactions. So the proton count of an element does not change in chemical reactions. This proton number, in turn, determines the number of electrons the atom needs to be neutral. And that in turn, determines the behavior of the atom when it interacts with other atoms chemically, i.e., the bonds it can form. And this determines both its chemical and physical properties.
The proton number determines the propensity of that element to keep, give away, or share its outermost electrons with other atoms.
Electrons in the outermost shell of an atom determine its chemical properties. Why are there different electron shells? Atoms and molecules tend to favor the state with the lowest potential energy, because of the second law of thermodynamics - the law of entropy.
Solving the Schrodinger equation shows how the energies of the electrons in any given atom will be distributed in its ground state. When we solve it, we find that electrons are distributed in orbitals and shells around the nucleus.
An orbital can contain only a maximum two electrons due to the Pauli exclusion principle. The Schrodinger equation shows that as the number of electrons increases in an atom, they occupy different energy levels or shells around its nucleus. These shells can only accommodate a maximum of a fixed number of electrons. These numbers are 2, 10, 18, 36, 54, 86.
So for the few elements that have exactly these protons numbers, they will have the precise number of electrons that make their atomic structure energetically stable. Consequently, they will not have the propensity to take on or lose any of their electrons to other atoms. These are the Noble elements.
Chemistry works by elements trading electrons to form neutrally charged systems that are more energetically favorable, than the elements on their own. Proton number is key because it is the main factor in determining what number of electrons an element would prefer. It boils down to energy and charge conservation.
#protons
#elements
One could ask, why aren’t all elements noble elements. Why didn’t nature make all elements stable? The reason is that elements were formed in fusion reactions within the cores of stars or star processes. The fusion process results in nuclei with all kinds of different numbers of protons, not just the noble elements. Fusion is a nuclear process that just makes stable nucle, not a chemical process that optimizes electron shell stability.
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REFERENCES
Video: A Universe from nothing: youtu.be/v8-oocxPwlM
Video: Eternal Inflation: youtu.be/nziePav5OMg
Multiverse Theory: tinyurl.com/2cv2qxbm
Math proof universe can come from nothing: tinyurl.com/np2vrty
Paper of above: tinyurl.com/223t86z6
What came before big bang: tinyurl.com/y7g4pgwp
CHAPTERS
0:00 Big bang: Lamda-CDM model
3:09 Sponsor: ESET
4:22 Cyclic universe
5:33 How likely is cyclic model?
7:53 Multiverse: Eternal Inflation
11:27 Universe from nothing
15:23 Why can't we answer this question?
SUMMARY
What came before the Big Bang? what happened before the big bang? Since time is thought to have started at the big bang, asking what happened "before" is like asking what is North of the North pole? It may have no meaning. But there are three good theories.
One is the idea of a cyclic or 'bouncing' universe, where the Big Bang is just the latest of many beginnings, in an eternal series of cosmic expansions and contractions. The universe begins from an initial tiny state (a singularity?) in which all the matter and energy of the universe is contained in an infinitesimally small volume. The universe then expanded, and after 13.8 billion years is at its current state. It will keep expanding for perhaps billions more years, and then it will contract for another long period or time until it is tiny again. And then the cycle repeats itself over and over again for eternity.
But the current rate of expansion of the universe is not slowing down. It would need to stop and reverse at some time in the future. But that's not what we observe. If the lambda cdm model is incomplete, then the cyclic model could be correct.
Another hypothesis about what came before the Big Bang is a multiverse, where our universe is just one bubble in a frothy sea of universes, each with its own laws of physics. There are many types of multiverses, but this one stems from the theorized concept of eternal inflation.
The idea is that there exists an infinite spacetime that is expanding faster than the speed of light. This is what we call inflation. Inflation is believed to have occurred in our universe shortly after the Big Bang for an extremely short period of time But in this short time, the universe expanded by a factor of 10^78 in size. Since quantum mechanics ensures that there will always be some randomness, it’s possible that inflation could last a bit longer or shorter than expected in different parts of the universe.
In the 1980s, Paul Steinhardt, Andrei Linde and Alexander Vilenkin realized that the exponential expansion of cosmic inflation, although it stopped in our part of the universe, could continue in other unobservable parts of the universe. And if that’s the case, then the universe we are familiar with, may be a very small fraction of all that exists. It could have stoped in other parts of the universe, forming other bubble universes. This could go on for eternity. Our universe would be nothing but a very tiny part of an unimaginably larger whole.
Another theory is that our universe could have come from nothing. At the subatomic level in empty space, particles are popping in and out of existence all the time. These are virtual particles. They borrow energy from the vacuum and give it right back so quickly that no conservation laws are violated. Energy is conserved.
Cosmologists have speculated that even in a universe where no matter, space or time exists, as long as the laws of quantum mechanics exist, spacetime itself could have emerged in a quantum fluctuation, because in quantum mechanics, anything that is not forbidden by conservation laws necessarily happens with some finite probability. If we live in a closed universe, like a sphere is a closed universe, then all the positive energy of matter is perfectly balanced by gravity, which has negative energy. So, just like with virtual particles, no net energy is created.
Just as virtual particles come in and out of existence without breaking any conservation laws, a small empty space could come into existence probabilistically due to quantum fluctuations. And since time is connected to space, time would follow in this nucleation.
A scientific paper authored by 3 Chinese physicists, titled “spontaneous creation of the universe from nothing,” was published in 2014, which showed a mathematical proof of how this could happen.
#bigbang
#time
Why can’t we turn the clock back just a little bit further and figure out what happened just a tiny fraction of a second before the Big Bang? because current understanding of physics breaks down at the singularity, the moment that predates the Big Bang.
How it it that mass and energy can be the SAME thing. This video discusses what the true nature of what mass really is. What is the ultimate source of mass in an atom?
The Strong Nuclear Force keeps protons and neutrons glued together inside the nucleus of atoms. This is distinct from the Strong Force which keeps quarks inside individual nucleons (protons and neutrons). The Strong Nuclear Force is due to a residual effect of the Strong Force.
#strongforce
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REFERENCES
Stron Nuclear Force explained: youtu.be/WF2c_jzefKc
Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD): youtu.be/KnbrRhkJCRk
General Relativity: youtu.be/tzQC3uYL67U
Higgs field explained: youtu.be/R7dsACYTTXE
CHAPTERS
0:00 Things not moving have energy
1:56 What and where is mass?
2:45 Higgs Field a source of mass
4:01 Strong force a source of mass
5:23 DeleteMe
6:32 Where 99% of the mass of the universe is located
7:55 How color charges work (Quantum chromodynamics)
8:23 Confinement
10:31 How does Strong Force create mass?
13:34 Strong NUCLEAR force also a source of mass
SUMMARY
How is mass and energy the same thing? What is mass really? If you weigh 80kg and are in a car moving 100km/hr, your energy is equal to about 30000 joules. But did you know that the energy you have standing still, not moving at all, is more than a hundred trillion times that, over 6*10^18 joules?
This comes from E=mc^2. But what is the nature of that energy? Is it due to movement at the quantum level? It is due to forces? How is it that mass can be the same as this energy. If it’s all energy, then is mass even a real thing?
What we call mass is made up of all the atoms in the rock. 99.99% of the mass of an atom is located in its tiny nucleus in the center, which makes up less than 0.01% of its volume. The rest is in the electrons that surround the atom.
There are two sources of mass. The known mass of fundamental particles comes from their interaction with the Higgs Field. This is like an energy grid. Different particles take different amounts of energy from it. But this makes up less than 1% of the mass of an atom. The other 99% of the mass is due to the strong force which keeps quarks bound within the nucleus of an atom.
A fundamental force of nature called the strong force that keeps these quarks bound together to form the proton nucleus. This force is mediated by gluons. But gluons are massless, so how are they responsible for so much mass? Gluons bind quarks together. And both have something called the color charge. This charge is how the strong force operates.
It’s somewhat analogous to an electrical charge where negatively charged electrons surrounding positively charged protons making the atom neutral. With quarks however, we deal with red, blue and green color charges that combine to form a neutral color. These are not optical colors, but metaphorically speaking, works similarly to the way red, blue and green optical colors can combine to form a neutral or white color.
Quarks exchange colors between themselves which is mediated by gluons. And it is this exchange which results in the strong force keeping them glued together. Why does color exchange keep them bound. This is due to confinement. What this means is that a color charged particle cannot exist on its own. Quarks and Gluons are color charged particles. Why? Because color charges exist can only exist in a combination of colors that is always neutral. This need for the combination of charges to exist as neutral, attracts red, blue and green color charged particles to each other.
This is quantum chromodynamics. It’s the science of the way the strong force works to keep the quarks inside the nuclei of atoms tightly bound together. This is the strong force. But how is this strong force creating mass? Mass is really just bound energy. The rest mass of an object is its intrinsic energy-content. It’s a type of potential energy. Any form of energy contributes to the mass of a body, potential or kinetic. The nature of this energy doesn’t matter. So for example, a compressed spring is a little bit heavier than the same spring without the potential energy stored in its compression. You don’t notice this mass difference because at our scales, these energies contribute very little to the mass.
Any kind of energy bends spacetime. it creates gravity. And so bounded energy, which is what the strong force results in creates is where most of the mass comes from. 99% of the mass of objects comes from the energy of the gluons confining quarks inside the nuclei of atoms.
#strongforce
#whatismass
#quantumchromodynamics
Another concept related to the strong force is the force that keeps Protons and neutrons glued together inside the nucleus of larger atoms. This is called strong NUCLEAR force, distinct from the Strong force which keeps quarks glued together. This is also a form of potential energy, and also contributes to the mass of an atom. This force is mediated by mesons which are formed when energy stretches quarks such that a new quark/anti-quark pair are stretched. This pair is called a meson. The exchange of mesons creates a strong attraction between protons and neutrons.
This video first talks about the differences between molten salt and conventional nuclear reactors, and then the one BIG difference that makes molten salt reactors virtually melt-down proof, and much safer.
Although it doesn't appear that String Theory and Quantum Field Theory can be combined, they do share one peculiar similarity. This video talks about that.
Is String Theory dead? Why do so many scientists still care about this theory that has never been proven to be correct. Well, the math shows us something astounting! This video will tell you what that is.
REFERENCES
Quantum Field Theory: youtu.be/eoStndCzFhg
String theory and loop quantum gravity: youtu.be/eoStndCzFhg
Equations of the Standard Model: youtu.be/asEtNJ9sRcQ
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD): youtu.be/asEtNJ9sRcQ
Quantum Gravity: youtu.be/asEtNJ9sRcQ
Everything is a spring: youtu.be/BZRv8Nko9XQ
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CHAPTERS
0:00 Is String Theory Crazy?
2:19 Why am I in London?
3:28 String Theory and Quantum Field Theory differences
5:16 Why bother with String Theory?
6:52 Why does a graviton need to have no mass and spin 2
7:52 Why no Graviton in Quantum Field Theory?
8:47 String Theory solves quantization of gravity
11:20 Similarity and differences between QFT and String Theory
14:08 Why does String Theory need extra dimensions
15:01 Bottom line on String Theory
SUMMARY:
How is string theory related to quantum field theory? Quantum field theory (QFT) is a mathematical
framework that is close to a theory of everything. It describes nearly all particles and forces in the universe, and is consolidated into an overarching theory - the standard model of particle physics. But it is incomplete because it doesn't explain gravity. Enter string theory, which sounds crazy, mainly because it proposes a universe made of vibrating strings and with at least 10 dimensions! We only know of 4, the three spatial dimensions and time. It claims that at least 6 other dimensions are hidden from us. But it is popular because it has an answer explaining gravity in quantum mechanical terms.
String theory posits that the smallest building blocks of the universe are not point-like particles, but tiny, one-dimensional "strings" that vibrate at various frequencies and in different dimensions. Different combinations of frequency and dimensions describe all the different types of matter, forces and energy in the universe. There are several string theories, all related to a deeper overarching theory called M-theory.
Quantum field theory posits that all particles are excitations in fields that span the entire universe, and that forces are due to the interaction of these particles mediated by other particles called bosons.
Both theories in principle can mathematically describe all particles and forces. But we know quantum field theory works. This is not the case for string theory, but we continue to bother with it is because it can model particle that looks identical to the graviton, the theorized missing boson particle that could quantize gravity.
String theory models a particle with zero mass and spin of 2, which would be a graviton. It needs to have no mass because gravity propagates at the speed of light and has an infinite range. Only a massless boson particle could have such properties. A spin 2 is required to model an exclusively attractive force which is what gravity is.
Quantum Field Theory can also describe gravitons – as excitations in a theoretical graviton field. But the problem with trying to quantize gravity in quantum field theory is renormalization. This is the procedure of making a theory valid to infinitesimally small lengths. When we try to do this, we get infinities in the equations. So quantizing gravity using QFT, doesn’t work.
Unlike QFT, String theory solves the issue of quantizing gravity. But the price we pay is that is that we have to contend with 6 to 7 extra dimensions. This is a problem because these dimensions have never been detected.
Scientists have come up with explanations about where the missing dimensions might be. One is compactification. It's like floss - from far away, it looks like a thin 1D line. But as you look at it more closely, we can see it is 3 dimensional.
Another solution to the missing dimensions is that there could be super dimensional membranes in a 4th dimension isolated from us. We would have to exist outside of our local brane to see these extra dimensions.
If we could detect these extra dimensions, It would be significant evidence indicating that string theory is likely a superior model of the universe, and that QFT is an approximation.
But there are some similarities between QFT and String theory. The amplitude in QFT corresponds to the number of particles, just like the amplitude of the vibrations in string theory also corresponds to the number of particles.
#stringtheory
#quantumfieldtheory
Why does String Theory need all these dimensions? because its mathematics does not work in 4 dimensions. It only works if we allow the strings to vibrate in at least 10 dimensions. Note that extra dimensions could also be theorized in quantum field theories, but we have not needed them to make the theory work. The math works fine as long we ignore gravity.
This video briefly covers how the force keeping protons and neutrons glued together in the nuclei of atoms is formed. This force is called the Strong Nuclear Force, and it is a kind residual force ancillary to the Strong Force.
This video is about what caused the earth's tilt. This cause also resulted in earth's "sister planet" - and was probably a big factor in the creation of life on earth. We almost certainly would not be here if this catastrophe had not occurred.
Molten salt nuclear reactors are green, and can be developed at relatively low cost. But there is one big reason they are not currently commercialized. And this is beyond the issue of gaining local zoning and government approvals. But this problem is being addressed successfully at the current time by research and manufacturing outfits like Copenhagen Atomics.
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REFERENCES
How Thorium nuclear works: youtu.be/T_jcbhE0u-8
Copenhagen atomics: youtube.com/@CopenhagenAtomics
World energy stats: tinyurl.com/y5zvomd9
Safety challenges of molten salt: tinyurl.com/yqsj5avq
CHAPTERS
0:00 World energy challenge
2:14 Soylent
3:31 How power plants work
6:43 How Conventional nuclear reactors work
10:23 How Molten Salt nuclear reactors work
15:06 Why are molten salt reactors not commercial
18:11 Bottom line and my opiniion
SUMMARY
There is a technology which could eliminate concerns about nuclear waste and disasters obsolete and allow us to have nearly unlimited energy, molten salt nuclear power technology. How does it work? What makes it safe? And how is it different from conventional nuclear power plants?
Any powerplant uses some fuel to heat some liquid. This liquid can be water, but it doesn’t have to be. This hot liquid can be used in industrial processes, or we can convert it to steam to drive a turbine to create electricity.Then it's icooled down again to be reused, to continue the cycle.
In a nuclear power plant. the source of energy is from the nuclear process of fission. Fission, very simply put, is when in the core of the reactor, we are split a heavy elements like uranium into smaller elements, like Krypton and Barium. The energy comes from the mass difference between the starting and ending products.
There have been drawbacks to nuclear power: 1) very expensive to build, 2) produces highly radioactive by-products which require storage for long periods of time, 3) an accident can cause an environmental disaster. A molten salt and Thorium reactor can eliminate many of these problems.
In the core of a traditional reactor, the fuel used today is uranium 238 with a tiny amount, uranium 235. But the fuel also has a lot of U238 which transmutes into highly radioactive isotopes, like Plutonium 239. This is the core of the nuclear waste problem.
There are two main differences with a molten salt reactor. Instead of solid fuels, the fuel is dissolved in molten salt which is in liquid form. The second difference is that instead of water as the coolant, they use a second molten salt as the coolant. These have several advantages, and some disadvantages.
The fissile material such as uranium is now part of the salt, which is in liquid form. This can allow it to move and circulate. This is very different from traditional designs where the uranium just sits in the core, and can’t go anywhere.
A circulating molten fuel is better, first, because it’s molten, it operates at much higher temperatures and can carry a lot more heat . And because it doesn’t operate under pressure, there is no chance of pressure vessel failure, so it can’t blow. Furthermore, because the fuel salt is being pumped into the reactor to keep it circulating, if anything goes wrong, for example if the pump stops working, the fuel will simply drain out via gravity into the bottom holding tank.
Molten salt also has a chemical property that when becomes too hot, it naturally expands. This reduces the nuclear chain reactions because the distance between the fissile atoms increases, so the chain reaction slows down all by itself. This is like a built-in thermodynamic safety valve. So in case of trouble, the salt can be just allowed to overheat, and the chain reaction will be reduced by itself. This makes a meltdown virtually obsolete.
Since the fuel is circulating, the reactor does not have to be shut down to be refueled. It can be refueled on the go. Finally, because the core by virtue of using molten salt is very hot, 600+ degrees Celsius, it has much better thermal efficiency. You can thus make more heat with a smaller core. So the reactor is unpressurized and has a smaller footprint, so it costs less to build for a given energy output. The reactor design by Copenhagen Atomics are so efficient and small that the whole thing can fit in a 40-foot container, and be produced on an assembly line, drastically reducing manufacturing cost.
#nuclearpower
#moltensaltreactors
So if molten salt reactors are so great, why are they not everywhere? They are highly corrosive and have not been commercially proven. Copenhagen Atomics has solved the problem by keeping removing the moisture and air from the salt, so that it doesn’t corrode.
Could Loop Quantum Gravity fix General Relativity and finally unite Gravity with Quantum Mechanics? This video introduces the central concept of LQG. The full video above has more details.
This video explains in 60 seconds how everything in the universe is like s spring. Mathematically we can model all forces and particles as springs or quantum harmonic oscillators. See the full video above for details.
What would happen if Earth lost its axial tilt. This is a short video explaining at least one of the consequences. Full video above discusses a couple of other BIG effects, including the fact that we humans probably would not be here without it!
#shorts
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REFERENCES
Why the sun shines: youtu.be/xR88vSiOvY4
livescience.com/18972-earth-seasons-tilt.html
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro to Earth's tilt
1:40 How did Earth get its tilt?
2:30 How would the weather changes with no Earth tilt?
4:50 How animals would be affected with no Earth tilt?
5:56 How would humans have evolved with no Tilt?
7:43 How the earth could turn into a snowball
9:35 Support this channel by Signing up for Brilliant
SUMMARY
The earth has an axial tilt of about 23.5 degrees. While this tilt is responsible for shaping our planet's climate and seasons, it also played a crucial role in shaping life on earth. What would have happened if the earth had no tilt? Is it even normal for a planet to tilt? What caused it?
Most planets in our solar systems have a tilt. Mercury is the only one that has nearly no tilt at 2 degrees. It’s thought that early in earth’s formation over 4 billion years ago, a planet the size of Mars, which we now call Theia, crashed into earth and knocked it off its kilter. In doing so, some of the material from the two planets was thrown off and began to orbit the earth. And over time it coalesced into the moon. This impact also created a permanent tilt in earth’s rotation.
If Earth didn't have a tilt, that is, if its axis were perpendicular to its orbital plane, several significant changes would occur.
The most noticeable change would be the absence of seasons. Every location on Earth would receive a consistent amount of sunlight year-round, and for about 12 hours every day. Temperature and precipitation patterns would not vary much. It would still be warm at the equator and cold at the poles.
Earth's current tropical zones can serve as an example of what an earth without seasons would be like in these non-tilting equatorial regions. But the weather would not be completely unchanging. There would be some change because the earth’s orbit around the sun is elliptical, so it is about 3% closer to the sun during some parts of year.
A lack of seasons could have significant implications for agricultural practices. Plant evolution would be altered because seasons are an important factor in the behavior and growth of plants. And plants in turn affect how animals have evolved because they are a source of food. Many living things time their reproduction to the seasons.
Different species of animals and plants would likely have been successful back in the early Earth - and that would have led to completely different evolutionary paths. It is quite possible that intelligent apes, that is, we may not have evolved in such an environment.
But if humans did manage to evolve on such a planet, according to Don Attwood, an ecological anthropologist at McGill University in Montreal, humans would probably never have advanced past a state of living in small, scattered settlements, scrounging for survival and often dying of horrific insect-borne diseases. According to him, Cold weather promotes invention. During the 18th century, the discovery of coal to warm homes and power machines improved technology and overall health. It led to the steam engine and ultimately to the industrial revolution, which led to the comforts of modern technology we enjoy today.
Winter prevents the spread of deadly diseases all over the world. Some diseases that come from humid tropical environments include HIV and the Ebola virus. The spread of these diseases could prove catastrophic for humankind.
Without a tilt, Earth could turn into a snowball long term. Near the poles it would be constantly below zero degrees. Assuming that snow would still form, then it these areas with permafrost snow would continue to fall, but never melt. This would cause a large snow built up like during an ice age. Slow and steadily the polar ice cap would expand away from the poles and Earth as a whole would begin to freeze.
There are two main factors which act as a positive feedback loop. Snow is white and reflects sun very effectively. This means much of the sun’s energy would be reflected off the ice caps and the energy and heat from the sun would bounce back into space, thus, earth would get colder as more and more of suns heat would be reflected away from earth. Secondly, as the ice cap grows in height the surface would be at higher altitude with the snow insulating the surface from any heat from inside earth itself. The polar ice cap would then slowly begin to ingulf more and more of earth.
#solstice
#earthstilt
Earth would probably not become a complete snowball because the equator would be hot enough to melt ice and snow?
Because of their high mass, you might think that Black Holes are incredibly dense objects. But this is not necessarily the case. Theory says that they are probably mostly empty space! This video explains why.
REFERENCES
Time travel via BH: youtu.be/1JnCArN0zIk
Inside a BH: youtu.be/iUr8Obv_DeA
BBC Article: tinyurl.com/22mjo8h2
Space.com article: tinyurl.com/rl6mau2
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CHAPTERS
0:00 What is a Black Hole?
2:10 Best way learn a Foreign Language
3:33 Are Black Holes dense and black inside?
5:48 Light cone explanation
9:52 Spaghettification and time dilation problem
13:41 View from inside the black hole
16:56 What happens at the singularity?
17:39 Could you go back in time in a black hole?
SUMMARY
Most black holes are formed when a massive star at least 30 times the mass of our sun runs out of fuel. It then collapses uncontrolled against all other forces of nature into a theoretically infinitesimally small volume. This region of infinitesimal spacetime is called a singularity. The spherical volume of space around this singularity is what we call a Black Hole. The radius of this region was first described by German physicist Karl Schwarzschild.
The edge of this radius is called the event horizon. It is the point beyond which nothing can escape, not even light. Unlike the singularity at its center, General relativity does describe what happens inside this region beyond the event horizon.
Presuming the mass is concentrated in a tiny volume inside, what we would have between this singularity and the edge of the black hole, is mostly empty space. It may contain things that have fallen through, but if the black hole is not very active, that is, if things are not falling into it, then there would be just empty space inside.
But this empty space would not be anything like the empty space that astronauts see far away from earth. First you wouldn’t see all black on the inside. It would be lit up from all the light that’s falling into it. And everything would be falling towards the singularity. And this singularity would appear to be located in all directions. No matter which way you moved, you would be moving towards it. There would be no other path.
Let’s now follow this astronaut all the way from his spaceship far away from the black hole to the black hole and then to the inside of the black hole, and on to the singularity. Even though time would appear to stop at the event horizon from a perspective far away from the black hole, from the Astronaut’s perspective, time would tick normally and He would simply just go right on through to the inside.
If he were to look back towards you, he wouldn’t see any visible light because most of the light near the event horizon would be so highly blue shifted that it would be in the x-ray part of the light spectrum. Infrared light and the cosmic microwave background light however would now be in the visible spectrum, so the astronaut might see these.
Also the light from all around the black hole may be visible to him, since the severe gravitational well would bend light from all around the black hole. But it would be distorted. What about spaghettification? Ironically, the more massive a black hole is, the less dangerous it is from the perspective of its gravity ripping your body apart.
This is because while gravity grows linearly with mass, it decreases with the square of the distance. Since making a black hole bigger means making its event horizon further away from the singularity where all the mass of the black hole is contained, the net effect is that the gravitational field at the surface goes down. As a consequence, for a sufficiently massive black hole, its surface gravity at the event horizon can be as small as it is on earth.
Now, the astronaut has made it inside the event horizon, what does he see now?
#blackhole
#singularity
The singularity, if it exists, would be felt in every direction. No matter which way the astronaut would try to move, he would still be moving towards the singularity. The true nature of the singularity is still a mystery. It is not clear that it would be a physical place inside.
But what would the astronaut actually see after he went inside? Assuming he is not moving at the speed of light,
he would be able to see the light that entered the black hole behind him. He would still see the outside world from inside the black hole. But this light would be a beam of light that would get smaller and smaller as he continued his journey. It would be a beam because only the light directly behind him could reach him. The light from the sides would be headed towards the singularity, so it would not travel sideways for him to be able to view it.
In front he would see total darkness because no light would be able to move backward toward him. So as he approached the singularity, his world would steadily darken until he gets the last glimpse of light from behind, and he smashes into the unknown physics of the singularity.
Unlike Hollywood movies, extraterrestrials would not kill us. The earth has nothing to offer that other planets do not have. They would want something else. This video explores that optimistic scenario.
Do photons have mass? Every science book you've ever read says that are massless. But we don't really know that to be true.
This video discusses the science of death and dying, and what a person might actually feel when he or she dies. You might feel ecstasy!
This video discusses why the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has huge advantages over the Hubble telescope
If the idea of Eternal Inflation is true, then this means we live in an infinitely growing multiverse of which our universe is a small part.
This video discusses why we have only 4 total number of dimensions. Why do we have only 1 dimension of time? why not 2 or more dimensions of time? And why do we have only 3 dimensions of space? Why not more dimensions of space?
Can an AI or Artificial Intelligence ever become conscious? That's the question I asked in the video above. If AI is an emergent phenomena of the brain, as it appears to be, why should it be limited to biological systems only? Why can't artificial systems that simulate all the neural connections of the brain, not be able to become conscious? The brain doesn't appear to have any special sauce that artificial intelligence can't also replicate.
Part 1 short here: youtube.com/shorts/d1gYcllAA3s
You all read that the Higgs Boson was created at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012. But was it really? It turns out that the Higgs was never actually observed or measured. Yes, it's true. This short explains why the Higgs Boson is so difficult to detect. So how do we know that it actually exists? See full video link above for explanation.
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REFERENCES
How Higgs gives mass: youtu.be/R7dsACYTTXE
Why the universe is LAZY: youtu.be/pvPxCtrXT1c
How Higgs was Discovered: tinyurl.com/yqc7pwz3
Paper on implications of Higgs discovery: tinyurl.com/ykw786pp
CHAPTERS
0:00 "God Particle Found!"
1:18 What are "particles" really?
3:19 Why heavy particles are not stable
5:17 How do we make a Higgs using lighter particles?
6:48 Why the Higgs is so difficult to detect
8:35 How we really "detect" the Higgs
10:56 Most interesting part of the video
11:08 Special offer from Brilliant
12:26 How the Higgs was made at the LHC
SUMMARY
In 2012, the Higgs boson (the God Particle) was discovered. It's responsible for giving mass to fundamental particles. But the scientists never measured the particle. So how can scientists claim a discovery without ever having seen or measured it? What is a measurement anyway?
The Standard Model shows that all fundamental particles that we know of are an excitation in their own field. Since the Higgs particle has a mass of 125 GeV, you must add 125 GeV worth of energy in the Higgs Field to form a Higgs particle. This is a very high energy level, equivalent to the rest mass of about 244,000 electrons.
Making a Higgs is not easy because heavy particles are not stable. They decay to lower mass particles, because the universe intrinsically favors lower mass/energy particles over higher mass particles. The Higgs particle being heavy is unstable and tends to decay into lighter particles.
But mass is only part of the energy of the particle. The combination of rest mass and kinetic energy of ligher particles can add up to the mass of a heavy particle like the Higgs.
This is the principle behind particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The LHC actually accelerates protons to do this because it’s a bit easier than electrona since a proton is much heavier at around 1 GeV, so it needs less kinetic energy to create the Higgs particle.
How do you detect the Higgs once it is made? You cannot detect it directly for two reasons. First, two protons collide with the same energy, but in opposite directions. The combined momentum is roughly zero. This means that the created Higgs boson will be roughly stationary in the particle beam. It’s difficult to detect something that doesn’t move because the detectors only picks up particles that fly away from the collision. Secondly, Its lifetime is incredibly short. It decays almost instantly. Thirdly, the Higgs is not a charged particle. Since we generally rely on some electromagnetic interaction to physically detect a particle, it’s not clear how you would detect it even if it could reach the detector.
If all that is true, what did we actually “discover” if no one ever measured a Higgs? You don’t need to measure it to know that it’s there. Essentially, if you smash two protons together and get an event where the sum of the decay products adds up to the mass of the Higgs, then we can reasonably conclude that the event likely created a Higgs particle.
But you might ask, what if the event created random interactions which just happened to yield a decay products equal to the Higgs mass? Yes, that could happen. But if you have many multiple measurements over a long period of time, then you can eliminate the possibility of just random interactions. And in the case of the 2012 announcement, this spike achieved 5 sigma significance, which is the gold standard in particle physics, for determining that a new particle was detected. It is thus as statistically significant discovery.
And it turns out that in there are many other particles, that we also never actually directly measure, because of similar limitations.
For example, the quarks and gluons that make up protons and neutrons, cannot because of the nature of the strong force, ever be directly detected. Yet, scientists still claim we discovered them. They can make this claim because the procedure of their discovery is similar to that of the Higgs.
How is the Higgs Boson produced? The most prominent process used at the Large hadron collider is the gluon fusion process. First, two high energy gluons can be produced by smashing two high energy protons. These can, in some cases, turn into top quarks, and fuse together via a triangle loop. This loop represents top quark, and anti-top quark creation and annihilation. The energy of this annihilation can create a Higgs boson.
#HiggsBoson
#LHC
This Higgs particle of course, as I stated earlier, almost instantly decays. So, what does it decay into? The Higgs decays to form very heavy bottom/anti-bottom quarks, which annihilates into two high energy photons. And the energy of these photons adds up to the mass of the Higgs. The photons is what we actually detect.
This video explains how the Higgs is responsible for the mass of fundamental particles such as electrons. Without the Higgs field, electrons would have no mass, and thus would travel at the speed of light, which means that they would not be able to to orbit a nucleus, so neutral atoms could not form.
When a star 30 times the mass of our sun, runs out of fuel, it collapses into a black hole. This collapse produces a gamma ray burst from its two poles. This video explains how this gamma ray burst forms.
A gamma ray burst usually occurs when a very large star collapses into a black hole. This results in Hypernova, which is 100x more powerful than a supernova. It is relatively rare, but since there are so many stars in the universe, a few hundred thousand occur somewhere in the universe every year. Every gamma ray burst we have detected has been outside of our own galaxy. If it occurred within our galaxy, pointed directly at us, we would probably be fried!
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REFERENCES
Why stars shine: youtu.be/xR88vSiOvY4
How white holes, neutron stars and black holes form: youtu.be/EZqLLAC5clc
Journey into a black hole: youtu.be/iUr8Obv_DeA
NASA gamma ray detection: tinyurl.com/26qf8b9f
Paper: How gamma ray bursts form: tinyurl.com/28zo4zuk
What causes gamma ray bursts? tinyurl.com/ygq5h7un
Are we safe from gamma ray bursts? tinyurl.com/22vynrzk
How gamma rays would sterilize earth: tinyurl.com/27xkwqar
CHAPTERS
0:00 What happens to stars after fuel runs out?
2:12 Kiwico: how to practice science: kiwico.com/arvin
3:31 The birth and death of stars
7:04 How Black Holes form
8:23 What is a Hypernova
9:42 How does a collimated or narrow gamma ray beam form?
11:36 Can a gamma ray burst kill us?
SUMMARY
Stars represent a celestial battle of two opposing forces, gravity trying to collapse the star, and radiation pressure trying to explode the star. But it comes to an end close to the time that it runs out of fuel. Gravity then collapses the star. If the star is extremely large, at least 30 times as massive as the sun, a massive explosion so enormous that its power is second only to the Big Bang itself. This is called a hypernova.
This can be detected because it sends out a gamma ray burst, which are the most powerful and energetic form of electromagnetic radiation known. If such a hypernova burst occurs even 200 light years from us, it would fry our atmosphere, and end life on earth. And we would not see it coming because the gamma ray beam would be traveling at the speed of light. The moment we saw it hit us, it would kill us.
All the stars you see in the sky, including the sun started out in a cloud of dust and gas in a stellar nursery. Gravitational forces cause these clouds to condense and contract, increasing the density and temperature at their cores. As the cloud contracts further, it forms a dense, hot core called a protostar. It starts to shine when the core reaches 10 million degrees Celsius.
Eventually the core of the star runs out of hydrogen. Then the star can no longer hold up against gravity. Its inner layers start to collapse, which squishes the core, increasing the pressure and temperature in the core. While the core collapses, the outer layers of material in the star to expand outward into a red giant. But for massive stars greater than 8 times the mass of our sun, they explode in a supernova. And for larger stars greater than 30 times the mass of our sun, they explode into a hypernova.
The core of such stars collapses to a black hole with gamma rays emanating from its poles. What distinguishes this explosion from other supernova explosions is first that they are 10 to 100 times more powerful than a supernova, and that they result in a collimated, or narrow beam of gamma rays, similar to a laser that travels across the universe. These gamma ray bursts can last anywhere from fractions of a second to hours.
A typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will release in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. They are rare. A few such bursts occur per galaxy every million years. But since there are at least 200 billion galaxies in the universe, a few hundred thousand of these occur every year somewhere in the universe. About one gamma ray burst is detected every day on earth . But so far, every burst we have detected has occurred outside of our own galaxy.
How does a narrow beam of gamma rays form? Shouldn’t these photons be emitted spherically, just like the way that the matter is expelled from a hypernova? When scientists first discovered these gamma ray bursts, calculations showed that the source of the explosion would have more energy than the big bang itself, which was not possible. But this calculation was based on a spherical photon burst, not a contained narrow burst.
The hypothetical mechanism is the following: The rapid rotation of the dying star twists up its magnetic field. This means that the easiest path of escape for any of the charged particles being ejected from the supernova is along a narrow beam at the poles of rotation, since the magnetic field can’t get as tangled in that direction. The twisted magnetic field causes the electrons to travel in a kind of helix. The rapid change of direction produce high energy photons, or gamma rays.
A hypernova is the most energetic event in the universe, exceeded only by the Big Bang. If it is pointed directly at us within our galaxy at about 200 light year or closer, it would cause a global extinction event. Since they travel at the speed of light, we would have no warning. We and the earth would just fry with no warning whatsoever.
#supernova
#hypernova
#kilonova
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REFERENCES
Original 2019 video on DCQE: youtu.be/0ui9ovrQuKE
Quantum Decoherence (Wave collapse) explained: youtu.be/wXJ9eQ7qTQk
Original 1998 paper by Kim et al: arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9903047.pdf
CHAPTERS
0:00 The original paper implied retrocausality
1:23 Really cool metal posters: Displates!
2:37 A classical interpretation would show retrocausality
3:49 How the double slit experiment works
6:25 Debunking the clean double line pattern
7:49 The Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser set up explained
11:54 How the Scientis hand-selected the outcome of the Delayed Choice experiment
SUMMARY
The original paper by the authors who first performed the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser implied retro causality. But retro causality is true only if you assume a classical way of thinking. But that's not the way quantum mechanics works, and I was wrong for interpreting it that way in my original 2019 video. When viewed with the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics where a particle is always a wave until the moment it is measured, there is no retro causality.
How the double slit experiment works: If you send photons one at a time through the slits, at first you will see what looks like a random distribution of dots. But after a while, you will see that those dots create an interference pattern.
If you then put detectors on the slits to measure which slit the photon passes through, you see a pattern like you would if you were sending individual particles through the slits. The act of measuring seems to affect the results. But the change is due to the nature of quantum mechanics. All quantum objects like photons and electrons are really waves. But if they interact with anything, that is, if an irreversible energy exchange takes place, their waves become localized like a particle. This is called “wave collapse.” Wave collapse also occurs when the photon interacts with the screen in the back. And we this as a dot on the screen.
The Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser is like the double slit experiment on steroids. First, I want to point out that if you have a detector that measures the path, you don’t really get two clean lines of photons like it's usually illustrated. You get a single spread out distribution of photons.
How does the delayed choice experiment work?
It starts with the double slit, but first the photons go through a special optical device called a Barium Borate crystal. It splits a single photon into a pair of entangled photons with half the energy each of the original. Note that the process of creating entangled photons effectively results in a measurement. In other words, the wave function of the photon collapses so that it is now a particle. And since the path from the top slit to detector 1 is slightly different than the path from detector 2, the which way information of the photon is known. Thus the pattern that will show up at detector 1 will always be a spread out pattern, not an interference pattern. It doesn’t matter what happens at any of the other detectors.
So why is it illustrated as changing depending on what happens at the other detectors? This is the center of the confusion, and where the idea of retro causality comes in.
Well the confusion is from the way this experiment is presented - as D1 changing its pattern to match the interference pattern at D4 or D5 when the photons end up there, but showing a different pattern, a spread out pattern, if the photons end up at D2 or D3.
So this implies that what happens at D2, D3, D4 or D5 influences what happens at D1. But since the path to D1 is shorter than the path to any of the other detectors, the photons reach D1 BEFORE they reach D2, D3, D4 or D5. So the implication is that the pattern at D1 which would be in the past, is being affected by what happens in the future at D2, D3, D4 or D5. So people have naturally been led to think that this means retro causality. This is wrong.
The quantum eraser has no effect on the original screen. What’s really happening is that the changing patterns are due to the scientists, conducting this experiment, selecting subsets of the photons in D1 to show the same patterns as at each of the other detectors. This can be done because the particles hitting the screen at D1 and the particles going to the other detectors are entangled.
#delayedchoicequantumeraser
#quantumphysics
So in the presentations that you see, including the one I originally made, the interference pattern you see get at D1 is nothing but a hand-selected subset of the actual original spread out pattern at D1, corresponding to photons that ended up at D4 or D5. This is done post-experiment by hand! The patterns do not change on their own. The future does not affect the past.
This video is about how the Alcubierre warp drive works, and whether it is realistic or fiction
There is a very good reason that only certain gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor cause global warming, but not other gases such as Oxygen and Nitrogen. This has to do with the nature of their chemical bonds.
ChatGPT works similar to the way we believe the human brain works. See full video above for an explanation.
"Disorder" is the more simplified way to think of entropy. But the second law of thermodynamics says that systems always trend to higher and higher disorder. If this is the case, then how did the seemingly more ordered Molecules from from disordered atoms, and how did the sun form from disordered gases and particles floating in space. This video shows how entropy actually increased in both those cases!
Entropy is usually defined as "disorder," but this is not quite the correct way to think of it. A better and more precise way is to think of it as the number of ways that the microscopic components of the system can be arranged without affecting its macroscopic properties. High entropy systems can be arranged in more ways than low entropy systems. Often, this is indistinguishable from disorder, so "disorder" is the more simplified way that it is defined.