Matt von Hippel – Quanta Magazine

How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories

Matt von Hippel — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 14:55:38 +0000

By 1928, quantum physicists seemed poised to unravel matter’s final secrets. The German researcher Walter Gordon had applied the emerging theory of quantum mechanics to the hydrogen atom, the universe’s simplest atom, and worked out exactly how it behaved. A mastery of all atoms seemed sure to follow. It did not. When quantum particles influence each other, their possibilities intertwine in such…

Source

When Data Is Missing, Scientists Guess. Then Guess Again.

Matt von Hippel — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 13:52:51 +0000

Data is almost always incomplete. Patients drop out of clinical trials and survey respondents skip questions; schools fail to report scores, and governments ignore elements of their economies. When data goes missing, standard statistical tools, like taking averages, are no longer useful. “We cannot calculate with missing data, just as we can’t divide by zero,” said Stef van Buuren…

Source

Vacuum of Space to Decay Sooner Than Expected (but Still Not Soon)

Matt von Hippel — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 13:45:36 +0000

Vacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know it, may happen 10,000 times sooner than expected. Fortunately, it still won’t happen for a very, very long time. When physicists speak of “the vacuum,” the term sounds as though it refers to empty space, and in a sense it does. More specifically, it refers to a set of defaults, like settings on a control board.

Source

The S-Matrix Is the Oracle Physicists Turn To in Times of Crisis

Matt von Hippel — Thu, 23 May 2024 14:20:31 +0000

In 1943, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg distracted himself from World War II by pondering a crisis in quantum theory. Predictions about how particles should behave were occasionally giving nonsensical, infinite results. These infinities led Heisenberg to distrust the way quantum physics was depicting reality, and to expect that a revolutionary new theory would eventually overthrow particle…

Source

Crucial Computer Program for Particle Physics at Risk of Obsolescence

Matt von Hippel — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:01:27 +0000

Recently, I watched a fellow particle physicist talk about a calculation he had pushed to a new height of precision. His tool? A 1980s-era computer program called FORM. Particle physicists use some of the longest equations in all of science. To look for signs of new elementary particles in collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, for example, they draw thousands of pictures called Feynman…

Source