My Life Here at THD-Popular Topic in My E-mail Last Week- The Demon Particle

I was reading in my E-mail a couple of days ago. The subject on the confirmation of the Demon Particle have been discussed by several members of my PAASE group( I have been a member since 1970). The existence of the Demon Particle have been confirmed from the research laboratory of the College of Engineering, University of Illinois ( UI), Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.  UI is one of My Alma Mater. 

To a non-physicist or to a non- science educated/oriented person the confirmation of the existence of The Demon Particle predicted 67 years go will probably not cause a personal excitement.  Last week,  however several members of my PAASE ( Philippine-American Academy of Science and Engineering) group have been discussing the subject of the Demon Particle with excitement via E-mails to all the PAASE membership.  

Here are portions of the E-mail Conversations of Some PAASE members on the Subject of the Demon Particle. I deleted the names for privacy reasons. 

 Dear PAASE Colleagues,

So how does one go about finding a subatomic particle first predicted 67 years ago that has no mass, no electric charge and does not interact with light -- but could very well be the holy grail for room-temperature superconducting rather than at the typically preferred superconducting temperature of 100F (or 38 C) BELOW freezing?

First, name such particle the demon particle as theoretical physicist David Pines who first predicted its existence in 1956 did so;

Second, work with the metal strontium ruthenate and use a nonstandard technique to directly excite its electronic modes perfectly innocently and without looking at all for the demon particles; and,

Third, let serendipity simply take over and do its awesome wonders.

And that precisely was how Peter Abbamonte, professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his team finally found Pines' demon particles after 67 years of such phantom particles merely existing in the theoretical ether of Physics.

Thus, in Physics demons in fact do exist :)  And, further -- room-temperature superconducting just may very well be achieved soon enough."

__________The Descent of Biological Engineering

https://www.ijee.ie/articles/Vol22-1/IJEE1722.pdf

"The article that you kindly shared expounds on a HUGE subject that -- at our current state of knowledge even today in the third decade of the 21^st century -- simply and truly falls and remains under the rubric of "imponderables".

We at this time simply do not have sufficient knowledge and the tools needed to be able to begin to write out all the deterministic equations that in combination would describe in full the locations and velocities of quantum objects with time and for any given force without the need for probability -- which is the BIG cause for the stark and gaping disconnect between quantum physics and classical physics -- let alone begin formulating the massive arrays of deterministic equations intended to define and predict the doings of living things, including beings such as Homo sapiens with the emergent property of consciousness and self-will. (And this inevitably will once again summon the supreme battle for conceptualizing modern Physics as being strictly mechanistic -- or can it at the same time be also treated as teleological?)

Can describing and predicting life strictly deterministically ever be done?

I do not know. And I honestly am not sure.

But for practical purposes and applications, this is where AI and generative AI come in -- which in a matter of years have made stupendous developmental progress -- simply because they are based on correlations and probability as opposed to deterministic equations.

And perhaps it is a good thing that it is quite likely that we humans will not be able to claim -- ever -- that we know and understand and can predict everything in this universe deterministically.  To try is human; to accept is also human -- and both are divine.

In case you have interest, here is a link to a paper I wrote back in 2006 that discusses the philosophical movements coincident with and that ultimately shaped the gradual development of modern science as we know it today through the millennia.

The word "quantum" frankly intimidated me until I went back to determine what it dealt with.  It is about atoms and their particles which I learned in high school.

The movie "Oppenheimer" made me inquire on how an atomic bomb works.  It is excited neutrons splitting enriched uranium.  This is all so elementary to our Physicists in PAASE, but to us in the "lay" field of Medicine it requires a review of quantum physics introduced in high school.

Quantum computing is on the horizon so that we do not have to depend on two digits: 0 and 1 but on the limitless continuum of 0 to 1.  How that will be represented by quantum physics will be my next source of study, beyond how I can learn and probably invent the protein that will be the antibody to kill the cancer cell.

This is an instance where high energy/elementary particle  physics and condensed matter physics meet. In quasi one-dimensional samples of strontium cuprate, "decay" of electrons into spinon, holon and orbiton quasiparticles do occur. This was first predicted by the so-called Tomonaga-Luttinger model in which the spin and charge of the electrons possess independent dynamics and hence separate.

Indeed metallic alloys of strontium present interesting physics. Particles in condensed matter physics are usually referred to as quasiparticles since these arise as excitations of many-body systems. There are so many exotic quasiparticles in CMP

Hope this helps to know the "vastness" of condensed matter physics,

___________________________________________________________________ 

This discovery is not intentional but accidental similar to the discovery of VIAGRA. If you are reading this post, you probably will say, who cares about this news. It has no practical application in our daily lives. Yes, indeed, but in the future, I predict it will be as useful as AI specially in the field of crystalline ( solid state) quantum computers. 

So what is Demon Particle? Here's the latest news on the Confirmation of the Demon Particle. 

Demon Hunting: Physicists confirm 67-year-old prediction of massless, neutral composite particle

Date:

August 18, 2023

Source:

University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering

Summary:

In 1956, theoretical physicists predicted that electrons in a solid can do something strange. While they normally have a mass and an electric charge, Pines asserted that they can combine to form a composite particle that is massless, neutral, and does not interact with light. He called this particle a 'demon.' Since then, it has been speculated to play an important role in the behaviors of a wide variety of metals. Unfortunately, the same properties that make it interesting have allowed it to elude detection since its prediction.

Now, a team of researchers led by Peter Abbamonte, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, have finally found Pines' demon 67 years after it was predicted. As the researchers report in the journal Nature, they used a nonstandard experimental technique that directly excites a material's electronic modes, allowing them to see the demon's signature in the metal strontium ruthenate.

"Demons have been theoretically conjectured for a long time, but experimentalists never studied them," Abbamonte said. "In fact, we weren't even looking for it. But it turned out we were doing exactly the right thing, and we found it."

 For Complete Details on this Important Science News, read the link below:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230818004752.htm#:~:text=Summary%3A,this%20particle%20a%20%27demon.%27

Meanwhile Here's my Quote of the Day: The Secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mens never losing your enthusiasm- Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, English Writer