Posted on 07/09/2013 6:13:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
If each energy field pervading space is thought of as the surface of a pond, and waves and particles are the turbulence on that surface, then the new evidence strengthens the argument that a vibrant, hidden world lies beneath.
For decades, the surface-level description of the subatomic world has been sufficient to make accurate calculations about most physical phenomena. But recently, a strange class of matter that defies description by known quantum mechanical methods has drawn physicists into the depths below...
Of all the strange forms of matter, cuprates -- copper-containing metals that exhibit a property called high-temperature superconductivity -- may be the strangest. In new research published online June 24 in the Journal of High Energy Physics, physicists at the University of California-Santa Barbara have explored the deeper phenomena that they claim are connected to the perplexing "surface-level" behavior of cuprates. By focusing their calculations on that underlying environment, the researchers derived a formula for the conductivity of cuprates that was previously known only from experiments...
The results bolster the evidence that this new way of looking at natures building blocks is real and that it is strikingly literal, said Jan Zaanen, a theoretical physicist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Whats more, the results could be seen as an unusual, indirect kind of evidence for string theory -- a 40-year-old framework that weaves together quantum mechanics and gravity and is as mathematically elegant and profoundly explanatory as it is unproven.
(Excerpt) Read more at simonsfoundation.org ...
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