Physics Frontiers

Jim talks with Daniel Whiteson of the University of California at Irvine about his new book _Do Aliens Speak Physics,_ In this discussion we look at his "extended Drake equation that asks, "if aliens do exist, will we be able to talk to them?" Or learn anything from them. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/83 (May be delayed)

Jim talks with Koustubh Phalak about quantum random access memory (QRAM), a proposed technology that would allow the storage of quantum states in qunatum computation. Koustubh discusses quantum computing, the need for QRAM, proposed implementations of QRAM, and some of the difficulties in its implementation. Show Notes: http//frontiers.physicsfm.com/82

Jim talks with Philip Tee about the effects of a fundamental length scale. Phil uses doubly special relativity to try to find observable effects of the pixelization of space, including its effect on light bending and the Casimir effect. Show notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/81

Jim talks with Philipp Strasberg about his simulations of branching and recombining processes in the evolution of quantum states, and their meaning for not only for the many worlds interpretation but also for understanding quantum mechanics in general. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/80

Jim talks with Elba Alonso-Monsalve and David Kaiser about the prospects to describe dark matter as tiny black holes that were created at the end of cosmic inflation. Due to the large inhomogeneities in the distribution of matter at that time, the black holes could form directly from the matter distribution and not be color neutral (in the sense of QCD). Show notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/79

Jim talks with Bruna Shinohara of CMC Microsystems. Quantum computing and machine learning are both currently making huge strides. So it is not strange that people are trying to use quantum computing for machine learning.

Jim talks with Alex Jurgens about Maxwellian ratchets, automata that are similar to Maxwell's Demon. They talk about their implications for information processing and entropy. http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/77

Jim talks with Claus Kiefer about the implications of Goedel's incompleteness theorems on the search for the theory. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/76

Jim talks with Nick Ormrod and V. Vilasini about their use of categorical probability theory to analyze the measurement problem. We discuss categorical probability theory, which allows them to abstract from particular mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics to more general ideas about states and measurements and observers than found in Hilbert space formulations. They use this to look at the various properties of quantum mechanics and how they relate to each other, in particular how relativity affects the measurement problem. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/75

Jim talks with David Wolpert about the non-equilibrium behavior of computation, what it means for entropy, and how it relates to traditional thermodynamics. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/74

Jim discusses quantum money with Jiahui Liu. Quantum money is a linchpin of quantum cryptography. The ability to create secure banknotes using quantum computers would allow even more secure methods of encryption for communications.

Jim talks with Antony Valentini about the difficulties of interpretation of quantum mechanics in light of quantum gravity. In particular, Antony discusses the failure of the Born Rule due to the impossibility of normalization (the fact that probabilities must sum to 100%) at that scale, and therefore the need to interpret the wavefunction as something more than merely the knowledge of the observer about the system. They spend some time talking about the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation in light of quantum gravity. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/72

Jim talks with Sunny Vagnozzi about using the Primoridial Graviton Background to rule out all inflation models. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/71

Jim talks with Ken Wharton about how to describe entangled states as sums over histories of particle paths using the path integral method. He shows how this works for Bell-type experiments, entanglements swapping, delayed choice experiments, and the triangle network. This leads to a second way to describe what happens quantum mechanically without introducing non-locality (but requiring other classical ideas to break down). Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/70

Jim talks with Joe Davighi of the University of Zurich about the flavor unification at high energies - the merging of all leptons into one kind of particle. The discussion includes symmetries in particle physics, symmetry breaking at low temperatures, and unification schemes in general. Joe also discusses both leptoquarks and proton stability in the context of his theory.

Jim talks with Gilad Gour of the University of Toronto about quantum resource theories. These are theories of largish systems that describe the relationships between possible states by the different levels of resources required for each. By using resources, a system can move from one state to another. This results in a partial order where between two states there could be two different states inaccessible to one another. Although (usually) these coalesce into an order based on a single property of thermodynamically-sized systems, the entropy, a few do not. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/68

Jim talks with Matthew R. Edwards about his theory of Optical Gravity. This is a Le Sage model of gravity based on graviton filiments. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/67

Jim talks with James Owen Weatherall about his work on viewing general relativity as an effective field theory and where it should give way to another theory. General relativity does a very good job of describing the world we see in astronomical observations, but certain results, e.g. singularities, and certain limits, e.g. the Planck scale, hint that there should be another theory that supersedes it. Jim Weatherall argues that this is in a high curvature regime. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/66

Jim talks with Michal Eckstein of the Copernicus Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies about how two different kinds of ordering, chronological and causal, give rise to a robust idea of time. Additionally, we discuss the Experiment Paradox, a generalization of other measurement-type paradoxes in physics. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/65

Jim talks with Blake Stacey about recent attempts to replace Born's rule. Born's rule is the principle used in quantum mechanics that associates quantum states to the probability of measurement. There has been a recent interest in Quantum Foundations to try to find a less arbitrary rationale for this procedure. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/64