Physics

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/33870342

What happens as a raindrop impacts bare soil has been fairly well-studied, but what happens to raindrops afterward is poorly understood. We know that the initial splash of raindrops on soil contributes to erosion, but a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that the journey of the raindrop downhill might have an even bigger impact on erosion than the initial splash.

So, I was reading about the Unruh effect. In short, if I understood correctly, it is about a constantly accelerating observer finding particles in vacuum that an inertial (non-accelerating) observer wouldn't, and relatedly, measuring a higher temperature there than an inertial observer would. This is due to a combination of quantum and relativistic phenomena. There even seems to be recent empirical support for this, but as I was reading about it, I accidentally stepped into some pseudoscience, which left me in an emotional state where I find everything suspicious.

Anyway, even though I technically am a physicist, this is far from my area of expertise. I came up with a thought experiment and would like to ask a couple of questions related to it.

Let's imagine a spacecraft that does a little trip where it goes into open space accelerating enormously, then stops and comes back. My first question is this: would it be (theoretically) possible for the spacecraft during the acceleration to capture some of those particles that from an inertial perspective don't even seem to exist, store them and bring them back as a very concrete evidence of the Unruh effect? If not, why not?

Another question or two: is my intuition correct when I think that if those collected particles were converted into energy, it would in no situation be possible to gather more energy this way than would be spent in the process of accelerating the spacecraft etc? If yes, could one in some sense say that the energy put into the acceleration is what created those particles in the first place?

TL;DR: ICT treats matter as fixed information, consciousness as the rate of informational change, and time as the structuring of this change. The model unexpectedly drew interest from researchers in information physics (feedback below) and includes three concrete falsifiable experiments.

1. Core Idea

ICT is based on three relations:

A. Matter = fixed information M = I_fixed

B. Consciousness = rate of informational change in time C is proportional to dI/dT (meaning: consciousness grows when informational updates per unit time increase)

C. Reality = interaction of stable and flowing information R = function(I_fixed, dI/dT)

This aligns with:

Landauer’s limit (energy cost of changing information)

Friston’s free-energy principle (entropy/information gradients)

Bekenstein bounds (informational density limits)

integrated-information ideas (but without assuming a biological substrate)

Key shift: Information is not an abstraction — it is the actual substrate of physics.

2. Time as an informational process

In ICT, time is defined as:

“The transition of potential information into structured experience.”

This connects:

subjective/phenomenological time

physical/relativistic time

computational/informational time

Consciousness shapes this transition — creating a local arrow of time through patterns of information change.

3. Experimental roadmap (all falsifiable)

Experiment 1 — C ∝ dI/dT (neuroenergetic test)

Task: multilevel oddball or sequence-learning with strict entropy control. Measurements: EEG or MEG + metabolic markers. Prediction: higher informational update-rate (dI/dT) increases both energetic cost and long-range neural integration.

Experiment 2 — R = f(I) (“structure without energy”)

Equal power input, but different informational structure: compressible vs pseudorandom signals, in sensory streams or light patterns. Prediction: informational form changes neural / behavioral / physical outcomes, even when energy is identical.

Experiment 3 — M = I_fixed (energy of fixation)

Measure energy thresholds for stable information across substrates: DRAM, Flash, PCM/memristors, spintronics, and possibly neural cultures. Prediction: matter behaves as stabilized information with substrate-dependent fixation thresholds.

4. External feedback

A researcher specializing in information physics and the nature of time — background:

MSU’s “Institute for Time Nature Explorations”

electrical engineering

information science

systemic research

interdisciplinary time studies

left a detailed review on Academia.edu.

Key excerpts:

"The author proposes an interesting approach to the relationship between matter, consciousness and information, incorporating the complex concept of time."

"'Matter as fixed information' opens a path toward an information physics of consciousness."

"The experimental framework is clear and promising."

— Irina L. Zerchaninova, researcher in information physics & time studies

5. Why posting on Beehaw

ICT sits at the intersection of:

physics

computation

information theory

philosophy of mind

AGI research

This is an early-stage but testable model. Technical critique is welcome.

Links

Preprint (equations + experimental criteria): https://www.academia.edu/s/8924eff666

Main publication (open access): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17584783

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/144946662

Ninety million times a year, when protons crash together at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), they produce, in their wreckage, a top quark and an anti-top quark, the heaviest known elementary particles. In the trillionth of a trillionth of a second before the particles decay into lighter pieces, they fly apart. But they remain quantum mechanically entangled, meaning each particle’s state depends on the other’s. If the top quark is measured to spin in one direction, the anti-top quark must spin the opposite way.

Top quarks are special. Other types of quarks quickly group together to form composite particles (such as neutrons) before the LHC’s detectors can record their states. But top quarks decay before combining with other quarks. The particles they decay into contain a record of their spins — an observable fingerprint of their entanglement

Video on differentiation and its relation to kinematics.

A team of physicists from the University of Innsbruck and Harvard University has proposed a fundamentally new way to generate laser light: a laser without mirrors. Their study, published in Physical Review Letters, shows that quantum emitters spaced at subwavelength distances can constructively synchronize their photon emission to produce a bright, very narrow-band light beam, even in the absence of any optical cavity.

I recently rediscovered my interest in nuclear physics. It started with the question that I hadn’t asked since school:

How do neutrons prevent the protons in a nucleus from repelling each other?

The answer: They add to the weak force and effectively ‘shield’ the protons from each other. This works because the weak force is way stronger, but has only short reach.

But why does this force have only short reach? Gravity and electromagnetism get weaker, but never vanish with distance.

That’s because the weak force is mediated by particles that decay quickly.

Wait, what?

So now I’m looking for a textbook to explain these things in a more structured manner, from the ground up. But I also know that from a certain point onwards, physics becomes applied maths. So just any university textbook won’t do, since the math will quickly surpass my understanding.

Do you guys have any recommendations for a layman’s introduction to nuclear physics?

Clocks are atomic

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36180044

Hi all. I’ve been developing a conceptual physics framework that proposes a new way of looking at quantum measurement, time, and classical emergence using what I’m calling ‘constraint field interactions’ as the underlying mechanism.

This isn’t a formal academic paper (yet); I don’t have an institutional affiliation or physics PhD. But I am very serious about developing this model coherently and rigorously. The work is still evolving, but the core idea is that reality may have stabilized through self-reinforcing patterns of constraint resolution, producing what we experience as time, classical causality, and observer-aligned outcomes.

The paper touches on:

• quantum measurement as contextual constraint resolution
• observer-dependent reference frames
• shared reality through stable constraint fields
• emergence of classical time as an output of constraint interactions
• and more speculative ideas on pre-collapse structure and substrate-level information fields

I wrote it to be as accessible as possible while still diving deep into conceptual mechanics. I welcome critique, skepticism, alternate interpretations, and questions. If anyone here enjoys unpacking new ideas or spotting holes in speculative frameworks, I’d genuinely appreciate your thoughts. More than happy to send a copy or link to the full paper upon request.

Cheers!

An international study involving ICN2, at the UAB campus, Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xi'an) and Stony Brook University (New York), has shown for the first time that ordinary ice is a flexoelectric material.

In other words, it can generate electricity when subjected to mechanical deformation. This discovery could have significant implications for the development of future technological devices and help to explain natural phenomena such as the formation of lightning in thunderstorms.