What is the simplest, most fundamental clock? UC Berkeley physicist Holger Müller and his colleagues have shown that a single atom is sufficient to measure time. Conversely, the frequency of matter can be used to define its mass.
Sakis Koukouvis's insight:
In a paper appearing in the Jan. 11 issue of Science, Müller and his UC Berkeley colleagues describe how to tell time using only the matter wave of a cesium atom. He refers to his method as a Compton clock because it is based on the so-called Compton frequency of a matter wave.
What could most of us could do to chill out and expand our subjective sense of time? Feel a sense of awe more often! Rudd et. al. do a series of experiments illustrating that it expands our perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being.
Research has shown that our perceptual system seems to pull causally-related events together – compared to two events that are thought to happen of their own accord, we perceive the first event as occurring later if we think it is the cause and we perceive the second event as occurring earlier if we think it is the outcome.
If time didn’t exist before the Big Bang, how could anything happen before it? Our concept of ‘before and after’ (as we know it) relies on our understanding of time and the concept of ’cause and effect’. An analogous question would be “What’s north of the north pole?”. The question has no meaningful answer due to our understanding and definition of ‘north’. This puts the question in a strictly theoretical realm. We’re going to explore several different hypotheses on what happened before the Big Bang, put forth by a few of the world’s leading theoretical physicists.
In a forthcoming paper, researchers Melanie Rudd, Kathleen Vohs, and Jennifer Aaker examined whether the emotion of awe, compared to happiness and neutral states, might reduce people's sense of time pressure and consequently make them more willing to volunteer their time, choose experiences over material objects, and enjoy greater life satisfaction.
The time and energy we can invest in others socially – in terms of building and maintaining friendships – is a lot like money; we cannot spend it in two places at once. Given that we have a limited budget with which to build and maintain relationships, it’s of vital importance for some cognitive system to assess the probability of social returns from its investment; likewise, individuals have a vested interest in manipulating that assessment in others in order to further their goals.
The heat-death of the universe need not bring an end to the computing age. A strange device known as a time crystal can theoretically continue to work as a computer even after the universe cools. A new blueprint for such a time crystal brings its construction a step closer.
Scientists have turned up rare evidence that space-time is smooth as Einstein predicted, while pushing closer to a complete theory of gravity. From NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope.
The settings for a person’s biological clock might provide clues to when, during the day, he or she will be more active. What’s more, these same settings could be linked to what time of day a person might die, a new study finds.
Why do people so often make decisions that their future selves regret? One possibility is that people have a fundamental misconception about their future selves. Time is a powerful force that transforms people’s preferences, reshapes their values, and alters their personalities, and we suspect that people generally underestimate the magnitude of those changes. In other words, people may believe that who they are today is pretty much who they will be tomorrow, despite the fact that it isn’t who they were yesterday.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, "what is time?" We all understand its passage intuitively, experientially. But does time actually exist? Is it a force of nature? A tangible entity? I spoke with theoretical physicist and perhaps the world's premier expert on the science of time, Sean Carroll, to learn more.
Scientists have located a specific set of neurons that indicate how time passes, confirming that the brain plays an essential role in how we experience the passage of time.
New research from psychological science suggests that the familiar adage may really be true, with a caveat: time flies when we’re have goal-motivated fun.
The sought-after equanimity of "living in the moment" may be impossible, according to neuroscientists who've pinpointed a brain area responsible for using past decisions and outcomes to guide future behavior.
Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, explains how physicists approach the intriguing possibility of faster-than-light travel.
Human beings have the capacity to stop time. It is, in fact, a commonly used capacity. We use our ability to stop time as a bulwark against the threat of disruptive newness that encroaches with the future. It also allows us to keep what we remember from turning into the mere past.
So how do we stop time?
The answer that I have in mind is: through ritual.
On May 30, 2012 the 5th annual World Science Festival opened with a showing of Icarus at the Edge of Time. Written by Brian Greene, adapted by David Henry Hwang, film by Al and Al, score composed by Philip Glass, conducted by Brad Lubman, and narrated by LeVar Burton.
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