Author Archives: Suresh Emre

Few Trends (2)

Posted on December 22, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Trends in Google web search between 2004 – 2022 Search term: spirituality Search term: soul Search term: consciousness Search term: divine love Search term: poetry Search term: artificial intelligence Search term: machine learning Search term: qubit Search term: primordial Search … Continue reading →

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Update on major US accelerator projects

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Image credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory (the internal quark and gluon substructure of the proton grows more complex when probed at increasing center-of-mass energies). Fermilab Progress Update Fermilab PIP-II project Brookhaven Electron-Ion Collider LCLS-II Free Electron Laser Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) … Continue reading →

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Free textbooks in the field of particle physics

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Suresh Emre

https://scoap3.org/scoap3-books/

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Is interaction a computation?

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Suresh Emre

My understanding of Seth Lloyd’s thesis [1][2][3] is that information is fundamental and any interaction (change, dynamics) involves computation. This is in line with John A. Wheeler’s “it from bit” program. You can reach Wheeler’s classic essay from the link … Continue reading →

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Why is the quantum uncertainty intrinsic?

Posted on November 26, 2022 by Suresh Emre

image credit: Stanford University The root cause of intrinsic uncertainty is related to one of the essential characteristics of Consciousness: seeking freedom. Consciousness escapes the confinement of its own doing in myriad ways. Such is the Cosmic Play! Consciousness seeks … Continue reading →

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Why did God make the world quantum rather than classical?

Posted on November 19, 2022 by Suresh Emre

I saw the question “Why did God make the world quantum rather than classical?” in John Horgan’s Scott Aaronson interview in 2016. In that long interview Scott Aaronson takes great care to provide answers to Horgan’s questions.  The responses to … Continue reading →

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Semantic Similarity

Posted on October 28, 2022 by Suresh Emre

The concept of “semantic similarity” is different from the concept of “textual similarity”. Semantic similarity is about the closeness in meaning of the two texts, and lexical similarity is about the lexical closeness of the two texts. Measuring semantic similarity … Continue reading →

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Astronomy Simulations

Posted on October 21, 2022 by Suresh Emre

This website contains amazing educational material (astronomy simulations) http://astro.unl.edu/animationsLinks.html Thanks to Astronomy Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Milky Way stellar disk is warped in its outer regions

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Suresh Emre

This is old news from 2019 but important to note for educational purposes. The distribution of stars in the outer regions of the Milky Way galaxy deviates from a flat disk shape. The conclusion [1] was based on the distances … Continue reading →

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On the conservation of information

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Is there a physics law that dictates information cannot be destroyed? No. But some physicists invoke the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the unitarity principle of Quantum Mechanics to support the claim that information is conserved. It is easy to … Continue reading →

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What is information?

Posted on September 25, 2022 by Suresh Emre

There is no consensus on the definition of “consciousness”. The situation is not that bad with “information” but still a vague concept despite great advances in the quantification of information by scientists and engineers. Philosophers are getting into this game … Continue reading →

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Probability, information and Shannon entropy

Posted on September 17, 2022 by Suresh Emre

I would like to thank John Baez one more time for his heroic efforts in educating the public. I learn a lot from his website. The tutorial material below is from his July 2022 diary. I added commentary. Quantitative measure … Continue reading →

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Physics of Life: A Free Book by the National Academies of Sciences-Engineering-Medicine

Posted on August 20, 2022 by Suresh Emre

“Biological physics now has emerged fully as a field of physics, alongsidemore traditional fields of astrophysics and cosmology, atomic, molecular and opticalphysics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, particle physics, and plasmaphysics.” https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/biological-physicsphysics-of-living-systems-a-decadal-survey You can follow the links View Report –> … Continue reading →

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What is the difference between algebraic geometry and algebraic topology?

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Suresh Emre

I am not a mathematician. I am just trying to understand the difference between algebraic geometry and algebraic topology, categorically. spatial objects: surfaces, spheres, tori, circles, knots, links, configuration spaces, etc. Algebraic Geometry University of Oxford Mathematical Institute: “As its … Continue reading →

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Update on neutron lifetime (mirror neutron hypothesis falsified)

Posted on July 22, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Bound to the atomic nucleus neutron is stable. Free from the nucleus neutron decays into (proton + electron + electron type antineutrino) in about 15 minutes.  Free neutrons inside a bottle decay in 877.8 ± 0.3 seconds. [1] Free neutrons … Continue reading →

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Higgs boson, ten years after its discovery

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Suresh Emre

The discovery of the Higgs boson was announced on July 4, 2012. Today, on the 10’th anniversary of the announcement, CERN released articles. The CMS and ATLAS experiments released statements as well. Higgs10: When spring 2012 turned to summer The … Continue reading →

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So much creative talent is wasted

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Suresh Emre

In the modern world there are many outlets for the driven intellectuals. They find a way to express themselves. But those who are buried under heavy burdens, working on never-ending mundane tasks, need encouragement to come out of their shells. … Continue reading →

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Reality+ (new book by David J. Chalmers)

Posted on May 28, 2022 by Suresh Emre

David J. Chalmers is my favorite philosopher. I have been following his work since 1994. He is known for his contributions to the academic studies of consciousness. For many years he was focused on the question: “What is consciousness?” In … Continue reading →

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Closure Problem of Emergence

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Abstract: Aristotle stated that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Modern scientists came to the same conclusion. Phillip W. Anderson wrote an influential article titled “More is Different” in 1972 [1]. Many other scientists joined him in … Continue reading →

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Learning to trust our intuition

Posted on April 30, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Development of new ideas starts with learning to trust our intuition. Then comes the hard part of working out the details. Presentation is a big job too. After the presentation, the probability of being ignored by professional scientists is very … Continue reading →

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Excitement about the new value of the W boson mass

Posted on April 22, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Tevatron was the highest energy accelerator in the world for 25 years between 1986-2011 colliding protons and antiprotons at the center-of-mass energy of 1.8 Tev. CDF was one of the two detectors (D0 being the other one) performing measurements using … Continue reading →

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CLA (circle, line, angle) symbolism

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Circle is a symbol of confinement. Dimensionless point symbolizes freedom. Straight line is a symbol of the escape from confinement. Straight line cannot symbolize freedom because line is a form. All forms are bounded therefore not free. Circle is a … Continue reading →

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First sentence of a book

Posted on April 9, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Authors sometimes spend years to decide about the first sentence of their book. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is famous for his opening lines. This is the most famous one: “I read a book one day and my whole life was … Continue reading →

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Truth

Posted on April 2, 2022 by Suresh Emre

IEP article on “Truth”: https://iep.utm.edu/truth/ SEP article on “Truth”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/ Wikipedia article on “Truth”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth Dictionary “Truth”: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/truth

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Zero mass but non-zero weight

Posted on March 26, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Photons have zero rest mass but non-zero weight. There is a tutorial paper on this by M.B. van der Mark and G.W. ‘t Hooft titled “Light is heavy“. Physicists do not use the term “rest mass” anymore. More appropriate term … Continue reading →

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Is it possible for the brain to use backpropagation?

Posted on March 19, 2022 by Suresh Emre

This is a follow-up on my earlier post titled “No useful theory of biological neural computation yet“. A recent Quanta article titled “Artificial Neural Nets Finally Yield Clues to How Brains Learn” by Anil Ananthaswamy gives me hope that Neuroscientists … Continue reading →

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Grand idea of Semantic Web is dying

Posted on March 13, 2022 by Suresh Emre

It looks like the grand idea of Semantic Web is dying. That would be a shame! This article ( Whatever happened to the Semantic Web? ) summarizes the state of the Semantic Web project as of 2018. The official FAQ … Continue reading →

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The Mysterious Google PageRank Algorithm

Posted on March 5, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Even though there are many clues about the factors used by the Google PageRank algorithm it remains mysterious. They will never tell us exactly how it works to prevent manipulation. Besides, they calibrate their algorithm continuously based on experiments. Citations … Continue reading →

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A Lecture on Falsafa by Nicholas Heer

Posted on March 4, 2022 by Suresh Emre

There is an informative article titled “A Lecture on Islamic Philosophy” written by Nicholas Heer. Let me remind you that the “Islamic Philosophy” here refers to the intellectual tradition known as falsafa which is distinct from “Islamic Theology”. Falsafa is distinct … Continue reading →

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Artificial Associative Memory

Posted on February 26, 2022 by Suresh Emre

The classic book on artificial associative memory is T. Kohonen’s “Self-Organization and Associative Memory” [1]. Kohonen’s most famous contribution is the Self-Organizing Map. Prof. Kohonen recently passed away on December 13, 2021, at the age of 87. There is also a … Continue reading →

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Open access to Turkish academic journals

Posted on February 12, 2022 by Suresh Emre

English: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/ Turkish: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/ DergiPark provides open access to articles published in Turkish academic journals. DergiPark is the national journal management and publication system of Turkey. Only open access journals are hosted by DergiPark. A significant portion of the articles … Continue reading →

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Symmetry Magazine’s “Quantum Ecosystem” articles

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Suresh Emre

The Symmetry Online Magazine published a series of articles to educate public about quantum computing. Playing by the quantum rules The second quantum revolution From bits to qubits What is quantum information? More than one way to make a qubit … Continue reading →

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Latest on proton and antiproton charge-to-mass ratio

Posted on January 15, 2022 by Suresh Emre

Latest results from the BASE experiment at CERN published in Nature [1] shows that the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and antiprotons are the same to a precision of 16 parts per trillion. This is a new record in precision. (charge_proton/mass_proton) … Continue reading →

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Citation statistics in scientific categories

Posted on December 30, 2021 by Suresh Emre

This is a follow-up on my 2014 blogpost titled “Average citations per article in different disciplines” which showed this figure: These numbers are averages over many papers and many years. Some papers get thousands of citations and others get no … Continue reading →

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Live status of JWST

Posted on December 25, 2021 by Suresh Emre

I watched the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) with great excitement this morning. You can follow the mission status of JWST from this page: https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html News: https://webbtelescope.org/news Home: https://webbtelescope.org/

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Different kinds of distance

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Suresh Emre

Image credit for formulas: Maarten Grootendorst [2] Euclidean distance Distance between two series. Manhattan distance Distance between two series. Chebyshev distance Distance between two series. Chebyshev distance has limited applicability. Minkowski distance This is the general formula that covers Euclidean, … Continue reading →

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Different kinds of entropy

Posted on November 26, 2021 by Suresh Emre

More than ten years ago, I have written a blogpost titled “Confusion about Entropy” and brought readers’ attention to the fact that even scientists are confused about entropy. That’s because there are different kinds of entropy: 1) entropy as dispersal … Continue reading →

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Unification themes in physics

Posted on November 10, 2021 by Suresh Emre

Most physicists believe that the universe is governed by comprehensible laws. They dedicate their lives to the discovery of those laws. A majority of them believe that the laws are part of a single theoretical framework. This belief system and … Continue reading →

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Neutrino resources

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Suresh Emre

Read this first Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 Fermilab All things neutrino Neutrinos (Fermilab experiments) T2K The FAQ page at T2K Matt Strassler Neutrino Types and Neutrino Oscillations How to make neutrino beam How to detect … Continue reading →

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David Mumford’s thoughts on consciousness

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Suresh Emre

I have been reading David Mumford’s blog recently. David Mumford received a Fields Medal (Nobel Prize of Mathematics) for his work on algebraic geometry. He received many other awards including the National Medal of Science in 2010. He writes about … Continue reading →

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Three kinds of neutrinos – no more, no less

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Suresh Emre

I never understood the search for sterile (right-chiral , 4th kind of) neutrino. I understand the search was prompted by anomalous data from the earlier MiniBooNE and LSND experiments and the desire to explain dark matter in the universe but … Continue reading →

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CERN LHC beams return after 3 years

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Suresh Emre

The CERN complex – chain of accelerators and all experiments – went through major upgrades in the last three years. And finally, on October 19, 2021, counter-rotating protons were injected into the LHC.  After two weeks of beam tests including low-energy collisions in … Continue reading →

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Hubble tension

Posted on October 15, 2021 by Suresh Emre

Shown above: values of the expansion rate of the universe (Hubble constant H0) from direct and indirect measurements by different missions, with the grey and pink bands showing the 68% confidence-level values from SH0ES and Planck, respectively. Problem “Local measurements … Continue reading →

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It is all quiet on the particle physics front

Posted on October 8, 2021 by Suresh Emre

Experimental side of elementary particle physics is very expensive and technically challenging. Theoretical side involves very difficult calculations requiring supercomputers. Esoteric BSM (beyond Standard Model) theories are waiting for confirmation. It seems that there will be decades before we find … Continue reading →

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Can electron be split in topological insulators?

Posted on September 17, 2021 by Suresh Emre

I was shocked when I saw John Preskill’s tweet shown above. I am no expert in condensed matter physics. I was a professional physicist in the past specializing in beam-beam interactions (accelerator physics) and I follow particle physics very closely. … Continue reading →

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Progress report on scientific research in Turkey

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Suresh Emre

Turkish Academy of Sciences published a report prepared by Ufuk Akçiğit (University of Chicago) and Elif Özcan-Tok examining the academic environment in Turkey. The report is based on datasets Scopus and MAG (Microsoft Academic Graph). http://www.tuba.gov.tr/tr/yayinlar/suresiz-yayinlar/raporlar/turkiye-bilim-raporu The report is written … Continue reading →

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Concept of dimension revisited

Posted on August 20, 2021 by Suresh Emre

In the vernacular the term “dimension” usually refers to a hidden realm. In the scientific literature the meaning of “dimension” depends on the branch of science. In physics “dimension” usually refers to spatial dimensions: the 3 spatial dimensions of external … Continue reading →

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My first conversation with GPT-3

Posted on August 6, 2021 by Suresh Emre

I was invited to be a beta tester of the OpenAI‘s GPT-3 related products. Here’s my first conversation with the Davinci engine. Q: Hi GPT-3, are you a conscious entity? A: Yes. Q: What makes you a conscious entity? A: … Continue reading →

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Centennial of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti

Posted on May 21, 2021 by Suresh Emre

We are celebrating the 100th birthday of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar (May 21, 1921 – October 21, 1990), also known by his spiritual name Shrii Shrii Anandamurti. The digital archive of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti’s books and discourses can be found at  https://anandamarga.net/ee9/ His call … Continue reading →

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First results from Fermilab muon g-2 experiment: more confusion

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Suresh Emre

Particle physicists have been waiting for the results from the Fermilab muon g-2 experiment with great anticipation. Results from the first run of the experiment were announced on April 7, 2021. I congratulate the E989 collaboration for performing this extraordinarily … Continue reading →

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Still here

Posted on March 21, 2021 by Suresh Emre

My job situation has changed! For the third time in my career, I experienced total loss of seniority and started from scratch. I went back to the young man’s schedule of 12 hour work days doing programming and data analysis … Continue reading →

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John Preskill’s lectures (CALTECH quantum computing course)

Posted on February 27, 2021 by Suresh Emre

John Preskill’s lectures from the first term of CALTECH quantum computing course have been posted on YouTube. Ph/CS 219A Quantum Computation – YouTube John Preskill is Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at CALTECH and the director of IQIM … Continue reading →

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Latest finding from SWARM studying Earth’s magnetic field

Posted on February 19, 2021 by Suresh Emre

I have written about ESA’s SWARM satellite constellation in 2015. In that post I mentioned this link that provides a wealth of information about the SWARM project. Swarm – eoPortal Directory – Satellite Missions SWARM scientists recently discovered [1] that … Continue reading →

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Number of papers published by the Large Hadron Collider collaborations

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Suresh Emre

“2852 papers: from the first publications in 2008 that described the detector designs, through 2012’s discovery of the Higgs Boson, all the way to CMS’s 1000th publication in 2020.” – CERN “…along with the 2852 publications by CERN’s LHC experiments, … Continue reading →

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A survey of young particle physicists in Europe

Posted on February 5, 2021 by Suresh Emre

A diverse group of about 180 early-career researchers in particle physics (mostly experimental physicists) provided feedback as part of the recent update of the European strategy for particle physics (ESPP). I wanted to share their executive summary and few statistics. … Continue reading →

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A brief history of hadron colliders

Posted on January 29, 2021 by Suresh Emre

The CERN Courier has a nice article summarizing the history of hadron colliders. Discovery machines – CERN Courier written by two leaders of the Large Hadron Collider project Lyn Evans (former LHC project director), Imperial College London  Peter Jenni (former ATLAS spokesperson), … Continue reading →

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Are we oversimplifying?

Posted on January 23, 2021 by Suresh Emre

I get overwhelmed with wonder when I contemplate the vastness of the Cosmos and the miracle of life. The truth of it all is beyond intellectual understanding. I know that! But, it is important for me to present a rational … Continue reading →

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On vacuum fluctuations

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Suresh Emre

In my post titled “How do we know vacuum fluctuations exist?” [1] I was careful to add the terminology “zero-point fluctuations in quantum fields” in parenthesis right after “vacuum fluctuations“. According to Arnold Neumeier [2] the terminology of “vacuum fluctuation” … Continue reading →

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Duality Rotation

Posted on January 8, 2021 by Suresh Emre

In recent posts ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]) I have been introducing the  (Confinement) and  (Liberation) hypothesis . So far, I have discussed two modalities of the {} interplay: 1) orthogonality 2) coupling. Here, I will discuss another … Continue reading →

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Coupling

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Suresh Emre

This is the follow-up to my previous post titled “Orthogonality“. Symbolism: Circle is a geometric symbol of (Confinement). Straight line is a geometric symbol of (Liberation) . For the definitions of and please see the “Orthogonality” article and the references … Continue reading →

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Orthogonality

Posted on December 26, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I will continue to elaborate on the (Confinement) and (Liberation) hypothesis mentioned in [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. acts and reacts. This is a simplistic description. We have to consider the modalities of the {, } interplay. One of the … Continue reading →

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Connectivity, Interaction, Communication

Posted on December 19, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Long time ago I wrote 2 articles titled “Different kinds of connectivity” and “Network Externalities“. This is a fascinating topic. I intended to follow up. I guess the time is now. I wrote few more articles related to the concept … Continue reading →

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Three Number Systems (thanks to John Baez for reminder)

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Suresh Emre

John Baez deserves a huge credit for educating us tirelessly over the years. There is a treasure of knowledge in his website and blogs. This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics  Fun Stuff (expository writings and other diversions) Seminar (tons of course notes) Serious … Continue reading →

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My response to Wolchover’s question: What is a particle?

Posted on December 5, 2020 by Suresh Emre

In her recent Quanta Magazine article titled “What is a Particle?” Natalie Wolchover lists the main categories of answers by the professional physicists as follows: A Particle Is a ‘Collapsed Wave Function’ A Particle Is a ‘Quantum Excitation of a … Continue reading →

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How do we know vacuum fluctuations exist?

Posted on November 28, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Experimental evidence for vacuum fluctuations (zero-point fluctuations in quantum fields) come from the observations of the Lamb shift in the energy levels of the Hydrogen atom, observations of the Casimir effect and the g-2 experiments with electrons and muons. Lamb … Continue reading →

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Reading CERN Courier (2)

Posted on November 21, 2020 by Suresh Emre

The online magazine CERN Courier is the most informative resource in particle and accelerator physics. This is the second installment of my “Reading CERN Courier” series. Most read articles at CERN Courier Why does CP violation matter in the universe?  (John Ellis) The … Continue reading →

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Tropes in Physics

Posted on November 14, 2020 by Suresh Emre

This article is not about literary tropes nor about tropes mentioned in the context of computer software. This article is about the concept of tropes discussed in philosophy and physics. The SEP article titled “Tropes” [1] is very detailed and … Continue reading →

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Basics of Theoretical Computer Science

Posted on November 7, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I have a friend who is very knowledgeable and skilled in many areas including theoretical computer science. During our conversations he uses terms like “halting problem”, “Turing machine”, “Gödel’s incompleteness theorem”. I felt the need to learn the basics of … Continue reading →

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Volcanoes of Anatolia

Posted on October 31, 2020 by Suresh Emre

In my 2013 blogpost “Mystery of Mount Ararat” I said that humans were always fascinated by volcanic mountains. There is a connection between the human psyche and volcanoes. Well…the connection may be more than psychological. There may be biological reasons … Continue reading →

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Fiber Bundles in Physics

Posted on October 24, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Another subject I avoided for many years: fiber bundles in physics. It was highly recommended to me that I should read this paper first: “Fiber Bundles and Quantum Theory” by Herbert J. Bernstein and Anthony V. Phillips published in Scientific … Continue reading →

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Reviewed and updated QM articles

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I reviewed my earlier blogposts related to Quantum Mechanics and updated some of them. I did my best to turn these articles into tutorials. There are few philosophical (euphemism for speculative) pieces. I clearly indicated those. Pure States and Mixed … Continue reading →

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dimensions-math.org

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I discovered a wonderful tutorial movie and web site on Topology and Geometry http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_regarder_E.htm (watch online) I recommend that you watch the movie first before you read the text on the web pages http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_tour_E.htm (tour/guide) http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_chap_E.htm (details) I congratulate Jos … Continue reading →

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Bifurcating self-interaction concept of Frank van den Bovenkamp

Posted on October 7, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I have brought your attention to Frank van den Bovenkamp’s work before. Pioneers of Microvita Research (2): Frank van den Bovenkamp Microvita links He recently published an important paper. The Hydrogen Atom as an Integrative Eigenstate of the Bifurcating Quantum … Continue reading →

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Roger Penrose wins the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Roger Penrose became a Nobel laureate at the age of 89. His contributions to physics and mathematics are well recognized. He has many awards, just look at the “awards” section of the Wikipedia article about him. Please also take a … Continue reading →

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Do not confuse spin direction with spin magnitude

Posted on September 26, 2020 by Suresh Emre

A fermion will impart  units of spin angular momentum irrespective of its energy when it interacts with other particles or fields. The direction of the spin angular momentum is discussed below. A gauge boson will impart  units of spin angular … Continue reading →

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Lake Baikal

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Suresh Emre

During the Covid-19 stay-at-home period I started watching YouTube videos on the big screen TV instead of the computer screen. It seems that YouTube recommendation algorithm works differently when you access it through a cable TV service. Anyways, I started … Continue reading →

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Experimental verification of Higgs boson couplings to elementary particles

Posted on September 12, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Thanks to the heroic efforts of thousands of experimental physicists, engineers and technicians we have learned that the Higgs field is real. Experimental exploration of the Higgs field and its quantum Higgs boson is an ongoing effort. At this point, … Continue reading →

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Physics Education in the United States (statistics)

Posted on September 5, 2020 by Suresh Emre

In the last two decades there was a sharp increase in the number of physics degrees. Physics PhD is 5-7 years of hard work. Data on graduate education in Physics Data on undergraduate education in Physics I published a physics … Continue reading →

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First observation of W-boson pair creation from two photons

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Photons do not interact with each other because photons do not carry any electric charge. In the presence of very strong electric and magnetic fields, however, there are possibilities for two photons to interact indirectly. In the presence of strong … Continue reading →

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Latest on the Element Lithium

Posted on August 22, 2020 by Suresh Emre

The diagram above shows the relative abundances of the elements. Elements Li (Lithium), Be (Beryllium) and B (Boron) stand out. Theoretically, they are supposed to be more abundant than C (Carbon) but they are not. The smaller the atomic number … Continue reading →

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Fourth type of neutrino does not exist

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I have been betting against the fourth type of neutrino. You don’t have to be a seer to make this prediction because there is overwhelming evidence against the existence of the fourth generation of fermions. Now, there is more experimental … Continue reading →

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Lepton universality is verified (no new physics)

Posted on August 15, 2020 by Suresh Emre

In my December 27, 2015 post titled “Lepton Universality” I reported about the early experimental signs pointing to a possible violation of the lepton universality. More data and analysis from the ATLAS experiment at CERN showed however that the lepton … Continue reading →

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Guest post by Richard Gauthier: Natural Laws and Mysticism in the Cosmic Cycle of Creation

Posted on August 12, 2020 by Suresh Emre

When I saw Richard Gauthier’s recent article I wanted to share this exceptional article with the readers. With his permission I present the full article here as a guest post. The links to this article are: https://www.academia.edu/43732448/Natural_Laws_and_Mysticism_in_the_Cosmic_Cycle_of_Creation  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343225050_Natural_Laws_and_Mysticism_in_the_Cosmic_Cycle_of_Creation There is … Continue reading →

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Semiotic Closure

Posted on August 8, 2020 by Suresh Emre

The concept of “semantic closure” was introduced and developed by Howard H. Pattee in the context of Biology [1][2][3][4]. L. M. Rocha called this concept “semiotic closure”. In a special issue of Biosystems journal (Volume 60, No: 1-3) edited by L. … Continue reading →

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Individuality and Collectivity

Posted on August 1, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Jordana Cepelewicz of Quanta Magazine wrote an article titled “What is an Individual? Biology Seeks Clues in Information Theory” [1] where she summarized the work of David Krakauer, Jessica Flack, Nils Bertschinger, Eckehard Olbrich and Nihat Ay. The scientific paper … Continue reading →

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Confinement and Liberation

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Suresh Emre

As I study natural processes, especially in the context of physics, I see 2 fundamental explanatory factors in play. I have referred to these factors as ‘Binding Action‘ and ‘Freedom Seeking‘ in the past. Perhaps a better terminology for these … Continue reading →

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Comments on universe being a fluctuation

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Richard Gauthier has responded to my post titled “Universe is not a fluctuation”. Please find his comments below. This inspired me to recollect my thoughts on the emergence of the physical universe. This is a subject I have been avoiding. … Continue reading →

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Universe is not a fluctuation

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Andromeda galaxy (credit: NASA) “We therefore conclude that the universe is not a fluctuation, and that the order is a memory of conditions when things started. This is not to say that we understand the logic of it. For some … Continue reading →

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How to implement random article pointer in JavaScript

Posted on June 28, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I cannot do this in the WordPress.com platform because it does not let me execute JavaScript. But, in other platforms you can do this: In other words, you prepare a list of URLs and point to one of them using … Continue reading →

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Ignoring Agency is Ignorance

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I came up with the title ‘Ignoring Agency is Ignorance‘ while reading  David Berlinski’s article at the Inference magazine where he reviews Brian Green’s book “Until the End of Time“. In that article David Berlinski touches on many subjects especially … Continue reading →

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Machine Learning Interview Questions

Posted on June 20, 2020 by Suresh Emre

image credit I recommend that beginners start with Roger Huang’s 41 questions and answers about Machine Learning. On his webpage Roger Huang provides links to further reading as well. It is clear that Machine Learning uses many statistical techniques. Therefore, … Continue reading →

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Large refugee waves to Anatolia in recent centuries

Posted on June 19, 2020 by Suresh Emre

There were waves upon waves of migrations into and out of Anatolia going back to the prehistoric times. As a result, Anatolia has been a melting pot for thousands of years. Each tribe, nation, and culture left an imprint. There … Continue reading →

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Happy to learn Maldacena’s thoughts on the relationship between vacuum fluctuations and spacetime stretching

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Natalie Wolchover wrote another excellent article. This one is titled “Why Gravity Is Not Like the Other Forces“. She talked to 4 well-known physicists about gravity. This is what Juan Maldacena communicated to her. “Furthermore, from the perspective of particle … Continue reading →

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Theoretical value of muon g-2 updated

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Fermilab E989 experiment This is a follow-up on my post titled “Muon g-2 mystery“. FERMILAB announcement on June 11, 2020: FERMILAB announced that the latest consensus theoretical value of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (published on June 8, … Continue reading →

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What percentage of scientists are atheists?

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Suresh Emre

image credit: Pew Research Center Statistics shown above was published in 2009. I don’t think the numbers changed significantly between 2009 and 2020. The study was based on a survey conducted among the members of the American Association for the … Continue reading →

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The non-gauge nature of the newly discovered forces

Posted on June 6, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Gian Francesco Giudice is the head of CERN Theoretical Physics Department. He has written an important essay titled “On Future High-Energy Colliders“. This is not about the technical details of future colliders. He discusses the current state and the future … Continue reading →

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Concept of Gauge Invariance

Posted on May 30, 2020 by Suresh Emre

I agonized over this post. I thought I could explain the concept of “gauge invariance” in simple terms but I couldn’t. This subject requires a lot of background. So, I will not attempt to present a tutorial here. Instead, I … Continue reading →

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Stephen Wolfram’s Theory of Everything

Posted on May 23, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Stephen Wolfram On April 14, 2020 Stephen Wolfram published a long article summarizing the results of his research towards a fundamental theory of physics. He does not use the terminology “ToE” (Theory of Everything) but many science journalists and scientists … Continue reading →

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Few Research Directions in Systems Neuroscience

Posted on May 16, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Amos Tversky (1937-1996) Being a graduate student is hard. You have to be a little lucky to be at the right place at the right time and work with the right professor. It is also about preparation and background, of … Continue reading →

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Guest Post by Richard Gauthier on Particle Physics Beyond the Standard Model

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Suresh Emre

Today I am happy to publish a guest post by Richard Gauthier. I follow his physics research very closely.  After receiving a B.Sc. degree in physics from M.I.T in 1967, Richard Gauthier earned a M.Sc. degree in physics from University … Continue reading →

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