Greetings from Palmia Observatory
Well, we are finally back into March and April APS meetings and we will review one lecture from there and also comment about imaginary numbers, but first must mention
that Astronomer Assistant Willow has gone missing. We all know about sayings like "curiosity killed the cat", but we don't know of Willow's fate yet and she might just return after being out of the observatory on some wild and curious adventure. All we know is that after some observatory staff open house partying, while we were saying goodbye to guests, Willow apparently slipped out one of the back doors. Ok, Willow, have fun, but please come back; we miss you!
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| Astronomer Assistant Willow Goes Missing (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
Next up, I received an email note from "Still in Control, Gene", who forwarded a Veritasium YouTube video on "How Imaginary Numbers were Invented." If you want to get a bit of that history, check out the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUzklzVXJwo
Thanks for that, Gene!
Along the same topic, this Nature article just showed up where not just the ease of calculation of using imaginary numbers came up, but the necessity of that type of thinking is solving some quantum mechanics problems and how theory based on real numbers can be experimentally falsified. Pretty neat!
Some figures from the March 13 Nature article, by Renou, et al, are shown below. This first screenshot shows the summary.
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| So, imaginary numbers are necessary for QM after all (Source: Nature, 3/13/20) |
The article goes on to describe experimental predictions based on real number as outline in Figure 1 from the paper.
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| So, imaginary numbers are necessary for QM after all (Source: Nature, 3/13/20) |
The comparison of results from both real and imaginary approaches is summarized in Figure 2 from the paper. I have left out the other details discussed in the paper, which you can look up and go through the details if you want. Anyway it seems numbers are sort of necessary, not just a convenient way of doing calculations, which I can remember while doing some calculations in electromagnetism, for example.
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| So, imaginary numbers are necessary for QM after all (Source: Nature, 3/13/20) |
So, with that warmup exercise in physical theory, it is time to dial in to the online American Physical Society March 2022 Meeting. The meeting this year is being finally held live, but I couldn't quite justify flying to Chicago. Similarly, flying to New York City for the April APS Meeting, also didn't quite make it over the thresh hold of just attending the meeting online.
So, while I was logging into the online meeting, I just by chance pushed the wrong icon on my Ipad and started to see some camera images. Hmm, what is going on here? Oh, I know, this is about me and what I was hopping to learn at the March Meeting. Oh yeah, a lot of brainy expansion!
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| I was really excited about learning stuff at the March APS meeting (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
Well, brainy expansion is not what I experience anymore and in fact in joking with Math Whiz, Dave, we are slowly beginning to recognize that we are maybe approaching an equilibrium as physicist wannabes, where what we learn from new meetings is offset by what we forget from old meetings! Anyway this next Ipad image sort of captures something like that of trying to learn something new.
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| What happened after starting the first lecture at the March APS meeting (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
Ok, ok, let's get into some brief comments on one of the first sessions of the March meeting that was of special interest to me. As you might guess, as a physicist wannabe and armchair cosmologies, my preference would be for the April APS meeting, but the March session on "Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics Models of the Origin of Life" appealed to my interest in Astrobiology and what the nature of alien life might be.
This first presentation of that series was by Addy Pross, professor of chemistry at Ben Gurion University and author "What is Life: How Chemistry Becomes Biology."
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| Dynamic Kinetic Stability and the Origin of Life (Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
The problem of going from chemistry to biology is illustrated pretty well by the slide below where we see that even simple biological systems or cells represents an increase of complexity of 9 orders of magnitude. The question about how and why this complexity comes about is one of the central "mysteries" of the transition from chemistry to biology.
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| Biology represents 9 orders of magnitude in complexity over chemistry (Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
Addy described how the concept of Dynamic Kinetic Stability (DKS) is a key to linking chemistry to biology. Life is a process that requires energy to continue in the fight against entropy, but it is these dynamic stability points that separate traditional thermodynamics concepts from these new out of equilibrium conditions necessary for life.
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| Kinetic & Dynamic Stabilities (Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
He mentioned that coming up with theories is alright, but a new theory alone is not that significant unless it is back up by experimental verification. This first experimental verification is outlined in the screen capture below. The chemical reaction goes in a cycle as along are incoming "nutrients", dimethylsulphate, in this case, is provided and the "waste product", in this case, ethyl alcohol, is removed, the cycle just keeps on going.
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| First Lab Demonstration of Synthetic DKS System (Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
The difference between thermodynamic equilibrium and DKS stability is illustrated below. The difference between the states "Y" and "X" involve difference levels of entropy and complexity can become more easily visible in the DKS system. It was interesting to hear also that the cycle between DKS X and Y can be driven by chemical potential energy or even solar energy as in day and night cycling. Wow, it might turn out that having a planet with day/night cycling is a key component necessary for life!
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| DKS System Stability and Thermodynamic Stability(Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
So, this new concept of DKS provides a nature splitting between the probability approach of Boltzmann and statistical mechanics and the exponential growth that is part of DKS.
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| Statistical theory meets exponential growth (Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
So, DKS introduces a new dimension into the domain of chemistry. This new landscape separates the old possible world of thermodynamics and the new world of DKS.
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| Chemistry now has new landscape (Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
What is the next step for research based on DKS? Well, the chemists now need to propose and explain how protein synthesis arises. This is a much higher level of complexity and the details still need to be resolved. What is neat about the search though, is now we can see a way for more general processes to go from chemistry to biology which are also applicable to the study of astrobiology.
This is something that Lee Cronin is always advocating because current origin of life studies are too preoccupied with origin of life on Earth where the real "mystery" is how life could arise on other exoplanets with a completely different approach, but still following the principles of DKS. For more details about Cronin's emphasis on exobiology check out any of the recent podcasts with Lex Fridman or Brian Keating.
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| Now the goal is to transition to proteins (Source: Addy Pross, APS March 2022 Meeting) |
Until next time,
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