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The Origins of Binary Black Holes May Be Hidden in Their Spins, Study Suggests : ScienceAlert
In a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysical Letters, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used various computer models to examine 69 confirmed binary black holes to help determine their origin and found their data results changed based on the model’s configurations.
Essentially, the input consistently altered the output, and the researchers wish to better understand both how and why this occurs and what steps can be taken to have more consistent results.
“When you change the model and make it more flexible or make different assumptions, you get a different answer about how black holes formed in the universe,” Sylvia Biscoveanu, an MIT graduate student working in the LIGO Laboratory, and a co-author on the study, said in a statement.
“We show that people need to be careful because we are not yet at the stage with our data where we can believe what the model tells us.”
Like binary stars, binary black holes are two massive objects orbiting each other, with both having the ability to potentially collide – or merge – together, with another shared characteristic being black holes are sometimes born from the collapse of dying massive stars, also known as a supernova.
But how binary black holes originated remains a mystery, as there are two current hypotheses regarding their formation: “field binary evolution” and “dynamical assembly”.
Field binary evolution involves when a pair of binary stars explode, resulting in two black holes in their place, which continue orbiting each other the same as before.
Since they initially orbited each other as binary stars, it is believed their spins and tilts should be aligned, as well.
Scientists also hypothesize that their aligned spins indicate they originated from a galactic disk, given its relatively peaceful environment.
Dynamical assembly involves when two individual black holes, each with their own unique tilt and spin, are eventually brought together by extreme astrophysical processes, to form their own binary black hole system.
It is currently hypothesized that this pairing would likely happen in a dense environment such as a globular cluster, where thousands of stars in close proximity could force two black holes together.
The real question is: What fraction of binary black holes originate from each respective method? Astronomers believe this answer lies in the data, specifically black hole spin measurements.
Using the 69 confirmed binary black holes, astronomers have determined these massive objects could originate from both globular clusters and galactic disks.
The LIGO Laboratory in the United States has worked with its Italian counterpart, Virgo, to ascertain the spins (rotational periods) of the 69 confirmed binary black holes.
“But we wanted to know, do we have enough data to make this distinction?” said Biscoveanu. “And it turns out, things are messy and uncertain, and it’s harder than it looks.”
For the study, the researchers continuously tweaked a series of computer models to ascertain whether their results agreed with each model’s predictions.
One such model was configured to assume only a fraction of binary black holes were produced with aligned spins, where the remainder have random spins. Another model was configured to predict a moderately contrasting spin orientation.
In the end, their findings indicated the results consistently changed in accordance with the tweaked models.
Essentially, results were consistently altered based on the model’s tweaks, meaning more data than the 69 confirmed binary black holes is likely needed to have more consistent results.
“Our paper shows that your result depends entirely on how you model your astrophysics, rather than the data itself,” said Biscoveanu.
“We need more data than we thought, if we want to make a claim that is independent of the astrophysical assumptions we make,” said Salvatore Vitale, who is an associate professor of physics, a member of the Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT, and lead author of the study.
But how much more data will the astronomers require? Vitale estimates the LIGO network will be able to detect one new binary black hole every few days, once the network returns to service in early 2023.
“The measurements of the spins we have now are very uncertain,” said Vitale.
“But as we build up a lot of them, we can gain better information. Then we can say, no matter the detail of my model, the data always tells me the same story – a story that we could then believe.”
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.
Study Suggests Spins of ‘Brain Water’ Could Mean Our Minds Use Quantum Computation : ScienceAlert
In the ongoing work to realize the full potential of quantum computing, scientists could perhaps try peering into our own brains to see what’s possible: A new study suggests that the brain actually has a lot in common with a quantum computer.
The findings could teach us a lot about the functions of neurons as well as the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. The research might explain, for example, why our brains are still able to outperform supercomputers on certain tasks, such as making decisions or learning new information.
As with much quantum computing research, the study looks at the idea of entanglement – two separate particles being in states that are linked together
“We adapted an idea, developed for experiments to prove the existence of quantum gravity, whereby you take known quantum systems, which interact with an unknown system,” says physicist Christian Kerskens from the University of Dublin.
“If the known systems entangle, then the unknown must be a quantum system, too. It circumvents the difficulties to find measuring devices for something we know nothing about.”
In other words, the entanglement or relationship between the known systems can only happen if the mediating system in the middle – the unknown system – operates on a quantum level, too. While the unknown system can’t be studied directly, its effects can be observed, as with quantum gravity.
For the purposes of this research, the proton spins of ‘brain water’ (the fluid that builds up in the brain) act as the known system, with custom magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans used to non-invasively measure the proton activity. The spin of a particle, which determines its magnetic and electrical properties, is a quantum-mechanical property.
Through this technique, the researchers were able to see signals resembling heartbeat-evoked potentials, which are a type of electroencephalography (EEG) signal. These signals aren’t normally detectable via MRI, and the thinking is that they showed up because the nuclear proton spins in the brain were entangled.
The observations recorded by the team require verification via confirmation via future studies across multiple scientific fields, but the early results look promising for non-classical, quantum happenings in the human brain when it’s active.
“If entanglement is the only possible explanation here then that would mean that brain processes must have interacted with the nuclear spins, mediating the entanglement between the nuclear spins,” says Kerskens.
“As a result, we can deduce that those brain functions must be quantum.”
The brain functions that lit up the MRI readings were also associated with short-term memory and conscious awareness, and that suggests the quantum processes – if that’s indeed what they are – play a crucial role in cognition and consciousness, suggests Kerskens.
What researchers need to do next is to learn more about this unknown quantum system in the brain – and then we might fully understand the workings of the quantum computer that we’re carrying around in our heads.
“Our experiments, performed only 50 meters away from the lecture theatre where Schrödinger presented his famous thoughts about life, may shed light on the mysteries of biology, and on consciousness which scientifically is even harder to grasp,” says Kerskens.
The research has been published in the Journal of Physics Communications.
Google spins out secret hi-speed telecom project called Aalyria
The logo of Google is seen at the high profile startups and high tech leaders gathering, Viva Tech,in Paris, France May 16, 2019.
Charles Platiau | Reuters
Inside Google, a team of techies has been working behind the scenes on software for high-speed communications networks that extend from land to space.
Codenamed “Minkowski” within Google, the secret project is being unveiled to the public on Monday as a new spinout called Aalyria.
While Google declined to offer details about Aalyria, such as how long it’s been working on the technology and how many employees are joining the startup, Aalyria said in a news release that its mission is to manage “hyper fast, ultra-secure, and highly complex communications networks that span land, sea, air, near space, and deep space.”
The company says it has a laser communications technology “on an exponentially greater scale and speed than anything that exists today.” Aalyria’s software platform has been used in multiple aerospace networking projects for Google.
The spinout comes as Google parent Alphabet reckons with a slowdown in ad spending and looks to advance or wind down experimental projects. That in part means seeking external funding for some of the projects that it’s incubated for years. Businesses such as life sciences company Verily and self-driving car maker Waymo have raised money from outside investors, while Alphabet has shuttered initiatives such as Makani, which was building power-generating kites, and internet-beaming balloon business Loon.
Aalyria said it has an $8.7 million commercial contract with the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit. The company will be led by CEO Chris Taylor, a national security expert who has led other companies that have worked with the government. Taylor’s LinkedIn profile says he’s the CEO of a company in stealth mode that he founded in November.
Alphabet itself has been pursuing more lucrative government contracts and earlier this year announced “Google Public Sector,” a new subsidiary geared at U.S. government partnerships primarily through Google Cloud.
Aalyria’s board of advisors includes several previous Google employees and executives as well as Vint Cerf, Google’s chief internet evangelist who’s known as one of the fathers of the web.
Google will retain a minority stake in Aalyria but declined to say how much it owns and how much outside funding the company has raised. Google said that earlier this year it transferred nearly a decade’s worth of intellectual property, patents and physical assets, including office space, to Aalyria.
Aalyria’s light laser technology, which it calls “Tightbeam,” claims to keep data “intact through the atmosphere and weather and offers connectivity where no supporting infrastructure exists.”
“Tightbeam radically improves satellite communications, Wi-Fi on planes and ships, and cellular connectivity everywhere,” the company said.
WATCH: A ride in a self-driving Waymo
Scientists see spins in a 2D magnet
All magnets—from the simple souvenirs hanging on your refrigerator to the disks that give your computer memory to the powerful versions used in research labs—contain spinning quasiparticles called magnons. The direction one magnon spins can influence that of its neighbor, which affects the spin of its neighbor, and so on, yielding what are known as spin waves. Information can potentially be transmitted via spin waves more efficiently than with electricity, and magnons can serve as “quantum interconnects” that “glue” quantum bits together into powerful computers.
Magnons have enormous potential, but they are often difficult to detect without bulky pieces of lab equipment. Such setups are fine for conducting experiments, but not for developing devices, said Columbia researcher Xiaoyang Zhu, such as magnonic devices and so-called spintronics. Seeing magnons can be made much simpler, however, with the right material: a magnetic semiconductor called chromium sulfide bromide (CrSBr) that can be peeled into atom-thin, 2D layers, synthesized in Department of Chemistry professor Xavier Roy’s lab.
In a new article in Nature, Zhu and collaborators at Columbia, the University of Washington, New York University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory show that magnons in CrSBr can pair up with another quasiparticle called an exciton, which emits light, offering the researchers a means to “see” the spinning quasiparticle.
As they perturbed the magnons with light, they observed oscillations from the excitons in the near-infrared range, which is nearly visible to the naked eye. “For the first time, we can see magnons with a simple optical effect,” Zhu said.
The results may be viewed as quantum transduction, or the conversion of one “quanta” of energy to another, said first author Youn Jun (Eunice) Bae, a postdoc in Zhu’s lab. The energy of excitons is four orders of magnitude larger than that of magnons; now, because they pair together so strongly, we can easily observe tiny changes in the magnons, Bae explained. This transduction may one day enable researchers to build quantum information networks that can take information from spin-based quantum bits—which generally need to be located within millimeters of each other—and convert it to light, a form of energy that can transfer information up to hundreds of miles via optical fibers
The coherence time—how long the oscillations can last—was also remarkable, Zhu said, lasting much longer than the five-nanosecond limit of the experiment. The phenomenon could travel over seven micrometers and persist even when the CrSBr devices were made of just two atom-thin layers, raising the possibility of building nanoscale spintronic devices. These devices could one day be more efficient alternatives to today’s electronics. Unlike electrons in an electrical current that encounter resistance as they travel, no particles are actually moving in a spin wave.
From here, the researchers plan to explore CrSBr’s quantum information potential, as well as other material candidates. “In the MRSEC and EFRC, we are exploring the quantum properties of several 2D materials that you can stack like papers to create all kinds of new physical phenomena,” Zhu said.
For example, if magnon-exciton coupling can be found in other kinds of magnetic semiconductors with slightly different properties than CrSBr, they might emit light in a wider range of colors.
“We’re assembling the toolbox to construct new devices with customizable properties,” Zhu added.
Unique quantum material could enable ultra-powerful, compact computers
More information:
Youn Jue Bae et al, Exciton-coupled coherent magnons in a 2D semiconductor, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05024-1
Youn Jue Bae et al, Exciton-coupled coherent magnons in a 2D semiconductor, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05024-1
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Scientists baffled as Earth spins faster than usual
Scientists have been left baffled after discovering the Earth is spinning faster than normal — making days shorter than usual.
New measurements by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory show that the Earth is spinning faster than it was half a century ago.
On June 29, the Earth’s full rotation took 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours — the shortest day ever recorded.
Scientists have warned that, if the rotation rate continues to speed up, we may need to remove a second from our atomic clocks.
“If Earth’s fast rotation continues, it could lead to the introduction of the first-ever negative leap second,” astrophysicist Graham Jones reported via TimeandDate.com.
“This would be required to keep civil time — which is based on the super-steady beat of atomic clocks — in step with solar time, which is based on the movement of the sun across the sky.
“A negative leap second would mean that our clocks skip one second, which could potentially create problems for IT systems.”
Researchers at Meta said a leap second would have colossal effects on technology and become a “major source of pain” for hardware infrastructures.
“The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers,” a blog post on the topic, authored by researchers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi, claimed.
“In any case, every leap second is a major source of pain for people who manage hardware infrastructures.”
Scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard and Nikolay Sidorenkov claim the irregular rotations are the result of something called the Chandler Wobble, an irregular movement of Earth’s geographical poles across the surface of the globe.
“The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about 3m to 4m at Earth’s surface,” Zotov told TimeandDate, “but from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared.”
Some experts believe the melting and refreezing of ice caps on the world’s tallest mountains could be contributing to the irregular speed.
“Earth has recorded its shortest day since scientists began using atomic clocks to measure its rotational speed,” TimeandDate reported.
“On June 29, 2022, Earth completed one spin in 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours. This is the latest in a series of speed records for Earth since 2020.”
Zotov told TimeandDate that there’s a “70 percent chance” the planet has already reached the minimum length of a day, meaning we will likely never have to use a negative leap second.
However, Zoltov admitted there is no way to know for certain with current technology.
Physicists Are Startled by This Magnetic Material That ‘Freezes’ When Heated
When disordered magnetic materials are cooled to just the right temperature, something interesting happens. The spins of their atoms ‘freeze’ and lock into place in a static pattern, exhibiting cooperative behavior not usually displayed.
Now for the first time, physicists have seen the opposite. When fractionally heated, the naturally occurring magnetic element neodymium freezes, turning all our expectations topsy turvy.
“The magnetic behavior in neodymium that we observed is actually the opposite of what ‘normally’ happens,” said physicist Alexander Khajetoorians of Radboud University in the Netherlands.
“It’s quite counterintuitive, like water that becomes an ice cube when it’s heated up.”
In a conventional ferromagnetic material, such as iron, the magnetic spins of the atoms all align in the same direction; that is, their north and south magnetic poles are oriented the same way in three-dimensional space.
But in some materials, such as some alloys of copper and iron, the spins are instead quite random. This state is what is known as a spin glass.
You might be thinking “but neodymium is well known for making excellent magnets” and you’d be right… but it has to be mixed with iron in order for the spins to align. Pure neodymium doesn’t behave like other magnets; it was only two years ago that physicists determined this material is, in fact, best described as a self-induced spin glass.
Now, it seems, neodymium is even stranger than we thought.
When you heat a material, the rise in temperature increases the energy in that material. In the case of magnets, this increases the motion of the spins. But the opposite also occurs: When you cool down a magnet, the spins slow.
For spin glasses, freezing temperature is the point at which the spin glass behaves more like a conventional ferromagnet.
Led by physicist Benjamin Verlhac of Radboud University, a team of scientists wanted to probe how neodymium behaves under changing temperatures. Interestingly, they found that raising the temperature of neodymium from -268 degrees Celsius to -265 degrees Celsius (-450.4 to -445 Fahrenheit) induced the freeze state usually seen when cooling a spin glass.
When the scientists cooled the neodymium back down, the spins once again fell into disarray.
It’s unclear why this occurs, since it’s very rare that a natural material behaves in the ‘wrong’ way, contrary to how all the other materials of its kind behave. However, the scientists believe that it may have to do with a phenomenon called frustration.
This is when a material is unable to attain an ordered state, resulting in a disordered ground state, such as we see in spin glasses.
It’s possible, the researchers said, that neodymium has certain correlations in its spin glass state that are dependent on temperature. Raising the temperature weakens these, and also therefore the frustration, allowing the spins to settle into an alignment.
Further investigation could reveal the mechanism behind this odd behavior in which order emerges from disorder with the addition of energy; the researchers note this has implications ranging far beyond physics.
“This ‘freezing’ of the pattern does not normally occur in magnetic material,” Khajetoorians explained.
“If we ultimately can model how these materials behave, this could also be extrapolated to the behavior of a wide range of other materials.”
The research has been published in Nature Physics.
A Black Hole Spins on Its Side – “Completely Unexpected”
Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, found that the axis of rotation of a 
Artist impression of the X-ray binary system MAXI J1820+070 containing a black hole (small black dot at the center of the gaseous disk) and a companion star. A narrow jet is directed along the black hole spin axis, which is strongly misaligned from the rotation axis of the orbit. Image produced with Binsim. Credit: R. Hynes
Often for the space systems with smaller objects orbiting around the central massive body, the own rotation axis of this body is to a high degree aligned with the rotation axis of its satellites. This is true also for our solar system: the planets orbit around the Sun in a plane, which roughly coincides with the equatorial plane of the Sun. The inclination of the Sun rotation axis with respect to orbital axis of the Earth is only seven degrees.
“The expectation of alignment, to a large degree, does not hold for the bizarre objects such as black hole X-ray binaries. The black holes in these systems were formed as a result of a cosmic cataclysm – the collapse of a massive star. Now we see the black hole dragging matter from the nearby, lighter companion star orbiting around it. We see bright optical and X-ray radiation as the last sigh of the infalling material, and also radio emission from the relativistic jets expelled from the system,” says Juri Poutanen, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Turku and the lead author of the publication.
Artist impression of the X-ray binary system MAXI J1820+070 containing a black hole (small black dot at the center of the gaseous disk) and a companion star. A narrow jet is directed along the black hole spin axis, which is strongly misaligned from the rotation axis of the orbit. Image produced with Binsim. Credit: R. Hynes
By following these jets, the researchers were able to determine the direction of the axis of rotation of the black hole very accurately. As the amount of gas falling from the companion star to the black hole later began to decrease, the system dimmed, and much of the light in the system came from the companion star. In this way, the researchers were able to measure the orbit inclination using spectroscopic techniques, and it happened to nearly coincide with the inclination of the ejections.
“To determine the 3D orientation of the orbit, one additionally needs to know the position angle of the system on the sky, meaning how the system is turned with respect to the direction to the North on the sky. This was measured using polarimetric techniques,” says Juri Poutanen.
The results published in the Science magazine open interesting prospects towards studies of black hole formation and evolution of such systems, as such extreme misalignment is hard to get in many black hole formation and binary evolution scenarios.
“The difference of more than 40 degrees between the orbital axis and the black hole spin was completely unexpected. Scientists have often assumed this difference to be very small when they have modeled the behavior of matter in a curved time space around a black hole. The current models are already really complex, and now the new findings force us to add a new dimension to them,” Poutanen states.
Reference: “Black hole spin–orbit misalignment in the x-ray binary MAXI J1820+070” by Juri Poutanen, Alexandra Veledina, Andrei V. Berdyugin, Svetlana V. Berdyugina, Helen Jermak, Peter G. Jonker, Jari J. E. Kajava, Ilia A. Kosenkov, Vadim Kravtsov, Vilppu Piirola, Manisha Shrestha, Manuel A. Perez Torres and Sergey S. Tsygankov, 24 February 2022, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abl4679
The key finding was made using the in-house built polarimetric instrument DIPol-UF mounted at the Nordic Optical Telescope, which is owned by the University of Turku jointly with the
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Tropical disturbance still expected to pass over Florida; Hurricane Larry spins in Atlantic
ORLANDO, Fla. – The National Hurricane Center is keeping tabs on two systems in the tropics as the peak of hurricane season nears.
An area of low pressure over the south-central Gulf of Mexico is expected to move slowly to the northeast over the next couple of days.
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The tropical disturbance has a 40% chance of development over the next five days, according to the NHC.
According to the National Hurricane Center, upper-level winds are not currently favorable for development but they are forecast to become more conducive for limited development as the system nears the northern Gulf coast on Wednesday and Wednesday night.
The system is projected to pass over Florida later this week — bringing rain but not tropical conditions — and could likely develop in the Atlantic as it moves along the coast of the Carolinas next week.
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Meantime, Hurricane Larry continues to spin about 1,500 miles away from the Florida coast.
Larry, a Category 3 hurricane packing 115 mph winds, will bring strong rip currents to Central Florida beaches for the next several days.
As of Tuesday morning, Larry was 780 miles southeast of Bermuda and heading northwest at 9 mph.
The projected path from hurricane experts shows Larry moving east of Bermuda by Thursday night. A tropical storm watch is currently in effect for Bermuda.
If Larry stays on that path, it will not directly impact the United States. While not directly impacting the U.S., the system is indirectly impacting the U.S. coast with large swells that are creating life-threatening rip currents along Central Florida’s beaches.
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The next named storms will be called Mindy and Nicholas.
Sept. 10 marks the peak of hurricane season, which runs through November.
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