Another Astonishing Week in Science

 9-5-2022: Wow, what a week of exciting science news. Most of it inspires, some of it depresses. Let us start off with a mind bender. Here kitty kitty:

This is an excellent summary. In a nutshell entanglement is a measure of separate entities sharing a quantum state. What is wild is that you can measure one entity by itself, the process of measuring these alters both. We are not talking about scales on the atomic level, it has now been seen in objects separated by 12km (I think that is the distance, not important to get the exact number). Basically what you measure is the correlation between the two. Which brings us to this mind bender. Up until now it has been experimentally shown for basic elementary quantum particles. Not anymore. As articulated below things are not just black and white, in the quantum world they can be both at the same time. When thinking about this behavior my mind wanders into so many realms. For example, could this be the beginning of understanding the paranormal world? Teleports? Absolutely FASCINATING!

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-fur-quantum-cat-entanglement-atoms.html

Speaking of the paranormal and portals, how about a look into a chilling new experiment that uses a portal to examine quantum magnetism. This portal exists at one billionth of a degree above absolute zero. When we think about these temperatures, well in northern Minnesota we certainly do, our first thought is near zero resistance of superconductors. Why does this occur? Basically think about what heat does. It excites the atoms,their energy increases as does their motion. Now think about trying to traverse through a tunnel with balls that are excited by heat, the more heat the more they move around. Good luck getting through that tunnel. No heat and they lay stagnant offering little resistance, have yourself a nice walk in the park. The "just" of this is think about the two situations. Which is easier to describe? Clearly the cold state. When in this cold state you can rearrange the balls at will. Following the kitties we mentioned we could easily separate the black balls from the white balls or arrange them in any pattern you want. Extend this to a new material, custom designed for whatever your needs. You are now ready for this:

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-sun-billion-colder-deep-space.html

Let's switch gears for a moment. This one brought me back to my graduate school days. In one of my posts I talked about how I became hooked on computer modeling and became a sort of "father" of modern hurricane forecasting systems. This article reminds me of another one of my progenies, the modern day coupled meteorological and ecosystem models. Yes, I became the first to grow plants in a mesoscale (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mesoscale) meteorological model. My impetus for doing such a project was the belief that meteorology is influenced by so many other factors through non-linear processes. At the surface of the earth the incoming energy from the sun is partitioned into different forms of energy, some is reflected back into the atmosphere and space. The reflected energy can further modify the atmosphere (and get reflected again) and cycle/repeat ad infinitum. The energy that is partitioned at the surface can be thought of as affecting the temperature and moisture status of the air above it and the ground below. In the ground we have another multitude of processes occuring. Soil moisture status, heat content, and plant root systems doing their thing. Did you know that roots can not only absorb water but can effuse it back into the soil from deep roots to shallower depths helping other plants and influencing microbes and insects (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cornell.edu/dist/7/5773/files/2015/05/Hydraulic-Lift-and-Sugar-Maples-sapf8v.pdf?) You get the idea of the complexity here and remember these processes are integrated over long time scales all resulting in the current status of an ecosystem. Well, shortly after coupling the models, my colleagues and I decided to look at the effect of bison on pre-settlement climate. In a sense the bison are like massive mowers that going through a great big circle seasonally from the southern climes to the north and back again.  

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-reintroducing-bison-grasslands-diversity-drought.html