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New Indian Express
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Cut to future: Film industry on AI and its potential impact
Responding to a reporter's question, a woman wittily offers life advice: 'Block him and sleep early. He may be temporary, but the dark circles are forever.' In another viral moment, two students take a jab at Isaac Newton, 'blaming' him for discovering gravity and thus indirectly sending them to school to study it. Welcome to the bizarre and oddly relatable world of AI (artificial intelligence) generated content that's flooding social media! Theatres have also become new witnesses to the shift, with the first of the lot being Love You, Kannada's first AI-generated film, also claiming to be the world's first, which released recently. A total of `10 lakh was spent for the film, bankrolled and helmed by Narasimha Murthy. Though the romantic drama went on to garner mixed responses, it was praised for the unconventional effort. In an age when videos can be created without ever stepping onto a set and AI has begun to seep into every layer of production, the film industry finds itself at a crossroads. It is confronting a new creative frontier, where opportunity and unease go hand in hand.
ABC News
a day ago
- Science
- ABC News
Quantum mechanic physics theory was born 100 years ago, thanks to Heisenberg's hay fever
In 1925, a young German physicist fled to the treeless island of Helgoland in the North Sea to ease a severe bout of hay fever. With nothing but daily walks and long swims to distract him, 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg had time to grapple with a conundrum. The macro world — of apples falling from trees — behaved differently to the micro world — of atoms and their subatomic components. While the macro world could be explained by Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion, nature's tiniest particles seemed lawless. As Heisenberg later wrote in his memoir, all attempts to make sense of their behaviour with "older physics" seemed doomed to fail. And so he arrived to the bracing sea air of Helgoland — "far from blossoms and meadows" — determined to find a mathematical solution. A month after this trip to Helgoland, on July 29, Heisenberg submitted a paper considered to be the advent of quantum mechanics. In the years that followed, the greatest minds in physics wrestled with what it all meant. As a consequence, they discovered some of the strangest pillars of quantum physics. Heisenberg's musings and subsequent writings were triggered by the concept of "quanta", which was introduced at the end of the 19th century. Quanta are discrete packets of energy, and their existence challenged the old view of energy as a continuous phenomenon. Heisenberg managed to come up with a mathematical formulation to make sense of this shift in 1925 with what he called his "matrix mechanics". It was the first consistent and logical formulation of quantum mechanics, but it was also incredibly dense. Meanwhile, Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger was also spending stretches of 1925 in seclusion, receiving treatment for tuberculosis at a high-altitude sanatorium in Switzerland. He was working on his own formulation of quantum mechanics that would later be known as the wave equation. The wave equation was easier to grasp than Heisenberg's matrices, and as a result it's still used today to understand the behaviour of particles. "It was a big year," mathematician and historian Robyn Arianrhod, an affiliate of Monash University, says. "It was the year quantum mechanics became formalised … and then all sorts of consequences happened when trying to interpret those two different formalisms." That's because it's not always immediately clear what a written equation means when it's applied to the physical world. Schrödinger initially imagined the wave in his wave equation as a physical phenomenon, like a soundwave or an ocean wave. But Schrödinger's interpretation of his own equation was wrong. "Really what the waves are predicting are probabilities," Dr Arianrhod says. If you picture a very basic drawing of a wave on a piece of paper, the peaks and troughs will indicate where a particle is more or less likely to be found. But here's the strange thing — until observed, the particle doesn't have a precise location. It exists in all of those possible locations at once. This is called superposition. This concept is often explained through the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, where the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. "And that was a really interesting and strange idea," Dr Arianrhod says. So strange it started a decades-long debate between two titans of physics: Albert Einstein and Danish physicist Niels Bohr. The world's greatest physicists met to discuss this new quantum mechanics at the Solvay Conference on Physics in 1927. Two camps had emerged, and it was on the sidelines of this conference that they battled it out. Bohr and his followers accepted we could only ever know statistical likelihoods when it came to the properties of particles. But Einstein could not accept this — he did not believe God was "playing dice" with the very building blocks of reality itself. So during mealtimes, or while walking between the hotel and the conference venue, the two men debated. "Every morning Einstein was like a jack-in-the-box, jumping up with fresh new thought experiments, trying to show the limitations of quantum theory," Dr Arianrhod says. "And every time, often after sleepless nights, Bohr found a way of answering those objections." After the Solvay Conference, it was assumed Bohr had won the debate. After all, the equations of quantum mechanics worked. "Although everybody thought Bohr had won, Bohr himself kept puzzling over these ideas," Dr Arianrhod says. For years the men swapped letters and thought experiments, trying to figure out how a particle could be in a superposition of every possible state until observed. How could observing a particle alter the particle? Don't particles have inherent properties, whether they're observed or not? It was this observer effect, and Einstein's attempts to undermine it, that led us to the strangest phenomenon of all: entanglement. There's a famous paper in physics known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox. In it, the authors present a thought experiment to demonstrate a problem with the observer effect. "Say you've got a red and a green jelly bean and each is in a sealed box," Dr Arianrhod says. "If observer one opens their box and finds a green jelly bean, then observer two knows the colour of their jelly bean in the other box will be red." Easy enough to understand. However, if these are quantum mechanical "entangled" jelly beans, things get more complicated. According to quantum mechanics, neither jelly bean has an inherent colour. They exist in a superposition of both red and green until they're observed. "All we can say for sure is that each jelly bean has a 50 per cent chance of being red and each has a 50 per cent chance of being green," Dr Arianrhod says. If observer one looks inside their box and discovers a red jelly bean, observer two's jelly bean will instantaneously be green. "And this means that the second jelly bean's colour is determined by the first observer. It's not pre-existing," Dr Arianrhod says. The EPR paper concluded: "No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this." Bohr responded to the EPR paper, disagreeing with Einstein's conclusion. And that was that. "The question was essentially put aside for decades," theoretical physicist Eric Cavalcanti of Griffith University says. "Anyone who tried to ask questions about the foundations of quantum mechanics was told to shut up and calculate. However, 30 years after the EPR paper was published, a physicist from Northern Ireland, John Stewart Bell, decided it warranted a closer look. Einstein could not accept what he called "spooky action at a distance". He thought there must be "hidden variables" that determine the colour of the jelly bean, not the observer who simply opened a box and looked inside. So Bell devised a theorem to test Einstein's idea. He found that if you held to Einstein's view of the world, there would be a limit to how much you could know about an entangled pair of particles at any time. For example, you might be able to discover the colours of your jelly beans, but finding out their momentum would be a step too far. The implication was if you breached this upper limit, you proved Einstein wrong. It was doing this that snared Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. They broke the upper limit, proving that quantum mechanics — in all its weirdness — was sufficient to explain the behaviour of particles. Although Professor Aspect's experiments proved Einstein's view of the world wrong, he didn't gloat about it. "When people say, 'Oh, you showed Einstein wrong', I say, 'Come on, I showed Einstein was great,'" he said in response to the award. After all, if Einstein hadn't asked all those follow-up questions, it's unclear where we might be in our understanding of particle physics, and our use of entanglement in quantum technology. "Bohr's instinct was right," Dr Arianrhod says. This year physicists travelled to Helgoland, tracing Heisenberg's footsteps to mark the 100-year anniversary of his fateful trip. The United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. And yet the question that Einstein asked way back in the beginning — what does this all mean? — continues to nag theoretical physicists. What does it mean for particles to be in a superposition of states, or entangled? What does it mean for observers to alter a particle? The maths might work, but it can't make meaning. Part of the problem, Dr Cavalcanti says, is that "we have a lot of answers, but we don't know which one is right. "And each paints a completely different picture of reality." One is the Many Worlds theory, which argues the wave of probabilities doesn't collapse after observation. All probabilities continue to exist, playing out in parallel universes. "There's a branch in which you chose to quit your job and there's a branch where you chose to keep your job," Dr Cavalcanti says. Then there's QBism, which puts the observer's subjective beliefs at the heart of measurement. Your expectations influence the observations you make. And then the de Broglie-Bohm theory, which allows faster-than-light interactions between particles, breaking Einstein's theory of relativity. There are dozens of interpretations out there, each weirder than the next. Any one of them could be true. "Will we ever know? To Bohr, it didn't matter. He didn't really need to know, but Einstein did," Dr Arianrhod says. "There will always be people who want to know. Whether or not nature is going to reveal those secrets is anyone's guess." Listen to 'The centenary of quantum mechanics' and subscribe to The Science Show podcast for more mind-bending science.
The Hill
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Views from the front lines of Trump's war on the science community
The Trump administration has unleashed a tsunami of budget cuts to federal science programs. Mass firings have taken place at both the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, part of a deliberate decimation of research staff across the federal government. Since January, the administration has systematically cut science funding to its lowest level in decades and issued a flood of budget plans and executive orders that are reshaping how the government uses and supports science. Some outcomes have been immediate and tragic, including staffing shortages that have left cancer patients stranded during experimental drug trials and delays in approving COVID-19 vaccines. The extent of these actions is unprecedented. The administration for a time froze all grant funding at the National Science Foundation and abruptly terminated thousands of the ongoing projects that it funds, as well as those of the National Institutes of Health. As scientists at leading research institutions, we have personally witnessed the effects of the administration's policies — including colleagues relocating overseas and students leaving research altogether. Undergraduate science internship programs have been canceled, and graduate programs in many research universities paused. As a result, scientists are increasingly seeking jobs abroad. The administration claims its goals are to increase efficiency and raise the standards of scientific research. In fact, thousands of programs and projects have been cut solely on the basis of ideologically motivated keyword searches, without any concern for their performance, design or conduct. That's not efficient. A Trump executive order issued in May underscores the purely political nature of these attacks. Titled ' Restoring Gold Standard Science,' the order puts hand-picked presidential appointees into every agency to review and 'correct' any evidence or conclusions with which they disagree. That's not scientific. Further, many of the administration's policies effectively punish researchers simply for asking discomfiting questions and punish institutions for teaching about unpopular ideas. Viewed together, these outline a political strategy toward science that is both systematic and dangerous: a full-scale war on the scientific community, the network of individual researchers across many institutions whose collaboration is essential for scientific progress. Despite the media stereotype of a lone genius in a lab coat, science is really a communal activity. As Isaac Newton, one of the most important scientists of all time, wrote: 'If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.' Every research project builds on foundational theory, tested methods and vetted findings created and refined through previous research. And every scientist depends on the distributed efforts of an extensive community to vet and review manuscripts for publication and proposals for new research, maintain common journals, databases and tools needed to share and build upon knowledge and educate and train the next generation of talent who help operate their labs. Institutions of higher education are the traditional hosts for the scientific community in the U.S, providing an independent forum for developing and refining ideas, an environment for training students and infrastructure for labs and shared resources. For more than 80 years, U.S. society has partnered with these institutions to foster a healthy scientific community. Federal funding enabled universities to build and maintain the infrastructure necessary for scientific research and support the most promising students. The scientific community collaborated to evaluate proposals for research across fields, ensuring resources were directed to the highest-quality projects, independent of political and institutional bias. No system is perfect, but the external scientific community has successfully partnered with the government to provide independent guidance and vetting — balancing competing interests and perspectives to evaluate proposals, advise the agencies that set funding priorities, accredit the programs that train researchers, review research findings and publish research results. Scientists within the government participate in the larger scientific community, reinforcing community standards as they move between jobs, and preserve the autonomy to ask scientific questions and share their findings. The administration's policies represent a three-fold attack on the scientific community. First, the administration aims to directly seize control over the key community functions that support scientific independence: Administrative actions have politicized the review processes for funding at National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, suppressed scientific data and withdrawn support for students. Second, the administration aims to subdue universities that provide an independent home for the community by weaponizing institutional accreditation and student visas, threatening individual institutions and their leadership when they are slow to align with the administration's ideology. Third, the administration is isolating scientists and scientific functions within the government. It does so by sidelining scientific expertise, firing entire independent expert advisory panels, canceling government access to scientific journals, preventing government scientists from publishing in them and, now, subjecting scientific analysis to systematic political modification and censorship. The government's war against science is a disaster for both. Without intellectual and political independence, the scientific community can't function effectively to discover new knowledge and solve hard problems. It's magical thinking for politicians to expect to receive truthful answers about the world when they poll to find the most popular answer, pay to get the answers they want or ignore data they dislike. And it's anti-democratic when political leaders dictate whether questions, data, and conclusions are appropriately scientific. Society needs science to tackle complex problems and to teach others how to do so. Science doesn't function without a healthy scientific community. As citizens, we should debate what problems are essential. As voters, we should decide which problems deserve public research funding. As free people, we should not tolerate political attacks on science and the scientific community. Micah Altman is a social and information scientist at MIT's Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship, MIT Libraries. Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Globe and Mail
4 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Newton Golf Company (NASDAQ: NWTG) Tees Up Innovation for the ‘Sport's New Face'
Newton Golf Company (NASDAQ: NWTG) is delivering innovative products to the dynamic market as a surge in women's golf participation is reshaping the industry. The company recently released a lighter shaft option, designed to deliver premium performance for golfers of all levels, from weekend enthusiasts to tour professionals. 'Newton Golf's introduction of its lighter shaft further aligns with shifting market dynamics. The new option is engineered to weigh less than previous versions while maintaining precision, stability and distance — qualities valued by golfers across all demographics,' reads a recent article. 'Newton Golf has built its reputation on innovation, focusing on advanced shaft technologies that address fundamental aspects of the golf swing… As women continue to drive golf's growth and redefine its culture and commerce, having manufacturers such as Newton Golf focus on thoughtful gear advancement is key. The new lighter shaft represents not only technological progress but also an industry adapting to the sport's new face — and all the golfers who comprise it.' To view the full article, visit About Newton Golf Company Inc. Newton Golf harnesses the power of physics to revolutionize golf equipment design. Formerly known as Sacks Parente, the company's rebranding reflects its commitment to innovation inspired by Sir Isaac Newton, the father of physics. By applying Newtonian principles to every aspect of its design process, Newton Golf creates precision-engineered golf clubs that deliver unmatched stability, control, and performance. The company's mission is to empower golfers with scientifically advanced equipment that maximizes consistency and accuracy, ensuring every swing is backed by the laws of physics. For more information, visit the company's website at About InvestorWire InvestorWire ('IW') is a specialized communications platform with a focus on advanced wire-grade press release syndication for private and public companies and the investment community. It is one of 70+ brands within the Dynamic Brand Portfolio @ IBN that delivers: (1) access to a vast network of wire solutions via InvestorWire to efficiently and effectively reach a myriad of target markets, demographics and diverse industries; (2) article and editorial syndication to 5,000+ outlets; (3) enhanced press release enhancement to ensure maximum impact; (4) social media distribution via IBN to millions of social media followers; and (5) a full array of tailored corporate communications solutions. With broad reach and a seasoned team of contributing journalists and writers, IW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that want to reach a wide audience of investors, influencers, consumers, journalists and the general public. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, IW brings its clients unparalleled recognition and brand awareness. IW is where breaking news, insightful content and actionable information converge. For more information, please visit Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the InvestorWire website applicable to all content provided by IW, wherever published or re-published: InvestorWire Austin, Texas 512.354.7000 Office Editor@ InvestorWire is powered by IBN
Time of India
7 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Startup claims it can make gold from mercury using fusion; science fiction turns real
From Sir Isaac Newton to the ancient Egyptians, some of the finest minds in history have been captivated by the prospect of converting base metals into gold. However, a Silicon Valley startup now asserts that, with the use of nuclear fusion technology, it has finally solved the age-old alchemical enigma. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Public Policy Operations Management Design Thinking Management Leadership Product Management MBA CXO Artificial Intelligence Degree Healthcare Finance Digital Marketing Project Management Technology Others PGDM Data Science MCA others Data Science healthcare Data Analytics Cybersecurity Skills you'll gain: Duration: 12 Months IIM Calcutta Executive Programme in Public Policy and Management Starts on undefined Get Details Skills you'll gain: Economics for Public Policy Making Quantitative Techniques Public & Project Finance Law, Health & Urban Development Policy Duration: 12 Months IIM Kozhikode Professional Certificate Programme in Public Policy Management Starts on Mar 3, 2024 Get Details By subjecting mercury isotopes to high-energy neutron bombardment, Marathon Fusion says it has found a way to turn mercury into gold. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 20 Highest-Salary Jobs for 2025 When two hydrogen isotopes are pushed together to make helium, a process known as nuclear fusion, the neutrons are released. This implies that power generation and the alchemical process can coexist. Live Events "Our approach is economically irresistible, practically feasible, and massively scalable, in contrast to prior attempts," Marathon Fusion stated. "An entirely new golden age begins now." The company has released a scientific article on the proposed transmutation technology and is working on fuel processing and recycling methods for the emerging fusion industry. Peer review has not yet been done on it. Alchemy has been around for thousands of years, and its main goals have been turning metals into gold and finding an elixir of immortality. It has fascinated intellectuals for thousands of years, including Newton, the English physicist who created the mathematical law of universal gravitation in the latter part of the 17th century. The creation of a "philosopher's stone" that would act as a catalyst to turn base metals like lead into gold was a fantasy of many. Marathon's concept is based on using components from the well-known nuclear fusion process in its place. When two hydrogen isotopes, tritium and deuterium, are forced together to form helium, high-energy subatomic particles known as neutrons are released. This process is known as fusion. In order to achieve this, the deuterium and tritium atoms are heated to extremely high temperatures, more than 100 million degrees Celsius, and then confined to a small area, where they will clash. When helium atoms collide with the fuel particles, their energy is transferred and the reaction continues, making the process self-sustaining. However, in order to guarantee that there is always an adequate amount of tritium in the mixture, fusion reactors usually contain other elements, such as beryllium, lead, or lithium isotopes. Because they emit two neutrons in their place when struck by one, these are referred to as "multipliers." Tritium is subsequently created when these additional neutrons react with lithium. A radical change Mercury-198, a typical type of mercury, is used as a multiplier in Marathon's approach. These atoms transform into mercury-197, a less stable form, when struck by a neutron. Those atoms then spontaneously transform into a stable form of gold over a few days. According to Marathon, this implies that gold supplies could be produced as a byproduct of the fusion process "without any compromise to fuel self-sufficiency or power output." According to the business, a fusion power station with a one gigawatt capacity could produce 5,000 kilogrammes of gold annually using the new method. The business states that although the gold generated by the reaction is stable, it may contain some radioactive gold isotopes, which could require storage for up to 18 years. Marathon's techno-economic modelling indicates that fusion plants could generate as much economic value from the production of gold as they do from the production of electricity, potentially doubling the facilities' value and drastically altering the economics of fusion and energy in general, the start-up continued. In addition to gold, it stated that the transmutation process might be utilised to create materials for "nuclear batteries," medicinal isotope synthesis, and precious metals like palladium. Adam Rutkowski, a former engineer at SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, and Kyle Schiller, a fellow at Schmidt Futures, the research foundation founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, founded Marathon. The method allows power plants to produce 5,000 kg of gold annually each gigawatt of energy generated (~2.5 GWth) without sacrificing power output or fuel self-sufficiency, claims the startup. Leading investors including Strong Atomics and the 1517 Fund, as well as multiple grants from the US Department of Energy and the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program, fund Marathon Fusion. The Fusion community's reaction Leading scientists are excited about the pre-print even as it awaits proper peer review: "This new technology approach that Marathon Fusion is developing changes fundamentally how we should think about fusion as an energy source." — Dr. Per F. Peterson , Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering at U.C. Berkeley and Scientific Advisor to Marathon Fusion "The technology described could have a major impact on the economics of fusion energy if it's able to be fully realized and integrated into upcoming power plants. Improved economics could further relax some engineering and scientific requirements, accelerating the path to commercial deployment. This is potentially highly impactful, and I'll be paying close attention to the results of rigorous peer review" — Dr. Dan Brunner , former CTO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and Scientific Advisor to Marathon Fusion "The discovery of scalable gold transmutation by leveraging fusion neutrons could fundamentally shift the techno-economic landscape. Marathon Fusion's breakthrough—commercial-scale gold synthesis via nuclear reactions—redefines fusion economics and could unlock the capital needed for next-generation power plants." — Dr. Ahmed Diallo , Principal Research Physicist and Distinguished Research Fellow at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), and Scientific Advisor to Marathon Fusion
