Final post on this blog Wednesday, Dec 26 2012

Dear all, I have not posted on this blog for some time, and missing out on many important scientific news. Such as for example the discovery of the Higgs Boson or the Nobel prize for Quantum decoherence. I have decided to not continue writing on this blog, but instead continue to write on the facebook-page “Hella cool science”:

http://www.facebook.com/HellaCoolScience

Please feel free to like it and I will assist in showing some cool science and technology stuff every now and then.

Until next time,

Yours sincerely

Joakim Munkhammar

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Happy birthday Stephen Hawking! And will he finally reveal that he is extraterrestrial? Sunday, Jan 8 2012

One of the worlds currently most famout theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking celebrates his 70:th birthday today. This should be considered somewhat of a miracle since he has been battling ALS since the 60′s. Some argue that this special condition helped boost the public opinion regarding the prominence of his research. That might be true, but over all his research can only be described at extraordinary. Also, during the course of his illness he had to give up old fashioned scientific aids such as pen and paper. Instead he had to develop a method to handle all equations in his head. Almost super human abilities. And the fact that he has aluded death longer than any ALS patient is also a indication of that statement.

His most famous formula regarding the entropy of black holes is still not observationally confirmed. But given that it – or simply black hole raditation – would be experimentally confirmed he would get the Nobel prize. For sure.

Rumour has it that he has been given a ticket for a ride on one of the first space tourism flights.

Given the clues above regarding his super-intelligence and mysterious super human abilities I start to wonder if he is really human. Given his deep-space intuition extraterrestrial origin would seem reasonable. I hope he is not planning a trip back to his home planet any time soon, since we slow minded humans could still gain very much from his presence here on earth.

Hope you have a great birthday Dr Hawking!

(Picture from his time at NASA in the 80′s)

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Nobelpriset i fysik 2011 – Allt om vetenskap Monday, Dec 12 2011

Alla som är intresserade av att veta lite mer om årets Nobelpris i fysik kan läsa om detta i en artikel jag skrivit i Allt om vetenskaps senaste nummer 12/2011.

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The Nobel prize in physics 2011 is awarded for… a great discovery which we cannot explain Tuesday, Oct 4 2011

Saul Perlmutter, Briand P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess recieved this years Nobel prize in physics for their discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This is a great discovery made just over a decade ago. However since then there has been many proposals suggesting a reason for it. Unfortunately no viable theory has been established. Is this years prize not a tad odd because of this?

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Regarding the recent “faster than speed of light” measurement Monday, Sep 26 2011

A recent hype has been built up regarding the detection of a potential Superluminal particle path. I do not know whether this is a valid experiment or not – further tests by several independent scientists needs to be made – but it is naturally interesting to contemplate the possibility. The news hype is unfortunately misdirected when statements like “Experiment could crush Einstein’s theory” arise. It is impossible to “crush” the theory of relativity. The (here special) theory of relativity has been verified in many experiments. Given that this recent superluminal experiment is verified it could potentially show that there are exceptions to special relativity that limits it’s validity. And that would indeed be interesting. However there are already quantum mechanical exceptions to special relativity – such as Bell’s theorem and experiments with the EPR-paradox – hinting that there is a more fundamental theory that unifies both.

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Är Hawkingstrålning ett universiellt fenomen även för artificiella svarta hål? Monday, Aug 22 2011

Hawkingstrålning har länge varit en eftertraktad artefakt att observera. För avlägsna svarta hål i rymden så har det varit svårt att göra detta. Jag publicerade en populärvetenskaplig artikel om att forskare nu experimentellt kanske lyckats visa att Hawkingstrålning uppstår för så kallade artificiella svarta hål. Dessa artificiella svarta hål är inte riktiga svarta hål utan har ett par viktiga egenskaper som skiljer dem från de traditionella kosmiska varianterna. Läs mer om detta i artikeln.

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Prezi – a magical tool for presentation Thursday, Jun 9 2011

Power point is without a doubt an outdated tool for presentation. In particular if one expects ones audience to remember anything. Yesterday I encountered Prezi - a new kind of tool for presentation. It is free to some extent and I tried it out today. Although it is a bit too simplified I was still completely blown away by its complexity and simple-to-use functions in order to produce entertaining and advanced presentations. I imagine using this for future scientific presentations, I did this one today. The workspace is always online, but one can choose to download the complete presentation once done as an executable file.

I have tried it and will probably never go back to Power point again.

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Quantum Mechanics derived from information theory Tuesday, May 31 2011

My paper “Canonical Relational Quantum Mechanics from Information Theory” was just recently published at EJTP (previously only on Arxiv). The editorial introduction reads:

“Munkhammar proposes an interesting connection between the Rovelli relational interpretation of QM, the Shannon information theory and Garrett Lisi universal action by introducing a specific entropy of quantum systems”

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Einstein’s general theory of relativity still rules Monday, May 16 2011

The results from NASA’s Gravity Probe B satellite has now been completely analyzed and published in the physical review letters. The satellite mission was aimed at measuring the “frame-dragging” or gravitomagnetic effect that was derived from Einsteins general theory of relativity a century ago. The results verified Einsteins results to a high degree. It is remarkable that Einsteins general theory of relativity – now about a hundred years old – still remains the best theory of gravitation known to man.

(Illustration: Nasa 2004)

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Einstein vs Hawking rap battle Monday, May 2 2011

Youtube brings the awesome with some entertaining ultimate showdowns, like this rap battle between Einstein and Hawking. Enjoy!

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