Physics Frontiers

<p>Jim Rantschler and Randy Morrison discuss physics from elementary particles to cosmological effects at the limits of our theoretical knowledge or have recently emerged. </p>

Episode 79: Primordial Black Holes with QCD Color Charge with Elba Alonso-Monsalve and David Kaiser

Jim talks  with Elba Alonso-Monsalve and David Kaiser about the prospects to describe dark matter as tiny black holes that were created at the end of cosmic inflation.  Due to the large inhomogeneities in the distribution of matter at that time, the black holes could form directly from the matter distribution and not be color neutral (in the sense of QCD).Show notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/79 

09-04
59:31

Episode 78: Quantum Machine Learning with Bruna Shinohara

Jim talks with Bruna Shinohara of CMC Microsystems. Quantum computing and machine learning are both currently making huge strides.  So it is not strange that people are trying to use quantum computing for machine learning.

05-31
51:05

Episode 77: Maxwellian Ratchets with Alex Jurgens

Jim talks with Alex Jurgens about Maxwellian ratchets, automata that are similar to Maxwell's Demon.  They talk about their implications for information processing and entropy.http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/77

03-31
01:21:10

Episode 76: Undeciability and Theories of Everything with Claus Kiefer

Jim talks with Claus Kiefer about the implications of Goedel's incompleteness theorems on the search for the theory.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/76

01-29
49:40

Episode 75: Categorical Probability and the Measurement Problem

Jim talks with Nick Ormrod and V. Vilasini about their use of categorical probability theory to analyze the measurement problem.  We discuss categorical probability theory, which allows them to abstract from particular mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics to more general ideas about states and measurements and observers than found in Hilbert space formulations.  They use this to look at the various properties of quantum mechanics and how they relate to each other, in particular how relativity affects the measurement problem.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/75

08-20
01:07:24

Episode 74: Stochastic Thermodynamics with David Wolpert

Jim talks with David Wolpert about the non-equilibrium behavior of computation, what it means for entropy, and how it relates to traditional thermodynamics.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/74

07-09
50:23

Episode 73: Quantum Money with Jiahui Liu

Jim discusses quantum money with Jiahui Liu.  Quantum money is a linchpin of quantum cryptography.  The ability to create secure banknotes using quantum computers would allow even more secure methods of encryption for communications. 

06-18
01:00:43

Episode 72: Born Rule and Gravity with Antony Valentini

Jim talks with Antony Valentini about the difficulties of interpretation of quantum mechanics in light of quantum gravity.  In particular, Antony discusses the failure of the Born Rule due to the impossibility of normalization (the fact that probabilities must sum to 100%) at that scale, and therefore the need to interpret the wavefunction as something more than merely the knowledge of the observer about the system.  They spend some time talking about the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation in light of quantum gravity.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/72

04-23
01:13:54

Episode 71: Primordial Graviton Background

Jim talks with Sunny Vagnozzi about using the Primoridial Graviton Background to rule out all inflation models. Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/71

02-19
45:39

Episode 70: Path Integrals and Entanglement with Ken Wharton

Jim talks with Ken Wharton about how to describe entangled states as sums over histories of particle paths using the path integral method.  He shows how this works for Bell-type experiments, entanglements swapping, delayed choice experiments, and the triangle network.  This leads to a second way to describe what happens quantum mechanically without introducing non-locality (but requiring other classical ideas to break down).Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/70

12-18
46:30

Episode 69: The Flavor Puzzle with Joe Davighi

Jim talks with Joe Davighi of the University of Zurich about the flavor unification at high energies - the merging of all leptons into one kind of particle.  The discussion includes symmetries in particle physics, symmetry breaking at low temperatures, and unification schemes in general.  Joe also discusses both leptoquarks and proton stability in the context of his theory.

11-20
43:00

Episode 68: Quantum Resource Theories with Gilad Gour

Jim talks with Gilad Gour of the University of Toronto about quantum resource theories.  These are theories of largish systems that describe the relationships between possible states by the different levels of resources required for each.  By using resources, a system can move from one state to another.  This results in a partial order where between two states there could be two different states inaccessible to one another. Although (usually) these coalesce into an order based on a single property of thermodynamically-sized systems, the entropy, a few do not.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/68

09-26
51:29

Episode 67: Optical Gravity with Matthew R. Edwards

Jim talks with Matthew R. Edwards about his theory of Optical Gravity.  This is a Le Sage model of gravity based on graviton filiments.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/67

08-14
35:00

Episode 66: The Limit of General Relativity with James Owen Weatherall

Jim talks with James Owen Weatherall about his work on viewing general relativity as an effective field theory and where it should give way to another theory.  General relativity does a very good job of describing the world we see in astronomical observations, but certain results, e.g. singularities, and certain limits, e.g. the Planck scale, hint that there should be another theory that supersedes it.  Jim Weatherall argues that this is in a high curvature regime.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/66 

06-26
30:09

Episode 65: Causality, Time and the Experiment Paradox with Michal Eckstein

Jim talks with Michal Eckstein of the Copernicus Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies about how two different kinds of ordering, chronological and causal, give rise to a robust idea of time.  Additionally, we discuss the Experiment Paradox, a generalization of other measurement-type paradoxes in physics.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/65

05-22
01:05:04

Episode 64: Born's Rule with Blake Stacey

Jim talks with Blake Stacey about recent attempts to replace Born's rule.  Born's rule is the principle used in quantum mechanics that associates quantum states to the probability of measurement.  There has been a recent interest in Quantum Foundations to try to find a less arbitrary rationale for this procedure.  Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/64

04-24
29:18

Episode 63: Gleason's Theorem with Blake Stacey

Jim talks with Blake Stacey about Gleason's Theorem, a foundational topic in the foundations of quantum mechanics.  Gleason's theorem gives us a set of characteristic states for a measurement and the probability rule associated measuring them.  This is the first part of the interview.  The second part will discuss recent attempts to replace the Born Rule.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/63

03-20
44:09

Episode 62: Deformed Special Relativity

Jim and Randy talk about how special relativity might be amended to incorporate a minimum length scale.  Such scales are common in quantum gravity theories, and in the limit where both QM and GR are less important, QG should induce first order corrections to SR.  We then talk about how these corrections seem to lead to unreasonable paradoxes.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/62

02-13
39:00

Episode 61: Dark Stars

Jim and Randy talk about alternatives to black holes without event horizons or singularities.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/61

10-31
42:37

Episode 60: Warp Bubbles

Randy tells Jim about developments of metrics describing isolated spacetime bubbles that could, possibly, move faster than light.Show Notes: http://frontiers.physicsfm.com/60

09-12
43:08

Alan Kozlay

OMG! RIP Randy. You left us too soon!

06-27 Reply

TZ

sexist much?!

02-23 Reply

Thomas Wheeler

beep beep

12-06 Reply

Joshua Darke

been waiting for this one. all your gravity shows r fantastic. my favorite subject

08-16 Reply

Joshua Darke

love this fuckin show

08-02 Reply

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