Life on Mars

Mars by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot

This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.
We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:
This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.
Jimmy Carter

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The IAU firmly opposes any discrimination based on factors such as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, and political or other opinion and therefore expects U.S. officials to not discriminate on the basis of religion.
(read more)

JMP 57, 12: quantum mechanics for the universe

I will begin to publish posts in a more continuous way, also recovering some drafts that I'm not able to conclude in 2016. For now I propose you a selection of articles from the Journal of Mathematical Physics, vol.57, issue 12:

Andersson, A. (2016). Electromagnetism in terms of quantum measurements Journal of Mathematical Physics, 57 (12) DOI: 10.1063/1.4972287

We consider the question whether electromagnetism can be derived from the theory of quantum measurements. It turns out that this is possible, both for quantum and classical electromagnetism, if we use more recent innovations such as smearing of observables and simultaneous measurability. In this way, we justify the use of von Neumann-type measurement models for physical processes. We apply the operational quantum measurement theory to gain insight into fundamental aspects of quantum physics. Interactions of von Neumann type make the Heisenberg evolution of observables describable using explicit operator deformations. In this way, one can obtain quantized electromagnetism as a measurement of a system by another. The relevant deformations (Rieffel deformations) have a mathematically well-defined "classical" limit which is indeed classical electromagnetism for our choice of interaction.

Aerts, D., & Sassoli de Bianchi, M. (2016). The extended Bloch representation of quantum mechanics: Explaining superposition, interference, and entanglement Journal of Mathematical Physics, 57 (12) DOI: 10.1063/1.4973356

An extended Bloch representation of quantum mechanics was recently derived to offer a possible (hidden-measurements) solution to the measurement problem. In this article we use this representation to investigate the geometry of superposition and entangled states, explaining interference effects and entanglement correlations in terms of the different orientations a state-vector can take within the generalized Bloch sphere. We also introduce a tensorial determination of the generators of $SU(N)$, which we show to be particularly suitable for the description of multipartite systems, from the viewpoint of the sub-entities. We then use it to show that non-product states admit a general description where sub-entities can remain in well-defined states, even when entangled. This means that the completed version of quantum mechanics provided by the extended Bloch representation, where density operators are also considered to be representative of genuine states (providing a complete description), not only offers a plausible solution to the measurement problem but also to the lesser-known entanglement problem. This is because we no longer need to give up the general physical principle saying that a composite entity exists and therefore is in a well-defined state, if and only if its components also exist and therefore are also in well-defined states.

Super Science Friends: how to save Newton

There is a new animated series in the city⁽¹⁾: Super Science Friends. Created by Brett Jubinville of Tinman Creative Studios, it was funded the first short through Kickstarter, while the rest of the episodes can be supported on Patreon.
The series is evidently inspired by Super Friends, produced by Hanna-Barbera for DC Comics, with the place of the heroes of JLA taken by some iconic scientists: Marie Curie, with a radioactive ring similar to Green Lantern’s one; Charles Darwin, able to transform into any animal, like Beast Boy from the Teen Titans; Nikola Tesla, with electromagnetic powers, like Magneto from Marvel universe, historical X-Men enemy; Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis with oversight of lust, to be seen as an alternative to Aquaman with his oversight of aquatic creatures.

Star Trek Network

Using data from tv series and movie, Star Trek Viz relizes some network plots with the connections between the characters of one of the most famous sci-fi serie.

Four all new exotic particles

LHCb has recently observed four new exotic-like particles in the decay of the $B^+$:

he properties of these structures are consistent with their interpretation as four-quark particles, which are considered as "exotic", (hence the "exotic-like" name in the title), although the details of the four quark $c{\bar c}s{\bar s}$ binding mechanism is still under discussion.

Read also paper 1 and paper 2

Juno: Journey into the unknown

The Juno Mission is travelling in space and it'll arrive near Jupiter today. Waiting this new space event, watch the trailer of the mission:

The Newton Medal is (bit) late

I think there is a subtle black humor in the 2016 Isaac Newton Medal, that was awarded by Tom Kibble:

The award is recognition of his contributions to mankind through his insight into the origins of mass and also through establishing astroparticle physics as a new branch of physics.

Kibble died on the 2nd June 2016 and he cannot retire the prize, but in every case we can remember his most important contribution, Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles with Gerald Guralnik and Carl Richard Hagen about the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism:

An intersting reading about the story behind the paper is The History of the Theory of the Spontaneous Breaking by Guralnik:

Shortly thereafter, as we were literally placing the manuscript in the envelope to be sent to PRL, Kibble came into the office bearing two papers by Higgs and the one by Englert and Brout. These had just arrived in the then very slow and unreliable (because of strikes and the peculiarities of Imperial College) mail. We were very surprised and even amazed. We had no idea that there was any competing interest in the problem, particularly outside of the United States. Hagen and I quickly glanced at these papers and thought that, while they aimed at the same point, they did not form a serious chall enge to our work.

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G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, T. W. B. Kibble, 1964, 'Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles', Physical Review Letters, vol. 13, no. 20, pp. 585-587 http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.13.585 (sci-hib)

Gerald S. Guralnik, 2009, The History of the Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble development of the Theory of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Gauge Particles, International Journal of Modern Physics A, vol. 24, no. 14, pp. 2601-2627 http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0217751x09045431 (arXiv)