Grandfather Paradox

 

In the past two months, physicist and professor Tim Ralph of the University of Queensland and his PhD student Martin Ringbauer led a team that experimentally simulated Deutsch's model of CTCs. This is the first time, testing and confirming many aspects of the two-decades-old theory. A lot of their work circles around the "Grandfather Paradox" which is a hypothetical scenario in which a person travels back through time in a CTC also known as a Closed Time Curve back in time to murder their grandfather then preventing them from being born. This creates a paradox that is infinite unless there is an interjection that disrupts and solves or destroys the paradox timeline. 

    Deutsch's quantum solution to the Grandfather paradox goes something like if a girl were to go back in time using a CTC and then killing her grandfather. The girl has a probability of 50% of not traveling back and killing her Grandfather and the Grandfather has  50% chance of escaping her murderous attempt. Thus according to Deutsch, there are good enough probalistic terms to close the causative loop and escape the paradox.

    In the new simulation developed by Ralph, they studied the interaction of two polarized photons within a quantum system is arguably equal to a singular photon traversing a CTC. They made it so the second photon acts as a past incarnation of the first. Because it is currently impossible to send a person into the past, they created a stunt double of the "person" and ran them through a time-loop simulator to see if the doppelganger emerged from the CTC appearing like the original one in that moment in the past. 

    By measuring the polarization state of the second  photon after emerging from the CTC and comparing it to the original first photon before entering the CTC they found that they were the same and got a successful experiment that helps to solidify his theory. Of course they are not sending actual objects or people into the past through CTCs but it is the closest thing to it at this time.

    

Question 1: Do you think that through following this experiment, that it would be possible to traverse a CTC and resolve a paradox?

Question 2: Do you think that CTCs exist and are usable?

Question 3: Do you think people will give up on travelling back and instead travel to the future?

Patrick Young

Laughing Matter: Finding the Roots of Humor in the Brain.

 

 Recently, a team of researchers scanned the brains of professional comedians to identify the brain activity involved in telling jokes. They found that compared to regular people, professional comedians had more brain activity in regions involved in producing humor.
In Los Angeles, they had many professional comedians but also amateurs that they could compare to. They then put the volunteers in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and showed them cartoon pictures with no captions. Each participant was then asked to write a humorous caption, a neutral caption that was not funny or no caption. The result? These scans showed differences in the pleasure centers of the brain, which are thought to be involved in appreciating humor. The normal people showed the most activity in these regions, the amateurs showed a little less, and the professionals showed the least amount. Although, professional comedians showed the most activity in regions of the brain's temporal lobe, which is where the scientists think jokes are made.
The scientists also had another group of people rate the funniness of the jokes, and found that funnier jokes were linked to more brain activity in the humor areas of the listeners. In other words, "you amplify the activity, you amplify the funniness," Amir said.
 http://www.livescience.com/48775-humor-brain-activity.html
1.) Why do YOU think that professional comedians have less activity in the part of the brain that makes you appreciate humor?
2.) Why do you think that  pleasure centers died away more quickly in the brains of the professional comedians than in the brains of the other participants?

Astronomers solve puzzle about bizarre object at center of our galaxy: Enormous black hole drove two binary stars to merge

     Astronomers saw a bizarre object in the center of the milky way and believed that it was a hydrogen gas cloud headed to our galaxy's huge black hole. The astronomers eventually realized that a hydrogen gas cloud would be torn apart by the black hole and would not still be there, so what could this object in the center of our milky way be?

     A team led by Andrea Ghez determined that the object that they had named G2 was most likely to be a pair of binary stars that merged together because of the black hole's powerful gravity. G2 continued its orbit around the black hole, controlled by the black hole's gravitational pull, and a hydrogen cloud would not have done this.

     Ghez and her colleagues went to Hawaii's W.M. Keck Observatory, which has the world's two largest optical telescopes. With these two telescopes they discovered that when two stars near the black hole merge together, it usually takes more than 1 MILLION YEARS before it settles down. They realized that some of the weird stars they have seen near the black hole before might be the end product of mergers that are much calmer now.

      G2 is now in a "spaghetti fication." This is a common phenomenon near black holes in which objects become longer. At the same time, the gas at G2's surface is being heated by stars around it, which makes an enormous cloud of gas and dust that covers most of the huge star.

      The researchers would not have figured this out without the two telescopes. The telescopes more clearly reveals the space around the enormously big black hole. This helped them understand what the massive star actually was.

       As you can see, the mysterious object in the sky is a pair of binary stars that have merged together. The black hole controlled its orbit with its powerful gravity. Ghez and the other astronomers would not have been able to figure the mystery out without the powerful telescopes, and they are starting to understand the physics of black holes in a way that has never been possible before.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141103192136.htm

Questions:

1. If you got to name the two binary stars that merged together, what would you name it, and why?

 2. If the two powerful telescopes were not made yet, how would it have effected the work of the astronomers?

The distracted teenage brain

Most teenagers have a reputation of not making smart decisions, and having a different way of thinking. Some researchers blame those bad decisions on the immaturity of a teenager’s prefrontal cortex. It is the part of the brain that makes decisions and plans (a way of thinking).

 

 A phycologist named Zackary Roper and his team worked with two groups: 13-16 year olds and 20-35 years old. Each person had to play a game. During the game, a computer had six circles on the screen, they were all different colours. The players had to find a red or green circle. These targets had a horizontal or vertical line inside. The other targets had lines at different angles. When a player found the right circle they had to press two keys on a keyboard. The keys they pressed meant they found the circle with the vertical or the horizontal line. When one of the players hit the right key, the screen would flash of how they got it correct.

 

For some players, green circles provided a large (10-cent) reward and red circles rewarded a small (2-cent) reward. For all of the players, the amounts were reversed. With red circles worth more. All other colors had no reward.

 

When the scientist asked the players about the value of red vs. green colors, both teens and adults didn’t know that a circles colour had any effect of how much they earned during the game.

 

 After the game was done, the scientists told the players that they had a new target. Each player had to report the orientation of the line inside the blue diamond. Again, groups of six symbols were on the screen. Only one was a diamond. The other five were still circles. In other trials there were no red and green circles.

 

The researchers checked how long it took for the players to find the diamond and record their answers. When no red or green circles were among the onscreen options, both adults and teens responded quickly. But when a red or green circle showed up, both groups took a bit longer. Adults, though, quickly stopped paying attention to the colored circles.

 

Teens reacted differently. They took longer to respond whenever a red or green circle showed up. Their response times never sped up. Their attention still was drawn to the previously valued circles, even though the shapes no longer brought any reward. The red and green circles were distracting teens from their objective. The game demonstrates that the attention of adolescents is especially drawn to rewarding information. Texting or using social media, trigger the brain’s reward system. Once the teenage brain has linked a behavior to that reward, it continues to seek the reward again and again.

 

This shows that teenagers have a different way of thinking, how will you think it will affect teenagers in life by thinking that way?

What is another reason why teenagers think this way?

Why do adults have a different way of thinking?

India kitchen

Meet a woman who trains robots for a living

Andrea Thomaz worked on a new invention. Can you imagine a robot, who can do cooking or cleaning your house? Andrea Thomaz think that robot will soon learn how to do what we want to do.

She explained that we have to teach the robot, example, how to cook, so how to grab the bowl or how to put sauce on the food. After you show to the robot how to do it, the robot will try to do the same thing or it will ask questions about how it should grab it or how it should hold the plate.

She said that with a little bit of practice, the robot will have a good built of a better model. Mrs. Thomaz said that people want to see the robot doing their chores that they don’t want to do. People wants to see robots doing everything, so they can have more free time.

For a lot of people in the community of human-robot interaction, that is the target—getting robots to a low enough price point that somebody could purchase one to be in their home and do something useful. We’re definitely not there yet, but we’re going to get there. The part of Robot & Frank that matches the vision she has for her lab is that the robot is adaptable.

Soon, human will be able to communicate with robots and soon, it will have to be some part of the end-user interaction.

Questions:

1.    Are robots will be a new treat for the population?

2.    Is it absolutely good for the habitants to have robots, doing their chores and the food? Are we going to be lazier if robots are doing everything? 

By Kim Botton

Surprises lurk inside a Saturn moon

Researchers could find how Mimas, the smallest of Saturn's moons diverse entourage of icy satellites formed because there is a surface sea or a roughly-shaped core might lie in it.

Like in all the moons they turn around in its own axis and facing its planet, but this astronomer Radwan Tajeddine from the Cornell University, noticed that his turn its further than the other moons. The researchers suggest in the Oct. 17 Science that the large twists must be caused by an unusual distribution of mass inside Mimas, which is just under 400 kilometers across.

Tajeddine and colleagues think the most likely culprit is an elongated core, a possible remnant from the moon’s formation.  An underground ocean is also possible, such as the one inside another Saturnian moon.

A few flybys with Cassini, the spacecraft that took the pictures, could let scientists map the moon’s gravity and unearth what Mimas is hiding.

Question1.- What do you think would happen if researchers could understand how Saturn’s diverse entourage of icy satellites formed?

 

Question2.- Why would an ocean affect this moon?

Yellowstone National Park, how the wolves changed rivers

How wolves changed Yellowstone National Park

In 1995, wolves where reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. They had been absent for 70 years. The elk and deer population was big since no other animals where there to cut it down. The deer ate all the grass in the valleys and gorges so no grass or flowers lived there.

When the wolves arrived, they didn’t just kill some deer, the deer moved away from those valleys which lead to the growth of grass and flowers. The trees became taller which brang in plenty of different species of birds. Beavers came in to live there since they ate the trees. They created dams  and niches which allowed other species such as muskrates and otters to live in. The wolves killed the coyotes so the number of rabits and mice went up, which gave life to more hawks and eagles.

The wolves didn’t just change the Yellowstone National Parks ecosystem but also its physical appearence; the wolves changed the rivers. More trees started to grow close to the river banks, reinforcing the banks. The banks stopped collapsing so the river was healthier and wider.

The wolves kept the Yellowstone National Park alive by changing the ecosystem and its physical appearance.

Questions:

1.     Do you know another animal that changed the ecosystem or physical appearance of an area?

2.     How do you think the wolves kept the park alive in a way?

Site of the article:

http://www.geekexchange.com/see-how-wolves-can-change-an-entire-ecosystem-102645.html

Komodo dragon lizard

The Komodo dragon is the biggest lizard I the word. The Komodo dragon can grow up to 10 ft. and weights 70 kilograms. The lizards lives in the Indonesian islands of komodo. The Komodo dragon is a carnivores which means that they just eat meet. They eat invertebrate, birds, pigs, fish, snake and water buffaloes.

The lizard has a venomous bite which contains toxic proteins. The Komodo dragon has bit and eaten several people in the western manggaria regency.

There mating season begins in May and august and the eggs are laid in September. They lay about 20 eggs. The eggs are incubated for seven to eight months hatching in April. Young komodo dragons live in trees safe from predators. They take up to 8 to 9 years to mature and they live up to 30 years. They are also popular zoo exhibits because they are so big.

 

1. do you know another animal who has the same diet as the komodo dragon?

2.do u know another animal who lays eggs at the same months as the komodo dragons

New Species of Mushrooms were Discovered.

        Very recently in the city of London, Bryn Dentinger and Laura Martinez-Suz, mycologists at the Royal Botanic Gardens discovered three new types of mushrooms. But this mushrooms were not funded in the middle of the woods, neither in the middle of a rain forest, but they were founded in a package of dried porcini mushrooms from a grocery store in southwest greater London.

        After founding this rare mushroom species the scientist, using a technique called  DNA barcoding they tested this mushrooms. The technique involves matching the DNA profile of a sample to a database of known species so they can identify the sample. But in three out of 15 pieces tested from the porcini mushroom package, no match was found. This means that this mushrooms are new.

"None of them had scientific names, so these were essentially new species to science," Dentiger told CBC science columnist Torah Kachur. "And we found three different species in the 15 pieces that we sampled from."

        By thinking about this article, in three knew type of mushrooms can be created in a grocery store because of human activity, imagine of what can be created in the future because of us...

Do you think that there are more existing plant or animal species in the natural world than the ones we know?

Do you think that this kind of evolutions can cause a problem in the future?