Quantumology
Join the group on Facebook:
  • Home
  • The Book
  • Blog
  • Lambda
  • Invisibles
  • NNN17
  • SQM2019

Evolving the Electron - Enter the Amplituhedron

9/18/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
Once upon a time there was J.J. Thompson, and in 1897 along with his intrepid team of laboratory explorers he discovered the electron by playing about with cathode rays. For a long time, electrons were thought of as little balls which orbited the nucleus of atoms, as in the picture here. 
Then the electron cloud model came trotting in on the heels of Thompson's discovery, but as you can see from this forum at Ask Jeeves, there is a bit of confusion as to how it actually came into being.
Universe Today gives a rather clearer picture of what the electron cloud model actually is, and explains how and why it does away with the orbital-balls idea. 

Picture
The electron cloud model went so far in taking the scientific imagination away from billiard balls. But without any clues as to alternative 'shapes', the electron remained a complete mystery. The mid-1900s saw other concepts come in, such as zero-point, linking Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to electron behaviour, and thus to quantum behaviour at large. Uncertainty for the scientist is another word for 'fuzzy', meaning that you can't tell where it is precisely, you can only guess where it might roughly be. Thus the human and the electron reached an empasse, with neither sure what the other would do next.

Suddenly, very suddenly indeed in fact, things have started to get really interesting. Blame the Dark Matter hunt if you like - I can happily blame it for almost anything happening in physics at the moment. 
Picture
Here in this new landscape, there are butterflies instead of billiard balls. This is an image of Hofstadter's Butterfly, a fractal representation of electron movement in a magnetic field. The problem is, nobody can quite get a handle on netting this butterfly, and in true human spirit, they won't be sure it exists until they've got it under a glass case. 

Bate your breath, because slamming in out of nowhere, all of a sudden, enters the Amplutihedron, which blasts the dust off our explorer's bush hat and flicks the calculator right out of his hands. The Amplutihedron is big potatoes. I'm choosing to quote from Quanta Magazine because I think this paragraph neatly sums up the reason why 
I'm likening this beautiful object to a quantum rail gun:

"The new geometric version of quantum field theory could facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes. 
The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: 

locality and unitarity.
Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time. And unitarity holds that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical interaction must add up to one. The concepts are the central pillars of quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental aspect of nature."

Picture
Out of the box. That's where our future lies; on the infinite beauty of truth our future depends.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Kathy Ratcliffe has studied quantum mechanics since 1997 in a life surrounded by birds and animals, She's a metaphysicist, if such a thing exists, looking as we all are for the inevitable bridge between humanity and particle physics.

    Archives

    January 2023
    July 2022
    October 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.