A Quantum Diaries Survivor

Creativity is one of the things that really makes us human - in fact, a number of human activities which we identify as specific of our nature, and which we believe could hardly be mimicked by artificial intelligence, rely on our inventiveness and capability of creating new objects, images, concepts, methods, or finding new purpose in old tools. Art, among all of these activities, is the quintessential result of our willful act of creating beauty - or even ugliness, if that is considered a worthy pursuit by the artist. 

Although unconventional, the ideas of Gregory Ryskin on vacuum energy sound interesting to me, so I invited him to share them with you in this guest post. Ryskin's physics journey began with fluid dynamics, first in Russia, then in the US, at Caltech. Later, the flow of complex fluids, such as polymer solutions or liquid crystals. Then Brownian motion and Markov processes. In 2000, he became interested in geology and geophysics, particularly in the causes of mass extinctions and the origin of the Earth’s magnetic field. His current research is focused on cosmology. His academic home is Northwestern University, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.The text below is Gregory's.---

If you are a follower of Science20, you probably know that  I have always been very liberal in this column about what deserves to be mentioned as a possible new idea in Physics. I even invited some "non-conventional", independent scientists to write about their own ideas and pet theories here, in many occasions. I do not think this collides with the main purpose of this blog, which is to discuss real science and do some proper outreach and dissemination. In fact, I find it instructive and enlightening on what really Science is.

The title of this post is no news for particle physicists - particle detectors are complex instruments and they work by interpreting the result of stochastic phenomena taking place when radiation interacts with the matter of which detectors are built, and it looks only natural that deep learning algorithms can help improve our measurements in such a complex environment.However, in this post I will give an example of something qualitatively different to providing an improvement of a measurement: one where a deep convolutional network model may extract information that we were simply incapable of making sense of. This means that the algorithm allows us to employ our detector in a new way.

The neutron, discovered in 1932 by Chadwick, is a fascinating particle whose existence allows for the stability of heavy nuclei and a wealth of atoms of different properties. Without neutrons, Hydrogen would be the only stable element: protons cannot be brought together and bound in a stable system, so e.g. Helium-2 (an atom made of two protons with two electrons) is very short-lived, as are atoms with more protons and no neutrons. So our Universe would be a very dull place.

Interference is a fascinating effect, and one which can be observed in a wide variety of physical systems - any system that involves the propagation of waves from different sources. We can observe interference between waves in the sea or in a lake, or even in our bathtub; we can hear the effect of interference between sound waves; or we can observe the fascinating patterns created by interference effects in light propagation. In addition to all that, we observe interference between the amplitudes of quantum phenomena by studying particle physics processes.

A bit over a half into my course of particle physics for Masters students in Statistical Sciences I usually find myself describing the CMS detector in some detail, and that is what happened last week. The courseMy course has a duration of 64 hours, and is structured in four parts. In the first part, which usually takes about 24 hours to complete, I go over the most relevant part of 20th Century physics. We start from the old quantum theory and then we look at special relativity, the fundaments of quantum mechanics, the theory of scattering, the study of hadrons and the symmetries that lead to the quark model, to finish with the Higgs mechanism and the Standard Model. 

Old timers of this blog will recall that I am an avid stone collector. In fact, of all experimental sciences I am fond of (Physics, Astronomy, Geology above others) Geology is the one that fascinated me first, as a six or seven year old child. We are talking about almost fifty years ago, when newspaper stands in Italy used to sell small packets containing pictures of soccer players (they were not even adhesive back then: you had to use your own glue to attach them in the proper place within collection albums which were sold separately) . Kids collected those "figurine", and exchanged them with their peer after school hours (or even during school hours). Other collections offered were ones of minerals, fossils, stickers, etcetera.

Do you remember the DAMA-LIBRA experiment? It is a underground detector made of sodium iodide crystals buried under the rock of the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy, which took data for over a decade in the search of the elusive signal that slowly-moving, massive particles would produce when they bounced off atoms of the active detector material. 

A long time ago, before starting the studies which would lead to a career as a particle physicist, I studied music. After getting a degree as a master in Antique Instruments, I studied composition for four years. But I was not particularly well versed in that tough discipline, and I did the right thing in dropping out. I was 18, and I decided that Science was going to be my job, not music. But I kept an interest in music and I continued - a bit erratically - to study the piano.

The title of this post is the same of a non-technical presentation I gave today at the 2021 USERN Congress. The USERN (Universal Scientific and Education Research Network) is an organization fostering the diffusion of science, which provides prizes to researchers who distinguish themselves for their scientific advancements, and strives for science across borders. As a member of its advisory board I was invited to give a presentation in the first session of the virtual congress, which deals with human versus artificial intelligence.