As the start of our new series on humans in physics, I would like to give a personal opinion on the lack of (gender) diversity in the natural sciences and its connection to the very human phenomenon of “unconscious bias”. I wrote this article for celebrating “Diversity Day” in the quantum science research cluster in Munich.
Continue reading “Gender and unconscious bias in quantum science”Author: Alexander
Apart from drinking loads of green tea, I spend most of my time pursuing a weird fetish of trying to combine symbols to some sort of sensible equation. In the next years, I will try to persuade my boss to give me a PhD for these scribblings and I hope to convey some of the fascinating things which will encounter me on the way to you! In my spare time, I combine my longing for the outdoors with more tea drinking (pictured above), but also triathlon, drawing, photography, meditation, gardening, cocoa ceremonies, outdoor raves and other life endeavors.
How quantum physics may save Earth from global warming
Transporting renewable energy to where it’s needed lies at the heart of the human endeavour to get rid of the need for fossil fuels. Superconductors can do so without loosing any of the precious electricity on the way, seemingly defying physical intuition. Find out in this article why many body physics is needed to understand their counter-intuitive behaviour, what role quantum entanglement plays and how quantum computation might lead to the discovery of materials which may give us the tools for a greener future.
Continue reading “How quantum physics may save Earth from global warming”Quantum cryptography
How quantum technologies enable uncrackably secure communication.
In our modern computer world, being able to encrypt messages is not only necessary to keep some information secret from others, but is a key part of technologies such as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Furthermore, the scandals around widespread eavesdropping of intelligence agencies has shown the world that in fact none of the routines used today are really secure. But what if I told you that in ten years all communication will be secure because it is physically impossible to eavesdrop on communication encrypted by quantum cryptography?
Scotty – Quantum beam me up!
How information can be teleported through the two most counter-intuitive properties of quantum mechanics.
We all know the quantum world is weird, but in no place does it become as weird as in the protocol allowing almost instant transportation of information from one place to the other termed “quantum teleportation”. That may sound like its impossible – but what if I tell you that this can even be done without the recipient of the information knowing? And that this technology is about to make communication absolutely eavesdrop-safe?
How chaos drives the arrow of time
This post is a continuation of our last post on chaos. We therefore recommend you to read that one first, but it’s by no means necessary.
Time only moves forward – this is what we experience in our everyday lives. Often, people connect this to the fact that there are clearly processes in nature which cannot be undone: when you boil an egg you can not make the egg-white transparent again, your coffee is very unlikely to go back into the coffee powder, which will never become a full bean again itself.
Quasiparticles – like particles, but dressed
Most people know that the concept of a “particle” is a pretty important in fundamental physics (the latest success being the discovery of the “Higgs” particle in 2012) – but have you ever heard of QUASIparticles before?
Continue reading “Quasiparticles – like particles, but dressed”
Many Body Physics 