Interesting Quantum Distortion

Posted on December 2, 2016 by marcia

ESO/L. Calçada

We just got the first real evidence of a strange quantum distortion in empty space

It’s taken us 80 years to witness this.

BEC CREW

For the first time, astronomers have observed a strange quantum phenomenon in action, where a neutron star is surrounded by a magnetic field so intense, it’s given rise to a region in empty space where matter spontaneously pops in and out of existence.

Called vacuum birefringence, this bizarre phenomenon was first predicted back in the 1930s, but had only ever been observed on the atomic scale. Now scientists have finally seen it occur in nature, and it goes against everything that Newton and Einstein had mapped out.

“This is a macroscopic manifestation of quantum field,” Jeremy Heyl from the University of British Columbia in Canada, who was not involved in the research, told Science. “It’s manifest on the scale of a neutron star.”

An international team of astronomers led by Roberto Mignani from INAF Milan in Italy made the discovery while observing a neutron star called RX J1856.5-3754 that’s 400 light-years from Earth.

Neutron stars are the crushed cores of massive stars that collapsed under their own weight when they ran out of fuel, and exploded as a supernova.

They’re made of some of the most dense material in the Universe – just 1 teaspoon of the stuff would weigh 1 billion tons on Earth – and their crust is 10 billion times stronger than steel.

Neutron stars also have the strongest magnetic fields in the known Universe – astronomers predict that the strongest neutron star magnetic fields are nearly 100 trillion times stronger than Earth’s.

These magnetic fields are so ridiculous, they’re thought to affect the properties of the empty space surrounding a neutron star.

In the classical physics of Newton and Einstein, the vacuum of space is entirely empty, but the theory of quantum mechanics assumes something very different.

According to quantum electrodynamics (QED) – a quantum theory that describes how light and matter interact – it’s predicted that space is actually full of ‘virtual particles’ that pop in and out of existence and mess with the activity of light particles (photons) as they zip around the Universe.

These virtual particles aren’t like regular physical particles like electrons and photons, but are fluctuations in quantum fields that have similar properties to a regular particle – the big difference being that they can appear and vanish at any point in space and time.

In regular empty space, photons aren’t affected by these virtual particles, and travel without interference.

But in the empty space near the incredibly intense magnetic field of a neutron star, these virtual particles are ‘excited’, and they have a dramatic effect on any photons passing through.

“According to QED, a highly magnetised vacuum behaves as a prism for the propagation of light, an effect known as vacuum birefringence,” Mignani explains in a press release.

“This effect can be detected only in the presence of enormously strong magnetic fields, such as those around neutron stars,” adds team member Roberto Turolla from the University of Padua in Italy.

As Jay Bennett reports for Popular Mechanics, the researchers directed the world’s most advanced ground-based telescope, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), at their neutron star, and observed linear polarisation – the alignment of light waves influenced by electromagnetic forced – in the empty space around the star.

“This is rather odd, because conventional relativity says that light should pass freely through a vacuum, such as space, without being altered,” says Bennett.

“The linear polarisation was to such a degree (16 degrees, to be precise) that the only known explanations are theories of QED and the influence of virtual particles.”

You can see an illustration of this at the top of the page, where light coming from the surface of a neutron star (on the left) becomes linearly polarised as it travels through the vacuum of space on its way to the observer on Earth (on the right).

The next step now is for the observations to be replicated in another scenario to know for sure that vacuum birefringence is what we’re looking at here, and if that’s the case, we’ve got a whole new phenomenon to investigate in the field of quantum mechanics.

“When Einstein came up with the theory of general relativity 100 years ago, he had no idea that it would be used for navigational systems. The consequences of this discovery probably will also have to be realised on a longer timescale,” Magnani told New Scientist.

The research has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and you can access it for free at arXiv.org.

from: http://www.sciencealert.com/we-just-got-the-first-real-evidence-of-a-strange-quantum-distortion-in-empty-space

Using Magnetic Fields for Power Transfer

Posted on April 18, 2014 by marcia

Wireless Power Transfer Achieved Using Magnetic Field

Image source

Activist Post

The way electronic devices receive their power has changed tremendously over the past few decades, from wired to non-wired. Users today enjoy all kinds of wireless electronic gadgets including cell phones, mobile displays, tablet PCs, and even batteries.

The Internet has also shifted from wired to wireless. Now, researchers and engineers are trying to remove the last remaining wires altogether by developing wireless power transfer technology.

Chun T. Rim, a professor of Nuclear & Quantum Engineering at KAIST, and his team showcased, on April 16, 2014 at the KAIST campus, Daejeon, Republic of Korea, a great improvement in the distance that electric power can travel wirelessly. They developed the “Dipole Coil Resonant System (DCRS)” for an extended range of inductive power transfer, up to 5 meters between transmitter and receiver coils.

Since MIT’s (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) introduction of the Coupled Magnetic Resonance System (CMRS) in 2007, which used a magnetic field to transfer energy for a distance of 2.1 meters, the development of long-distance wireless power transfer has attracted much attention for further research.

However, in terms of extending the distance of wireless power, CMRS, for example, has revealed technical limitations to commercialization that are yet to be solved: a rather complicated coil structure (composed of four coils for input, transmission, reception, and load); bulky-size resonant coils; high frequency (in a range of 10 MHz) required to resonate the transmitter and receiver coils, which results in low transfer efficiency; and a high Q factor of 2,000 that makes the resonant coils very sensitive to surroundings such as temperature, humidity, and human proximityProfessor Rim proposed a meaningful solution to these problems through DCRS, an optimally designed coil structure that has two magnetic dipole coils, a primary one to induce a magnetic field and a secondary to receive electric power. Unlike the large and thick loop-shaped air coils built in CMRS, the KAIST research team used compact ferrite core rods with windings at their centers. The high frequency AC current of the primary winding generates a magnetic field, and then the linkage magnetic flux induces the voltage at the secondary winding.

Scalable and slim with a size of 3 m in length, 10 cm in width, and 20 cm in height, DCRS is significantly smaller than CMRS. The system has a low Q factor of 100, showing 20 times stronger against the environment changes, and works well at a low frequency of 100 kHz. The team conducted several experiments and achieved promising results: for instance, under the operation of 20 kHz, the maximum output power was 1,403 W at a 3-meter distance, 471 W at 4-meter, and 209 W at 5-meter. For 100 W of electric power transfer, the overall system power efficiency was 36.9% at 3 meters, 18.7% at 4 meters, and 9.2% at 5 meters.

“With DCRS,” Professor Rim said, “a large LED TV as well as three 40 W-fans can be powered from a 5-meter distance.”

“Our technology proved the possibility of a new remote power delivery mechanism that has never been tried at such a long distance. Although the long-range wireless power transfer is still in an early stage of commercialization and quite costly to implement, we believe that this is the right direction for electric power to be supplied in the future. Just like we see Wi-Fi zones everywhere today, we will eventually have many Wi-Power zones at such places as restaurants and streets that provide electric power wirelessly to electronic devices. We will use all the devices anywhere without tangled wires attached and anytime without worrying about charging their batteries.”

Professor Rim’s team completed a research project with the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd in March this year to remotely supply electric power to essential instrumentation and control equipment at a nuclear power plant in order to properly respond to an emergency like the one happened at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They succeeded to transfer 10 W of electricity to the plant that was located 7 meters away from the power base.

from: http://www.activistpost.com/2014/04/wireless-power-transfer-achieved-using.html

Hidden Portals in Earth’s Magnetic Field

Posted on March 17, 2014 by marcia

NASA Discovers Hidden Portals In Earth’s Magnetic Field

Last updated on March 17, 2014

Our planet has come a long way in scientific breakthroughs and discoveries. Mainstream science is beginning to discover new concepts of reality that have the potential to change our perception about our planet and the extraterrestrial environment that surrounds it forever. Star gates, wormholes, and portals have been the subject of conspiracy theories and theoretical physics for decades, but that is all coming to an end as we continue to grow in our understanding about the true nature of our reality.

In physics, a wormhole was a hypothetical feature of space time that would be a shortcut through space-time. We often wonder how extraterrestrials could travel so far and this could be one of many explanations. Although scientists still don’t really understand what they have found, it does open the mind to many possibilities.

Turning science fiction into science fact seems to happen quite often these days and NASA did it by announcing the discovery of hidden portals in Earth’s magnetic field.

NASA calls them X-points or electron diffusion regions. They are places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, which in turn creates an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun’s atmosphere which is 93 million miles away.

NASA used its THEMIS spacecraft, as well as a European Cluster probe, to examine this phenomenon. They found that these portals open and close dozens of times each day. It’s funny, because there is a lot of evidence that points toward the sun being a giant star gate for the ‘gods’ to pass back and forth from other dimensions and universes. The portals that NASA has discovered are usually located tens of thousands of kilometres from Earth and most of them are short-lived; others are giant, vast and sustained.

As far as scientists can determine, these portals aid in the transfer of tons of magnetically charged particles that flow from the Sun causing the northern and southerns lights and geomagnetic storms. They aid in the transfer of the magnetic field from the Sun to the Earth. In 2014, the U.S. space agency will launch a new mission called Magnetospheric Multi scale Mission (MMS) which will include four spacecraft that will circle the Earth to locate and then study these portals. They are located where the Earth and the Sun’s magnetic fields connect and where the unexplained portals are formed.

NASA funded the University of Iowa for this study, and they are still unclear as to what these portals are. All they have done is observed charged particles flowing through them that cause electro-magnetic phenomenon in Earth’s atmosphere.

Magnetic portals are invisible, unstable and elusive. they open and close without warming and there are no signposts to guide is in.
– Dr Scudder, University of Iowa

Mainstream science continues to grow further, but I often get confused between mainstream science, and science that is formed in the black budget world. It seems that information and discovery isn’t information and discovery without the type of ‘proof’ that the human race requires. Given that the human race requires, and has a certain criteria for ‘proof’, which has been taught to us by the academic world, information can easily be suppressed by concealing that ‘proof’.

It’s no secret that the department of defence receives trillions of dollars that go unaccounted for and everything developed within the United States Air Force Space Agency remains classified. They are able to classify information for the sake of ‘national security’. Within the past few years, proof has been emerging for a number of phenomenon that would suggest a whole other scientific world that operates separately from mainstream science.

We have the technology to take ET home, anything you can imagine we already have the technology to do, but these technologies are locked up in black budget projects. It would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.
– Ben Rich, Fmr CEO of LockHeed Skunk Works

from: http://in5d.com/NASA-discovers-hidden-portals-in-earths-magnetic-field.html

Robins Can See Magnetic FIelds

Posted on March 13, 2014 by marcia

Robins Not Only Sense, But Can Actually SEE Magnetic Fields

By Dr. Becker

Story at-a-glance

Magnetoception is the scientific term for the ability to detect a magnetic field to perceive location, direction, or altitude. It is a skill only a handful of living things are known to possess, among them, certain birds.
While some birds can sense the Earth’s magnetic field, one type of bird – the robin – can actually see magnetic fields thanks to a special molecule in the retina. To robins, magnetic fields appear as patterns of light, shade or color superimposed onto what the birds see with their normal everyday vision.
This special magnetic compass is only found in the right eye in adult robins, though they are born with compasses in both eyes. Over time, the left eye loses its compass, and the bird’s magnetoception ability depends on good vision in the right eye.

Now here’s a word you may never come across in your lifetime (unless you enter a lot of spelling bees): Magnetoception (also called magnetoreception). Do you know what it refers to? It describes the ability to detect a magnetic field to identify direction, altitude or location.

Magnetoception is a skill only a handful of creatures seem to have, including bacteria, some invertebrates (fruit flies, honeybees, and lobsters), homing pigeons, domestic hens, certain mammals, turtles, sharks and stingrays. Humans may or may not possess the ability, depending on who you ask.

Robins Not Only Sense, But Actually SEE, Magnetic Fields… But in Only One Eye

Some birds can sense the Earth’s magnetic field and orient themselves accordingly. As you can imagine, this is a huge benefit for the “frequent flyers” of the avian world, migrating birds.

But one type of bird in particular, the robin, can actually see magnetic fields thanks to a special molecule called a cryptochrome in the retina. The fields appear as patterns of light, shade or color superimposed onto what the birds normally see.

Scientists have learned that in robins, the magnetoception ability is dependent on good vision in the right eye. If the right eye is covered, the birds become disoriented when they fly, but if the left eye is covered, they navigate without a problem. This means the robin’s vision in the right eye acts as a doorway for its magnetic sense. If there is darkness or cloudiness in the right eye, the door stays shut, but light in that eye opens the door and activates the bird’s internal compass.

The guidance mechanism seems to work in such a way that the magnetic field-generated patterns of light, shade or color overlaying what a robin normally sees change as the bird turns and tilts its head during flight. This provides a visual compass composed of contrasting shades of light. But the compass doesn’t depend solely on light – the birds must also have a clear image with their right eye in order to accurately navigate. Their magnetic sense is only a transparent overlay to the images their normal vision provides. If that vision is impaired in any way, the magnetic sense is of no use. (Imagine trying to follow your car’s GPS navigation instructions with a couple inches of heavy wet snow covering your windshield.)

Experts believe robins probably require a clear, focused image to distinguish between inputs from their visual and magnetic senses. Since the magnetic field lies on top of what is seen through normal vision, and both incorporate differences in light and shade, it would seem the birds could become easily confused. However, the images the birds see through normal vision tend to have sharp transitions between light and shade, whereas changes in the patterns superimposed by magnetic fields are smoother and more gradual. Birds are probably aware that sharp changes in contrast are due to the boundaries of actual objects, while more subtle changes are the result of magnetic effects.

Baby Robins Possess a Magnetic Compass in Both Eyes, But Lose the Left One as They Mature

While adult robins have a magnetic compass in their right eye only, as babies, they had a compass in each eye. It seems they lose the left one as they mature.

The change from both eyes to just the right eye occurs gradually. In robins that are no longer babies but not fully grown, the magnetic compass in the left eye can be revived for a time by covering the right eye. According to scientists, this means the eyes themselves aren’t changing. Instead, the brain begins processing input from the eyes in different ways.

A near equivalent in humans is right- or left-handedness. The hand we ultimately prefer as adults only becomes dependably dominant around the age of four or five.

from: http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2014/03/10/robins-magnetic-field.aspx?e_cid=20140310Z1_PetsNL_art_3&utm_source=petnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art3&utm_campaign=20140310Z1&et_cid=DM40605&et_rid=451707623

On Magnetic Fields & Shells

Posted on January 8, 2013 by marcia

Magnetic shell provides unprecedented control of magnetic fields January 4, 2013 by Lisa Zyga feature

The newly designed magnetic shell can either expel or concentrate magnetic energy.

A general property of magnetic fields is that they decay with the distance from their magnetic source. But in a new study, physicists have shown that surrounding a magnetic source with a magnetic shell can enhance the magnetic field as it moves away from the source, allowing magnetic energy to be transferred to a distant location through empty space. By reversing this technique, the scientists showed that the transferred magnetic energy can be captured by a second magnetic shell located some distance away from the first shell. The second shell can then concentrate the captured magnetic energy into a small interior region. The achievement represents an unprecedented ability to transport and concentrate magnetic energy, and could have applications in the wireless transmission of energy, medical techniques, and other areas.

The physicists, Carles Navau, Jordi Prat-Camps, and Alvaro Sanchez at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, have published their results on their new method of magnetic energy distribution and concentration in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters. “We have tried with this work to open new ways of shaping magnetic fields in space,” Sanchez told Phys.org. “Since magnetic fields are so crucial for so many technologies (e.g., almost 100% of the energy generated uses magnetic fields), finding these new possibilities may bring benefits.” The basis of the technique lies in transformation optics, a field that deals with the control of electromagnetic waves and involves metamaterials and invisibility cloaks. While researchers have usually focused on using transformation optics ideas to control light, here the researchers applied the same ideas to control magnetic fields by designing a magnetic shell with specific electromagnetic properties. The shell can be used to control magnetic fields in two ways, depending on its location relative to a magnetic source. When a magnetic source is placed inside the shell, the shell expels the magnetic energy outside. When the shell is placed near a magnetic source located outside the shell, the shell harvests and concentrates the magnetic energy from the source into a hole in the shell’s center. Magnetic shell provides unprecedented control of magnetic fields Enlarge

Magnetic shells can be used to increase the magnetic energy of multiple magnets: The four magnetic dipoles in (a) interact very weakly, even when they are moved closer together in (b). However, when all four dipoles are surrounded by a shell as in (c), their exterior fields become enhanced, yielding a stronger magnetic field in the center region. Credit: Carles Navau, et al. ©2012 American Physical Society

In both cases, the shell works by dividing the space into an exterior and interior zone and then transferring the magnetic energy completely into one domain or the other. This method differs from the way that superconductors and ferromagnets distribute magnetic energy, where the energy always returns to the domain where the magnetic sources are. Although no material exists that can perfectly meet the requirements for the magnetic shell’s properties, the physicists showed that they could closely approximate these properties by using wedges of alternating superconducting and ferromagnetic materials.

For practical purposes, this approximation is sufficient to work for a variety of potential applications, in which the magnetic shell’s two functions (transferring and concentrating) can be used together or independently. For instance, by surrounding two magnetic dipoles with their own shells, the magnetic coupling between them can be enhanced, which could be used to improve the efficiency of wireless power transmission between a source and a receiver. With its ability to concentrate nearby magnetic fields, a single magnetic shell could also be used to increase the sensitivity of magnetic sensors. The scientists demonstrated that a magnetic sensor placed inside the shell can detect a much larger magnetic flux from an external magnetic source than it would when using a typical concentration strategy involving superconductors. Magnetic sensors are often used in consumer electronics, factory automation, navigation, and many other areas. The magnetic shell could also have medical applications, such as for biosensors that measure the brain’s response in magnetoencephalography, a technique used for mapping brain activity. The physicists also showed that the shells can be used to surround multiple magnetic sources arranged in a circle, allowing them to concentrate magnetic energy in the center of the circle. This arrangement could be used in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a technique used to treat psychiatric disorders. While TMS generally targets regions near the brain’s surface, the magnetic shells could help extend the reach of magnetic fields to deeper targets. Magnetic energy also plays a vital role in power applications, such as in power plants, magnetic memories, and motors. All of these applications require magnetic energy to be spatially distributed or concentrated in a certain way. By enabling the control of magnetic energy in new ways, the magnetic shells could improve these applications and others due to their many possible configurations. “We are presently working on extending these ideas of applying transformation optics to the magnetic case into different directions, and see how future designs can be implemented in practice (in the present case, we suggested superconductors and ferromagnetic materials as a practical implementation of the magnetic shell),” Sanchez said. More information: Carles Navau, et al. “Magnetic Energy Harvesting and Concentration at a Distance by Transformation Optics.” PRL 109, 263903 (2012). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.263903

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