Controversy over claims of room temperature superconductors

Superconductivity is the phenomenon where the resistance to current flow in a material drops to zero. This means that there will be no loss of energy due to heat generation when current flows through the superconductor. Since resistive heat losses are one of the main limitations associated with any current-generated devices, superconductors open up enormous possibilities for technology that could revolutionize our lives. Unfortunately this phenomenon, first discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911, only seemed to work at extremely low temperatures close to absolute zero that required cooling with liquid helium, making it impractical for everyday use.

Creating materials that would be superconducting at room temperatures became the Holy Grail of this area of research and a big breakthrough came in 1986 when materials were found that were superconducting at around 90K (-183C) which could be reached using liquid nitrogen. Even higher temperature superconducting materials at about 203K (-77C) have been found but that required enormous pressures, of about 106 times atmospheric pressure.

Recent papers by a research team headed by Ranga Dias and Ahskan Salamat at the University of Rochester have claimed that they have found materials that are superconducting at temperature of 294K (17C) and at a pressure of 10 kbar or ten thousand times the atmospheric pressure. This is big news.
[Read more…]

Having fun with ChatGPT and Bell’s theorem

There has been a lot of buzz in the media about the AI software ChatGPT and its ability to turn out essays that have at least a superficial plausibility. I decided to give it a spin and gave it variations of the same prompt on a topic about which I knew something but was probably too esoteric for non-physicists, just to see what it would come up with.

Here are the prompts and what I got back.

Prompt: Explain Bell’s theorem

Bell’s theorem is a concept in quantum mechanics that describes the phenomenon of entanglement. It states that when two particles are entangled, the properties of one particle are intimately linked to the properties of the other, regardless of the distance between them.

This means that if one particle is measured and its properties are determined, the properties of the other particle are automatically determined as well, even if the two particles are separated by great distances.

Bell’s theorem suggests that this entanglement is not due to some hidden force or connection between the particles, but rather it is a fundamental property of the universe itself. It challenges our everyday understanding of physics and suggests that there are deeper truths waiting to be discovered.

The implications of Bell’s theorem are far-reaching and have been the subject of much research and study in the field of quantum mechanics. It has also led to the development of new technologies, such as quantum computers and quantum cryptography, which rely on the principles of entanglement to function.

[Read more…]

Remaking Caligula

This 1979 film about notorious Roman emperor Caligula had a script written by Gore Vidal, a well-known director Tinto Brass, and featured a cast of A-list actors like Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, and John Gielgud. I saw the film a long time ago and despite the sterling credentials of the people involved, it was a mess. But that was not the fault of any of the above luminaries, but of the producer Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse magazine who financed the film.

Guccione took charge of the final cut and seemed to think that it was a good idea to waste all this star power by inserting, after filming had been completed by Brass, large amounts of gratuitous sex scenes to make what some considered a pornographic film. He probably thought that all those sex scenes would draw audiences who would seize on the chance to see a mainstream film that was soaked in sex and violence, since in those pre-internet days, video of explicit sex was not available to the general public except in selected theaters that showed low-budget, crudely made films. He may well have been right since the film made $23.4 million at the box office, exceeding its cost of $17.5 million.
[Read more…]

Culture wars forever!

Now that Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives, speaker Kevin McCarthy is paying off his debt to all those in his caucus who held him hostage in his attempt to become speaker by letting them hold all manner of hearings on culture war issues.

(Non Sequitur)

However, I think that they will never run out of things to be outraged about. Outrage over trivialities serves to distract from their lack of any program of action that can command mass support.

It does not snow in Sri Lanka

I was forwarded this photograph that purported to show snow in Sri Lanka.

As soon as I saw it I was skeptical. The catch is that Sri Lanka is a tropical island that is just a few degrees north of the equator, somewhat like Hawaii in climate, so snow would be very unusual even given the erratic weather patterns caused by climate change. Furthermore, I lived for many years in the area shown in the photograph and I cannot recall even needing a sweater at any time. It is at an elevation of less than 2,000 ft above sea level.

My initial reaction was that this is one of the many doctored images that float around the internet, especially since there was no sign of snow on the trees or on top of the cars and buildings.

But a friend in Sri Lanka says that while it is not snow, it is not a hoax either, that the material used to resurface the roads results in a soap-like foam emerging after it rains. This apparently happens all over the globe but I have never encountered it myself.

Has anyone observed this?

Biden’s budget proposals puts Republicans in a bind

Yesterday Joe Biden released his budget proposals for the next fiscal year. In the ritualistic role-playing that is the annual budget process in the US, a president’s proposals are taken seriously as likely to be implemented only if the president’s party controls both houses of Congress. Otherwise, the opposition party that is the majority will dismiss the proposals outright. Those are the usual opening moves in this dance and it is being followed this time with Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy and others in his party’s leadership dismissing the budget.

In a joint statement, House speaker Kevin McCarthy and other top Republicans accused Biden of “shrugging and ignoring” the national debt, which they called one of the “greatest threats to America”.

”President Biden’s budget is a reckless proposal doubling down on the same far-left spending policies that have led to record inflation and our current debt crisis,” the statement said.

McCarthy’s statement looked like it might have been written well in advance since he accuses the Biden budget of ignoring the national debt when in fact Biden argues that his budget will lower it by $2.9 trillion over the next ten years. The precise numbers are always subject to debate but it is incorrect that Biden is ‘ignoring’ it when it is the top line item.
[Read more…]

Reducing the cost of insulin is big news

An estimated 26.9 million people of all ages (8.2% of the U.S. population) have been diagnosed with diabetes. A further 7.3 million adults ages 18 years or older (21.4 percent of adults with diabetes) are estimated to have diabetes but are undiagnosed. For people with diabetes, insulin is essential for them to live but in the US, insulin prices have been much higher than elsewhere in the world resulting in crippling costs for users, so much so that some people cannot afford to buy the drug.

One of the major achievements of Democrats and the Biden administration in passing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) at the end of last year was that it allowed Medicare to negotiate down the price of insulin for those over 65.
[Read more…]

The Republican lane problem

In political analyses of political races in the US, the kids in the media these days like to use the metaphor of ‘lanes’ to signify where candidates stand with respect to their rivals. Traditionally, the lanes had labels such as progressive, liberal, centrist, moderate, and conservative that, while hardly precisely defined, gave one a vague sense of whether that person was aligned with ones own values or not. One could make the distinctions more fine-grained by separating them on economic/fiscal and social polices, so that one could describe someone as a fiscal conservative who is socially liberal and so on. So in principle one could identify many different ideological lanes that people could be pigeonholed into. (Warning: This post is going to overwork the lane metaphor to death.)

But when it comes to current Republican politics, all that has to be thrown out of the window because since Donald Trump, the lanes are no longer defined by ideology. What we have is the Trump lane and the non-Trump lanes. The Trump lane is defined by whatever Trump thinks serves his own interests and will enable him to win and that ideologically amorphous structure makes it harder for his competitors to find their own lanes, since the Trump lane can weave erratically across ideological lines, as he opportunistically seizes on any issue to attack his opponents, even if it involves flat-out lying about them and himself. For example, his stance against cuts to Social Security and Medicare makes those who are on record as favoring privatizing or cuts (such as Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence) vulnerable to attacks from him. He has already started doing so.
[Read more…]

‘Anti-wokism’ as a distraction from the lack of any positive policy proposals

In the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver examines Ron DeSantis’s record as governor of Florida and shows that his schtick is entirely based on fighting what he calls ‘wokism’, a word that is undefined but seems to mean anything that he dislikes and can be used to rile up the party base on culture war issues. He does not seem to have done anything that materially improves the lives of Floridians but instead feeds their grievances.