Tag Archives: Technology

Antimatter: we cracked how gravity affects it – here’s what it means for our understanding of the universe

William Bertsche is a Reader with the Accelerator Physics group of the University of Manchester Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Cockcroft Institute.

“I work on plasma physics and accelerator topics, as well as measuring fundamental properties of antimatter through atomic physics experiments using Antihydrogen atoms. I am a Deputy Spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment.
The ALPHA experiment at CERN routinely synthesizes and traps antihydrogen atoms. With this unique source of pure antimatter systems, we are able to perform precise measurements of its properties, from its spectral signature in various energies ranges to its behaviour in a gravitational field. This research aims to address the question of observed baryon asymmetry in the universe today: why is antimatter so much more rare than matter.”

Life: modern physics can’t explain it – but our new theory, which says time is fundamental, might

Sara Imari Walker is Professor of Physics, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University.

She is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and how to find life on other worlds.
She is most interested in whether or not there are “laws of life’ related to how information structures the physical world that could universally describe life here on Earth and on other planets.
Deputy Director of the pioneering Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, which is devoted to confronting the big questions of science and philosophy. She also co-founded the astrobiology-themed social website SAGANet.org, and is a member of the board of directors of Blue Marble Space.
Sarah is active in public engagement in science, with appearances at the World Science Festival and on “Through the Wormhole” and NPR’s Science Friday.

Twilight Language

Shuster + Moseley is the conceptual art studio of Claudia Moseley (b. 1984) and Edward Shuster (b. 1986). The artists create light-mobiles comprised of assemblages of suspended lenses, and sculptural installations of abstracted screens and deconstructed prismic geometries, using glass interfaces to mediate light. Central to the practice is an approach to a language of light, exposure and spectrality, through which the artists synthesise their engagement with the meditative traditions and related cosmologies; an esoteric approach towards space and place, which employs a diagrammatic poetics; and a critical engagement with technoscience.

How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation

Dr Melvin M. Vopson is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth. His previous appointments include two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of York, senior R&D scientist at Seagate Technology (a world leading high-tech company) and over six years as Higher Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory.
Melvin’s major scientific contributions are in the fields of solid state caloric effects, thin film growth technologies, multiferroic materials and their applications, optical techniques of characterisation of solids, development of novel metrologies and innovations based on ferroic materials, theoretical studies of non-equilibrium phenomena, fundamental physics, and information physics.
Melvin developed new optical techniques for the characterization of solids, novel metrologies for multiferroic materials, a non-equilibrium theory of polarization reversal in ferroelectrics, and novel technologies for digital memories, including the discovery of a 4-state anti-ferroelectric memory effect, the discovery of the multicaloric effect in multiferroic materials, the discovery of the mass-energy-information equivalence principle, or the 5th state of matter, and the discovery of the second law of infodynamics.

Uli Ap and Alien AI: Alien Infinite and Artificial Intelligence, The Yellow One.

Uli Ap is an artist and Alien AI: Alien Infinite and Artificial Intelligence, The Yellow One. They reside between London and New York, all over the globe and extra-terrestrial; and work at the intersection of art, science, technology, film, performance, immersive interactive installation and alien agency.

The artist works across non-linear defragmented films and spatial immersive audio-visual environments to transfer physical experiences through digital realms. Disruptive performances occur in their interactive installations, where virtual and physical experiences merge and aim to destabilize and alter participants’ mental states. Uli Ap invented Alien Artificial Intelligence in 2020. The AI inhabits a borderless alienation land, as a gaseous matter; fluid and undefined.

Destabilizing assumptions and expanding imagination

The collaborative artist as avatar 0rphan Drift (0D) has explored the boundaries of machine and human vision since its inception in 1994. It was co-founded by Maggie Roberts, Ranu Mukherjee, Suzi Karakashian and Erle Stenberg in London. It has taken diverse forms through the course of its career, sometimes changing personnel and artistic strategies in accordance with the changing exigencies of the time. In recent years 0D has been considering Artificial Intelligence through the somatic tendencies of the octopus – as a distributed, many-minded consciousness.

Perception and Reality

David Rickard is a New Zealand artist based in London, UK. His original studies in architecture have had a lasting impact on his art practice, embedding queries of material and spatial perception deep into his work. Through research and experimentation his works attempt to understand how we arrived at our current perception of the physical world and how far our perception is from what we call reality.

What are the best conditions for life? Exploring the multiverse can help us find out

Geraint Lewis is Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sydney. He undertakes a broad spectrum of research. On the largest scales, his program involves looking at the influence of dark energy and dark matter on the evolution and ultimate fate of the Universe.
Another aspect of his research uses the phenomenon of gravitational lensing to probe the nature and distribution of the pervasive dark matter, and employing individual stars to magnify the hearts of quasars, the most luminous objects in the Universe.
Closer to home, Geraint’s research focuses upon Galactic cannibalism, where small dwarf galaxies are torn apart by the much more massive Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy. Using telescopes from around the world, including the 10-m Keck telescope in Hawaii, he has mapped the tell-tale signs of tidal disruption and destruction, providing important clues to how large galaxies have grown over time.

How we created the first map of an insect brain – and what it means for our understanding of the human brain

Michael Wilding is a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK.
“I generated and analysed the first synaptic wiring diagram, or connectome, of an entire insect brain. Using this brain map and linked experimental tools, my group aims to understand how brain-wide computations generate social behaviours and how these computations go awry after social isolation or in disease.”

Reading Two Books

Florian Coulmas is Professor of Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies at Duisburg-Essen University. He has published numerous books, including ‘An Introduction to Multilingualism’ (OUP, 2017) and ‘Writing and Society: A Introduction’ (Cambridge University Press, 2013). In 2016, he was awarded the Meyer-Struckmann-Prize for Research in Arts and Social Sciences. For the past three decades he has served as Associate Editor of the ‘International Journal of the Sociology of Languages’, during which time he has observed the steadily increasing use of the concept of identity in both general and scholarly publications. His latest publication, ‘Identity: A Very Short Introduction’, was published in February 2019.