change – Page 4 – Harmonia Philosophica

Transformations. Modern alchemy. Ancient secrets…

Since the Middle Ages, alchemists have sought to transmute elements, the most famous example being the long quest to turn lead into gold. Transmutation has been realized in modern times, but on a minute scale using a massive particle accelerator.

Researchers have now taken a different approach to that alchemists’ ancient goal by making one material behave like another. Theorists at Princeton University have demonstrated that any two systems can be made to look alike, even if just for the smallest fraction of a second. (work published in published Feb. 24, 2017 in the journal Physical Review Letters)

In this context, for two objects to “look” like each other, they need to reflect light in the same way. The Princeton researchers’ method involves using light to make non-permanent changes to a substance’s molecules so that they mimic the reflective properties of another substance’s molecules. In that way the researchers controlled the light that bounces off a molecule or any substance by controlling the light shone on it, which would allow them to alter how it looks. “It was a big shock for us that such a general statement as ‘any two objects can be made to look alike’ could be made,” said co-author Denys Bondar, an associate research scholar in the laboratory of co-author Herschel Rabitz, Princeton’s Charles Phelps Smyth ’16 *17 Professor of Chemistry. (1)

We like making things look the same, transforming them into something else. But the key is not the transformation itself, but something deeper lurking inside this seemingly new knowledge.

The light reflected whispers the unholy secret…

The transformation is useless.

All it does is to show that things are already the same.

While looking different…

A world of unity. Under a veil of uniqueness…

Many waves.

And yet one ocean.

Many snowflakes.

And yet they are all water.

Many humans.

And yet…

Listen to that whisper.

Turn your eyes away from the light.

Only then will everything be revealed…

Iced water. With no ice. Alchemy. Summer breeze…

Water can remain liquid below zero degrees Celsius. It is called supercooled water and is present in refrigerators. At even smaller temperatures, supercooled water could exist as a cocktail of two distinct liquids. Unfortunately, the presence of ice often prevents us from observing this phenomenon. (1)

Water has got super high surface tension and apparently, if it gets cold enough fast enough, it might have two different kinds of liquid form, with a phase transition (i.e. the threshold between liquid water and supercooled water) somewhere around 228 kelvin (-49° F). But, for now, that’s just a theory. The problem is that it is tough to get enough of this supercooled liquid water together to examine it with any precision. In fact, scientists refer to liquid water below 232 K (-42° F) as a “no-man’s land,” because it’s so hard to get there. (2)

Now physicists had the idea of replicating the tetrahedral shape of water molecules using DNA as a scaffold to create tetrahedral molecules and thus removing the interference of ice formation. The researchers confirmed previously published ideas suggesting that it is the structure of the monomers and their network which makes it theoretically possible to have a dual liquid phase (one with high-density and one with low-density liquid) if the resulting lattice is sufficiently empty to allow for partial interpenetration of molecules and sufficiently flexible to avoid crystallization into ice. (3)

Given the right conditions everything can exceed its current limitations.

However, it can never be “something else”.

Supercooled water is still… water. No matter the state it is in.

Can we change water?

Can we make water something else?

Drink the water.

Transform it into a man.

Can we change the cosmos?

Pure water in it.

Make life.

Make a man.

Talking non-sense in the summer breeze.

Super cooled. Super warm inside…

Superconductivity. Intrinsic abilities. Alchemy. Being.

Scientists activated the intrinsic ability of graphene to superconduct (carry an electrical current with no resistance). Before that, superconductivity in graphene has only been achieved by doping it with, or by placing it on, a superconducting material – a process which can compromise some of its other properties. But in the study (published on January), researchers at the University of Cambridge managed to activate the dormant potential for graphene to superconduct in its own right. This was achieved by coupling it with a material called praseodymium cerium copper oxide (PCCO). (1)

Inherent capabilities.

Kept locked until someone finds the key…

Changing to become something else.

Only because you already are that something else…

There are materials which cannot superconduct. And yet they can change. To become something else. To superconduct. To do anything. But nothing can change into something that it is not. Because if it did, then that would simply show that it could be that something. And separating that something from what it is now is only a matter of time and conditions.

Would you say water is not ice?

Would you say babies are not adults?

Alchemy is everywhere.

It used to be written in old dusty books.

Now all you have to do is open Google…

Unless water is not ice.

Unless babies are not adults.

Unless everything is different from each other every passing moment. That would mean that we do not die. (we are not the ones dead) That would mean that we are not us. (I change all the time) That would mean that the cosmos is not itself. (what constitutes the cosmos in an ever changing cosmos?)

Look at you. You were a baby. You are a baby.

Your mother is smiling.

Is everything more clear now?

Synchronizing things… That are already in sync…

Scientists have set up the world’s most precise ‘metronome’ for a kilometer-wide network. The timing system synchronizes a 4.7-kilometer-long laser-microwave network with 950 attoseconds precision. An attosecond is a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second. (1)

Impressive. Or so it seems.

Because the problem is not synchronization per se.

Everything is already synchronized. In their own frequencies, according to their own preferences. The problem is that we want to synchronize things as we wish fit. We want to exert control. We do not care about how nature is already synchronized. All we care is to make our machine work.

But How would we progress? someone might ask…

Sure. Making a laser and achieving state of the art synchronization is ‘progress’. But after doing that just wonder: What if that synchronization is at the expense of another more valuable synchronization? What if you disrupted something much more fundamental in order to make this laser network work? Yes, it now works. However I have the sense that we are not more happy or more complete as humans because of this ‘achievement’.

Somehow I have the feeling that a river somewhere stopped flowing…

Even for an attosecond.

Memories. For ever (changing)…

Conventional memories used in today’s computers only differentiate between the bit values 0 and 1. In quantum physics, however, arbitrary superpositions of these two states are possible. Most of the ideas for new quantum technology devices rely on this “Superposition Principle”. One of the main challenges in using such states is that they are usually short-lived. Only for a short period of time can information be read out of quantum memories reliably, after that it is irrecoverable.

A research team at TU Wien has now taken an important step forward in the development of new quantum storage concepts. In cooperation with the Japanese telecommunication giant NTT, the Viennese researchers lead by Johannes Majer are working on quantum memories based on nitrogen atoms and microwaves. The nitrogen atoms have slightly different properties, which quickly leads to the loss of the quantum state. By specifically changing a small portion of the atoms, one can bring the remaining atoms into a new quantum state, with a lifetime enhancement of more than a factor of ten. These results have been published in the journal “Nature Photonics”. (1)

The atoms are everywhere. Changing all the time. But we want them to be somewhere. In order to control them. In order to keep information there.

Because we want to create memories.

In an ever changing world, we want to find stability. Even though everything changes all the time, we want them to follow stable rules, patterns, certain paths. Inside everything, we need something. We seek constancy in an ever turbulent cosmos.

Because we need to be able to remember. To know.

And the weird thing is that we do know. Even though it seems we cannot find stability, we somehow find it. Because we do remember. Because we Are. Something we do not fully grasp now. And yet, we feel it. The world is not what it seems to be. The world can stop moving. The world can stop changing. The world can come to a halt.

As long as we decide it.

As long as we stop trying.

As long as we accept it is already stable…

See the stars moving.

They are not.

Yes, now I remember!