Apr 29, 2023 12:08 AM
(This post was last modified: Apr 29, 2023 12:17 AM by C C.)
Chemists tackle the tough challenge of recycling mixed plastics
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/986884
EXCERPT: Polymer chemists at Colorado State University have long been leaders in finding ways to tackle the environmental problems humans have created with plastics waste. Now, they’ve come up with fundamental new chemistry that seeds a creative solution to the challenge of recycling mixed-use plastics... (MORE - missing details)
New chemistry can extract virgin-grade materials from wind turbine blades in one process
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/987294
INTRO: Danish researchers have developed a chemical process that can disassemble the epoxy composite of wind turbine blades – and simultaneously extract intact glass fibres as well as one of the epoxy resin's original building blocks in a high quality... (MORE - details)
Artyom Yurov & Valerian Yurov argue the universe is a quantum object, interacting with other quantum universes
https://iai.tv/articles/dark-energy-is-t..._auid=2020
EXCERPTS: . . . Some scientists [...] aimed to show that it is possible to explain quantum mechanics without resorting to the ill-defined concept such as a collapse of a wave function. And they succeeded! In fact, now we know that there are two ways to do it. The first one, independently proposed by the physicists Louis de Broglie and David Bohm, reduces the quantum mechanical effects to a special “quantum force” which is simply added to the equations of classical mechanics. In the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation (often called the “pilot wave interpretation”) ... there are no superpositions...
A second approach, proposed by the American physicist Hugh Everett III, is radically different. According to it, the superpositions are real, but the collapse is not. In other words, a measurement of a quantum object does not destroy terms in the wave function. [...] Thus, according to the many-world interpretation, when we measure the spin of an electron (which can be either “up” or “down”), the universe splits into two: in one of them we observe the “up” spin, while our doppelganger in the parallel universe perceives the “down” spin.
[...] At a first glance the Everett’s picture seems to be much more extravagant and significantly less plausible than the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation. But to an eye of a physicist, it is the latter that is much more suspect, as it fails to satisfactorily explain either a source or a physical nature of the proposed “quantum” forces. On the other hand, over the years the Everett’s many-world interpretation slowly but surely gained popularity among theoretical physicists. At first coldly received by the proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation, who found Everett’s lack of faith in the wave function’s collapse disturbing, new evidence began to sway the opinion of the public.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence for it was the discovery [quantum darwinism], made independently by two prominent physicists Heinz-Dieter Zeh and Wojciech Zurek. [...] For simplicity, let us restrict ourselves to photons. Zeh and Zurek have shown that when a single photon interacts with our electron, it utterly reduces the level of quantum interferences. To an imperfect eye of a classical observer, this looks as if a collapse of the wave function took place ... But in reality, there was no collapse: the superposition remains, albeit in a significantly weakened form. This is what is called decoherence. One can show that under the normal condition ... any macroscopic object undergoes extremely rapid decoherence which all but renders its quantum abnormalities almost imperceptible.
This was the generally accepted state of affairs in the field of quantum mechanics for the last few decades. However [...] In 2014 three physicists, Michael Hall, Dirk-André Deckert and Howard Wiseman made a fascinating discovery: they have managed to unite together the de Broglie-Bohm and the Everett interpretations, constructing a brand new model, called the Many Interacting Worlds interpretation (MIW).
They proposed that our universe is indeed one of many other universes, just like in the many-world interpretation of Everett. But this time there was a little twist: while Everett treated the different universes as distinct and independent from each other, Hall et al. have assumed that the universes might actually influence one another. And how exactly do they do that? Why, via the “quantum” forces, proposed by de Broglie and Bohm, of course!
Here is how it works: for any object (say, an aforementioned electron in a hydrogen atom) there exists a number of its doppelgangers, “doubles” from the parallel universes (different versions of our electrons). We cannot see those doppelgangers, because they interact only with each other. What we can see is the result of that interaction, which manifests itself as an additional repulsive force. In fact, according to MIW, all quantum effects that affect an object are produced by the forces of interaction with the object’s doubles from other universes.
[...] But what about… the universe itself? We have already discussed how the cosmological inflation in an early universe has produced a very smooth, homogeneous and isotropic FLRW universe. [...] All we have to do is to consider a multiverse consisting of many different FLRW universes with various scale factors and add an interactive repulsive force. Following this idea, we have derived the cosmological equations for a universe interacting with its nearby “neighbours” via the quantum force.
To say that what we’ve got has exceeded our expectations would be an understatement. The preliminary results have predicted that the “quantum” forces might act like a dark energy of a special sort! And not only that: the parallel universes closest to ours might also manifest themselves as a dark matter. Imagine our astonishment! (MORE - missing details)
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/986884
EXCERPT: Polymer chemists at Colorado State University have long been leaders in finding ways to tackle the environmental problems humans have created with plastics waste. Now, they’ve come up with fundamental new chemistry that seeds a creative solution to the challenge of recycling mixed-use plastics... (MORE - missing details)
New chemistry can extract virgin-grade materials from wind turbine blades in one process
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/987294
INTRO: Danish researchers have developed a chemical process that can disassemble the epoxy composite of wind turbine blades – and simultaneously extract intact glass fibres as well as one of the epoxy resin's original building blocks in a high quality... (MORE - details)
Artyom Yurov & Valerian Yurov argue the universe is a quantum object, interacting with other quantum universes
https://iai.tv/articles/dark-energy-is-t..._auid=2020
EXCERPTS: . . . Some scientists [...] aimed to show that it is possible to explain quantum mechanics without resorting to the ill-defined concept such as a collapse of a wave function. And they succeeded! In fact, now we know that there are two ways to do it. The first one, independently proposed by the physicists Louis de Broglie and David Bohm, reduces the quantum mechanical effects to a special “quantum force” which is simply added to the equations of classical mechanics. In the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation (often called the “pilot wave interpretation”) ... there are no superpositions...
A second approach, proposed by the American physicist Hugh Everett III, is radically different. According to it, the superpositions are real, but the collapse is not. In other words, a measurement of a quantum object does not destroy terms in the wave function. [...] Thus, according to the many-world interpretation, when we measure the spin of an electron (which can be either “up” or “down”), the universe splits into two: in one of them we observe the “up” spin, while our doppelganger in the parallel universe perceives the “down” spin.
[...] At a first glance the Everett’s picture seems to be much more extravagant and significantly less plausible than the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation. But to an eye of a physicist, it is the latter that is much more suspect, as it fails to satisfactorily explain either a source or a physical nature of the proposed “quantum” forces. On the other hand, over the years the Everett’s many-world interpretation slowly but surely gained popularity among theoretical physicists. At first coldly received by the proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation, who found Everett’s lack of faith in the wave function’s collapse disturbing, new evidence began to sway the opinion of the public.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence for it was the discovery [quantum darwinism], made independently by two prominent physicists Heinz-Dieter Zeh and Wojciech Zurek. [...] For simplicity, let us restrict ourselves to photons. Zeh and Zurek have shown that when a single photon interacts with our electron, it utterly reduces the level of quantum interferences. To an imperfect eye of a classical observer, this looks as if a collapse of the wave function took place ... But in reality, there was no collapse: the superposition remains, albeit in a significantly weakened form. This is what is called decoherence. One can show that under the normal condition ... any macroscopic object undergoes extremely rapid decoherence which all but renders its quantum abnormalities almost imperceptible.
This was the generally accepted state of affairs in the field of quantum mechanics for the last few decades. However [...] In 2014 three physicists, Michael Hall, Dirk-André Deckert and Howard Wiseman made a fascinating discovery: they have managed to unite together the de Broglie-Bohm and the Everett interpretations, constructing a brand new model, called the Many Interacting Worlds interpretation (MIW).
They proposed that our universe is indeed one of many other universes, just like in the many-world interpretation of Everett. But this time there was a little twist: while Everett treated the different universes as distinct and independent from each other, Hall et al. have assumed that the universes might actually influence one another. And how exactly do they do that? Why, via the “quantum” forces, proposed by de Broglie and Bohm, of course!
Here is how it works: for any object (say, an aforementioned electron in a hydrogen atom) there exists a number of its doppelgangers, “doubles” from the parallel universes (different versions of our electrons). We cannot see those doppelgangers, because they interact only with each other. What we can see is the result of that interaction, which manifests itself as an additional repulsive force. In fact, according to MIW, all quantum effects that affect an object are produced by the forces of interaction with the object’s doubles from other universes.
[...] But what about… the universe itself? We have already discussed how the cosmological inflation in an early universe has produced a very smooth, homogeneous and isotropic FLRW universe. [...] All we have to do is to consider a multiverse consisting of many different FLRW universes with various scale factors and add an interactive repulsive force. Following this idea, we have derived the cosmological equations for a universe interacting with its nearby “neighbours” via the quantum force.
To say that what we’ve got has exceeded our expectations would be an understatement. The preliminary results have predicted that the “quantum” forces might act like a dark energy of a special sort! And not only that: the parallel universes closest to ours might also manifest themselves as a dark matter. Imagine our astonishment! (MORE - missing details)
