Speaker Series Public Lecture with Dr. Stuart Hameroff

Stuart R. Hameroff MD, Professor Emeritus, Anesthesiologist, Consciousness Researcher, Co Founder, Director, Center for Consciousness Studies — Stuart R. Hameroff, M.D.

The Scientific Association for the Study of Time in Physics and Cosmology is very honored to present Stuart Hameroff, M.D., anesthesiologist and Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at Banner-University Medical Center, The University of Arizona, as the fall speaker for the SASTPC Speaker Series Free Public Lectures.

“Is Your Brain Really a Computer? Or is it a Quantum Orchestra?”

Date: November 20, 2015
Time: 4:00PM
Location: 1500 E University Blvd., ILC Room #130, University of Arizona.

The talk is free and will be posted to YouTube. Thank you for supporting SASTPC!

Co-sponsored by the UA Philosophy Department

Physics in the News

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

The UW’s current fusion experiment, HIT-SI3. It is about one-tenth the size of the power-producing dynomak concept. (Credit: U of Washington)

via washington.edu

Researchers achieve quantum teleporting

Tipping the spherical cow: The initial conditions of star formation

Gas column density 5 Myr after stars begin forming in the “real” Clouds (left panels) and corresponding Spheres (right panels). The Spheres begin forming stars 5-6 Myr after t=0, so the figure shows simulations at a similar stage of star formation. Clouds show more widespread star formation, and alignment of their major gas filaments along the larger-scale structures present in the galaxy. Part of Figure 2 from Rey-Raposo, Dobbs & Duarte-Cabral 2014. — Gas column density 5 Myr after stars begin forming in the “real” Clouds (left panels) and corresponding Spheres (right panels). The Spheres begin forming stars 5-6 Myr after t=0, so the figure shows simulations at a similar stage of star formation. Clouds show more widespread star formation, and alignment of their major gas filaments along the larger-scale structures present in the galaxy. (Credit: Rey-Raposo, Dobbs & Duarte-Cabral 2014)

Breakthrough allows researchers to watch molecules “wiggle”

Difference electron density maps showing the comparison of control and HATRX data for thaumatin. (Credit: University of Leeds)

Monster galaxies resort to cannibalism to keep growing

Larger galaxies are unable to create new stars at a rapid enough pace so they start to “eat” stars in neighboring galaxies. (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)

via cbs

Aliens may be too distant for contact

The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is hunting for radio signals from hypothetical intelligent alien life in our galaxy. (Credit: SETI) Institute — The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is hunting for radio signals from hypothetical intelligent alien life in our galaxy. (Credit: SETI) Institute

How NASA plans to utilize lasers in order to draw 3D maps of the earth’s forests

NASA has a new project underway called GEDI. The sole purpose of GEDI is to point a laser-based device at Earth from the International Space Station in order to map out forests in 3D, eventually determining the amount of carbon in Earth’s forests. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space) — NASA has a new project underway called GEDI. The sole purpose of GEDI is to point a laser-based device at Earth from the International Space Station in order to map out forests in 3D, eventually determining the amount of carbon in Earth’s forests. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space)

via industrytap

Sierra Nevada protest halts production of SpaceX and Boeing s pace taxis

The Wait For Space A look through the open hatch of SpaceX's Dragon V2 capsule, one of two designs chosen for NASA's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program. Both Boeing and SpaceX have been told to halt production of their space taxi designs until a protest filed by the Sierra Nevada Corporation has been resolved. (Credit: NASA) — A look through the open hatch of SpaceX’s Dragon V2 capsule, one of two designs chosen for NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program. Both Boeing and SpaceX have been told to halt production of their space taxi designs until a protest filed by the Sierra Nevada Corporation has been resolved. (Credit: NASA)

Three win Nobel for super-zoom microscopes

German winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry Stefan Hell gestures at a small party with his colleagues in Goettingen, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Hell shares the prize with Americans Eric Betzig and William E. Moerner for developing ways to dramatically improve the resolution of optical microscopes. Hell developed the underlying technology for R&D 100 Awards-winning super-resolution microscopes from Leica. (Credit AP/dpa, Swen Pfoertner)

Newly discovered letter gives a rare glimpse into Einstein’s personal views on life

he Einstein Papers Project, a group of scholars devoted to collecting and transcribing Einstein’s works and publishing The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein both online and in printed format, have collected thousands of Einstein’s letters, both those from him and to him. But this exchange is new. (Credit: The Telegraph) — The Einstein Papers Project, a group of scholars devoted to collecting and transcribing Einstein’s works and publishing The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein both online and in printed format, have collected thousands of Einstein’s letters, both those from him and to him. But this exchange is new. (Credit: The Telegraph)

Physics in the News

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

New Results from Planck: It Doesn’t Look Good For BICEP2

Dust map of the Universe. The region studied by BICEP2 is indicated by the rectangle in the right circle. (Credit: Planck Collaboration)

via universetoday

Artificial Atoms Talk … and Scientists Listen

n this illustration, the artificial atom on the right side of the image sends out sound waves that are picked up by the microphone on the left. (Credit: Philip Krantz)

via livescience

What’s Next for Inflation Cosmology – New Updates

(Credit: Andrei Linde) — A serious challenge to the discovery of gravity waves by the BICEP2 2014 results has appeared: the researchers had underestimated the amount of interstellar dust that could be contaminating their data. (Credit: MacRobert, Andrei Linde)

via skyandtelescope

Clear skies reveal water on distant Neptune-sized planet

Scientists have found definitive traces of water on a relatively small exoplanet. HAT-P-11b is the size of Neptune and has copious amounts of both water vapor and hydrogen in its atmosphere. (Credit: NASA) — Scientists have found definitive traces of water on a relatively small exoplanet. HAT-P-11b is the size of Neptune and four times the size of Earth. The exoplanet has copious amounts of both water vapor and hydrogen in its atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)

via bbc

Hugh Everett: The man who gave us the multiverse

via newscientist

What is the geometry of the universe?

Our current model of the early inflationary period predicts that the universe should be flat, and so far that has held up. If the universe actually is curved, then the inflationary period must have been more complex than we have thought. (Credit: Koberlien)

Robot Octopus Takes to the Sea

Physics in the News

Friday, September 19, 2014

An anomaly in satellites’ flybys confounds scientists

An artist's rendition of Rosetta probe during a flyby. (Credit: ESA/C.Carreau) — When space probes, such as Rosetta and Cassini, fly over certain planets and moons, in order to gain momentum and travel long distances, their speed changes slightly for an unknown reason. A researcher has now analyzed whether or not a hypothetical gravitomagnetic field could have an influence. However, other factors such as solar radiation, tides, or even relativistic effects or dark matter could be behind this mystery. An artist’s rendition of Rosetta probe during a flyby. (Credit: ESA/C.Carreau)

via sciencedaily

Particle detector finds hints of dark matter in space

The starboard truss of the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the station. The newly installed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is visible at center left. (Credit: NASA)

via mit

Finding dark energy in the details

The dome of the Blanco Telescope, which houses DECam, the 570-megapixel CCD camera used for the Dark Energy Survey, at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. (Credit: Reidar Hahn)

via simonsfoundation

The lonely landscape of Rosetta’s comet

The lonely landscape of Rosetta's comet — The lonely landscape of Rosetta’s comet – Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from a distance of just 29 kilometers (Credit: ESA)

via abc

Miranda: An icy moon deformed by tidal heating

Mosaic of southern hemisphere of Miranda, the innermost regular satellite of Uranus, with radius of 236 km. Projection is orthographic, centered on the south pole. Visible from left to right are Elsinore, Inverness, and Arden coronae. (Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Ted Stryk)

Physical constant is constant even in strong gravitational fields

Picture of the laser system with which the hydrogen molecules were investigated on earth. (Credit: LaserLaB VU University Amsterdam/Wim Ubachs) — An international team of physicists has shown that the mass ratio between protons and electrons is the same in weak and in very strong gravitational fields. Pictured above is the laser system with which the hydrogen molecules were investigated on earth. (Credit: LaserLaB VU University Amsterdam/Wim Ubachs)

NASA’s Maven spacecraft will arrive at Mars this weekend

Shrink-wrapping spacesuits

The MIT BioSuit, a skintight spacesuit that offers improved mobility and reduced mass compared to modern gas-pressurized spacesuits. (Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT)

via mit

Physics in the News

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Have physicists just disproved string theory?

via mysteriousuniverse

New measurements from the AMS experiment unveil new territories in the flux of cosmic rays

Upper plot shows the slope of positron fraction measured by AMS (red circles) and a straight line fit at the highest energies (blue line). The data show that at 275±32 GeV the slope crosses zero. Lower plot shows the measured positron fraction as function of energy as well as the location of the maximum. (Credit CERN)

via interactions

Nuclear spins control current in plastic LED: Step toward quantum computing, spintronic memory, better displays

An organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, glows orange when electrical current flows through it. University of Utah physicists used this kind of OLED -- basically a plastic LED instead of a conventional silicon semiconductor LED -- to show that they could read the subatomic 'spins' in the center or nuclei of hydrogen isotopes and use those spins to control current to the OLED. It is a step toward 'spintronic' devices such as faster computers, better data storage and more efficient OLEDs for TV, computer and cell phone displays. (Credit: Andy Brimhall, University of Utah) — An organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, glows orange when electrical current flows through it. It is a step toward ‘spintronic’ devices such as faster computers, better data storage and more efficient OLEDs for TV, computer and cell phone displays. (Credit: Andy Brimhall, University of Utah)

New technology that guides light through glass, developed by researchers from Polytechnique Montréal, could make our smartphones even smarter (PDF)

his revolutionary work could open up new real estate in the phone by embedding the glass with layer upon layer of sensors, including ones that could take your temperature, assess your blood sugar levels if you're diabetic or even analyze DNA. — This revolutionary work could open up new real estate in the phone by embedding the glass with layer upon layer of sensors, including ones that could take your temperature, assess your blood sugar levels if you’re diabetic or even analyze DNA. (Credit: Jerome Lapointe, Mathieu Gagné, Ming-Jun Li, and Raman Kashyap)

via mediacastermagazine

Milky Way mysteries mapped

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this finely detailed image of the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6384. This galaxy lies in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), not far from the centre of the Milky Way on the sky. The positioning of NGC 6384 means that we have to peer at it past many dazzling foreground Milky Way stars that are scattered across this image. In 1971, one member of NGC 6384 stood out against these bright foreground stars when one of its stars exploded as a supernova. This was a Type Ia supernova, which occurs when a compact star that has ceased fusion in its core, called a white dwarf, increases its mass beyond a critical limit by gobbling up matter from a companion star. A runaway nuclear explosion then makes the star suddenly as bright as a whole galaxy. While many stars have already come to the ends of their lives in NGC 6384, in the centre, star formation is being fuelled by the galaxy’s bar structure; astronomers think such galactic bars funnel gas inwards, where it accumulates to form new stars. This picture was created from images take with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. An image taken through a blue filter (F435W, coloured blue) was combined with an image taken through a near-infrared filter (F814W, coloured red). The total exposure times were 1050 s through each filter and the field of view is about 3 x 1.5 arcminutes. (Credit NASA) — The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this finely detailed image of the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6384. This galaxy lies in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), not far from the centre of the Milky Way on the sky. The positioning of NGC 6384 means that we have to peer at it past many dazzling foreground Milky Way stars that are scattered across this image. (Credit NASA/ESA)

via nationalgeographic

Very large telescope findings could force physicists to rethink the Big Bang

he problem was first identified some time ago. Dubbed the “cosmological lithium discrepancy,” the issue is very simple: everything we know about the Big Bang, supernovae, and the dynamics of stars, tells us that we should find a very specific concentration of lithium in the universe at large — but the universe actually seems to contain far less than that amount. (Credit: NASA, HUbble)

Asteroid tracking program has only 10 percent chance of success

European Space Agency's Giotto probe returned 2333 images during the Comet Halley encounter of March 13-14, 1986. All were recorded before the closest approach of 596 km at 00:03:02 UTC on 14 March 1986; the last from a distance of 1180 km, 15 seconds before closest approach. (Credit: MPAE, Dr H.U. Keller. — European Space Agency’s Giotto probe returned 2333 images during the Comet Halley encounter of March 13-14, 1986. All were recorded before the closest approach of 596 km at 00:03:02 UTC on 14 March 1986; the last from a distance of 1180 km, 15 seconds before closest approach. (Credit: MPAE, Dr H.U. Keller.

Mystery U.S. government satellite is now in orbit

av_clio_l3917201432422AM63-1552x1940 — An Atlas V rocket lifts off with the mysterious CLIO satellite. The rocket was carrying a satellite known only as CLIO, which it delivered into an unidentified (though probably geosynchronous) orbit. (Credit: ULA)

Physics team uses pixel sensitivity of smartphone as a random generator for encryption

: Random number generator setup: a camera is fully and homogeneously illuminated by a LED. The raw binary representation of pixel values are concatenated and passed through a randomness extractor. This extractor outputs quantum random numbers. (Credit: arXiv:1405.0435 [quant-ph])

What is the Universe? Physics has some mind-bending answers

Science says the universe could be a hologram, a computer program, a black hole or a bubble—and there are ways to check (NASA, ESA, SAO, CXC, JPL-Caltech, and STScI) — Science says the universe could be a hologram, a computer program, a black hole or a bubble—and there are ways to check. (Credit: NASA, ESA, SAO, CXC, JPL-Caltech, and STScI)

via smithsonianmag

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