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Category: physics – Page 119

Materialism matters: The role of philosophy in science

In this first article in a series on philosophy and science, we take a look at materialism and why it is fundamental to science.

A short disclaimer before we read further: I’m a materialist. Materialism is a branch of philosophy to which the sciences, particularly the physical and life sciences, owe a lot. Materialism posits that the material world — matter — exists, and everything in the Universe, including consciousness, is made from or is a product of matter. An objective reality exists and we can understand it. Without materialism, physics, chemistry, and biology as we know it wouldn’t exist.

Another branch of philosophy, idealism, is in direct contradiction to materialism. Idealism states that, instead of matter, the mind and consciousness are fundamental to reality; that they are immaterial and therefore independent of the material world.

Sagittarius A*: Spinning Black Hole Shapes Spacetime into Football

“A spinning black hole is like a rocket on the launch pad,” said Dr. Biny Sebastian. “Once material gets close enough, it’s like someone has fueled the rocket and hit the ‘launch’ button.”

The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is exhibiting spinning behavior while warping the spacetime environment, according to a recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. A team of international researchers led by Penn State University investigated the spinning patterns of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A•, which is located approximately 26,000 light-years from Earth, and holds the potential to help astrophysicists better understand the behavior of black holes throughout the cosmos.

“A spinning black hole is like a rocket on the launch pad,” said Dr. Biny Sebastian, who is a researcher in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Manitoba and a co-author on the study. “Once material gets close enough, it’s like someone has fueled the rocket and hit the ‘launch’ button.”

For the study, the researchers analyzed data sets from six archival observations obtained by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which has been using its powerful instruments to study the cosmos since its launch in July 1999. Using a method that was developed in a 2019 study by the current study’s lead author, Dr. Ruth Daly, the researchers determined that Sagittarius A* was spinning in such a manner that it is warping the surrounding spacetime environment into a football shape, which becomes flatter as the spin increases and is driven by the surrounding matter and the black hole’s magnetic field. The researchers concluded that if the amount of this matter and magnetic field’s strength change in the future, this could alter the amount of energy the spin exerts out into space.

NASA Sponsored Researcher Suggests It Might Be Possible to Change the Laws of Physics

In an extremely cosmic–brain take, University of Rochester astrophysics professor Adam Frank suggests that a civilization could advance so much that it could eventually tinker with the fundamental laws of physics.

It’s a mind-bending proposition that ventures far beyond the conventional framework of scientific understanding, a reminder that perhaps we should dare to think outside the box — especially as we continue our search for extraterrestrial civilizations.

If a civilization were to be able to change the laws of physics, “the very nature of energy itself, with established rules like energy conservation, would be subject to revision within the scope of engineering,” Frank, who is part of the NASA-sponsored Categorizing Atmospheric Technosignatures program, wrote in an essay for Big Think.

Bubble-Like ‘Stars Within Stars’ Could Explain Black Hole Weirdness

Once hypothetical monsters born in a tangled nest of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, black holes are now recognized as bona fide celestial objects as real as stars, moons, and galaxies.

But make no mistake. Their engines are still as mysterious as they were when the German theoretical physicist Karl Schwarzschild first played with Einstein’s field equations and came to the conclusion that space and time could pucker up into pits of no return.

Goethe University Frankfurt physicists Daniel Jampolski and Luciano Rezzolla have gone back to step one in an attempt to make better sense of the equations that describe black holes and have come away with a solution that’s easier to picture, if no less bizarre.

New mechanism enables the electrical control of the magnetization in magnetic nanodevices

The development of innovative magnetic nanodevices is one step closer to reality thanks to the observation by RIKEN physicists of a type of rotation that can be realized in materials consisting of light elements.

The ability to use to turn revolving mechanical parts led to the development of electric motors and caused an explosion in . Now, physicists are trying to do the same thing but on a nanoscale. However, the development of innovative magnetic nanodevices requires the efficient electrical generation of rotation, or torque.

Usually, torque is generated in by converting electric charge to spin by using the strong spin–orbit interaction of a heavy-metal . The resulting spin current is then injected into adjacent ferromagnetic layers. But heavy-element materials are often incompatible with scalable production processes, and their high resistance makes them unsuitable for some applications.

Researchers synthesize two new isotopes, osmium-160 and tungsten-156

Researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have synthesized two new isotopes—osmium-160 and tungsten-156—which sheds new light on nuclear structures and hints that lead-164 could be a doubly magic nucleus with increased stability.

The study was published in Physical Review Letters and highlighted as an Editors’ Suggestion.

“Magic numbers” of protons and can make an particularly stable. The traditional magic numbers include 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126. In previous studies, researchers discovered the vanishing of traditional magic numbers and the emergence of new magic numbers on the neutron-rich side of the chart of nuclides.

Nestars: Study suggests gravastars akin to nesting doll structure

Physicists have theorized the existence of new types of celestial objects that they name “nestars.”

These are gravitational condensate stars, or gravastars, nestled among other gravitational condensate stars, like a Russian matryoshka doll, or nesting doll.

This type of doll is distinguished by its hollow, round form and the ability to be split apart to reveal a sequence of increasingly smaller dolls nestled inside.

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