Ancient Roman Nanotechnology Found in Goblet Chalice Stuns Experts

""A Roman goblet could be an 1,600-year-old example of nanotechnology, according to experts. The mysterious Lycurgus Cup is made of dichroic glass and appears green when lit from the front and turns bright red when a light is shone on it from behind.

The chalice, which is on display at The British Museum, London, uses similar techniques to modern nanotechnology - the manipulation of materials on an atomic and molecular scale - which scientists believe could be used for everything from diagnosing diseases to identifying bioharzards at airports.

Scientists only solved the mystery of the color-changing chalice in 1990, after being baffled by its behavior for decades, Smithsonian Magazine reported. 

After putting broken fragments of glass under a microscope, scientists found the Romans had impregnated it with particles of sliver and gold, which they ground down to tiny proportions - around 50 nanometres in diameter - a thousand times smaller than a grain of salt.

The precise amount of metals has lead experts to hail the Romans as 'nanotechnology pioneers' who really knew what they were doing. Archaeologist Ian Freestone, of University College London, who researched the cup and its unusual optical properties, called its construction an 'amazing feat'.

The cup appears to change color as when light hits it as the flecks of metals' electrons vibrate in ways that seem to change the color, depending on where the observer is looking at it. The chalice was used to hold drink on special occasions and experts believe that when it was filled, the behavior of the vibrating electrons changed, as well as it's color.

Gang Logan Liu, an engineer and nanotechnology expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told the publication: 'The Romans knew how to make and use nano-particles for beautiful art.'

Of course scientists could not investigate the effects of the one-of-a-kind cup by filling it with liquid. Instead, they reportedly imprinted billions of little wells onto a piece of plastic the size of a postage stamp and sprayed them with gold and silver nano-particles to essentially re-create the special configuration of the cup.

The scientists then poured different liquids into the wells to note the effect they had. When they filled a well with water it turned the surface light blue, while pouring oil inside turned it bright red.""

http://humansarefree.com/2013/08/proof-of-nanotechnology-in-ancient-rome.html

Do Time and Space Exist in the Quantum Mechanical Realms of the Microcosm? Black Hole Paradoxes Yet to be Resolved.

""We’ve come a long way in 13.8 billion years; but despite our impressively extensive understanding of the Universe, there are still a few strings left untied. For one, there is the oft-cited disconnect between general relativity, the physics of the very large, and quantum mechanics, the physics of the very small. Then there is problematic fate of a particle’s intrinsic information after it falls into a black hole. Now, a new interpretation of fundamental physics attempts to solve both of these conundrums by making a daring claim: at certain scales, space and time simply do not exist.

Let’s start with something that is not in question. Thanks to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, we can all agree that the speed of light is constant for all observers. We can also agree that, if you’re not a photon, approaching light speed comes with some pretty funky rules – namely, anyone watching you will see your length compress and your watch slow down.

But the slowing of time also occurs near gravitationally potent objects, which are described by general relativity. So if you happen to be sight-seeing in the center of the Milky Way and you make the regrettable decision to get too close to our supermassive black hole’s event horizon (more sinisterly known as its point-of-no-return), anyone observing you will also see your watch slow down. In fact, he or she will witness your motion toward the event horizon slow dramatically over an infinite amount of time; that is, from your now-traumatized friend’s perspective, you never actually cross the event horizon. You, however, will feel no difference in the progression of time as you fall past this invisible barrier, soon to be spaghettified by the black hole’s immense gravity.

So, who is “correct”? Relativity dictates that each observer’s point of view is equally valid; but in this situation, you can’t both be right. Do you face your demise in the heart of a black hole, or don’t you? (Note: This isn’t strictly a paradox, but intuitively, it feels a little sticky.)

And there is an additional, bigger problem. A black hole’s event horizon is thought to give rise to Hawking radiation, a kind of escaping energy that will eventually lead to both the evaporation of the black hole and the destruction of all of the matter and energy that was once held inside of it. This concept has black hole physicists scratching their heads. Because according to the laws of physics, all of the intrinsic information about a particle or system (namely, the quantum wavefunction) must be conserved. It cannot just disappear.

Dr. Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University alongside illustrations of a black hole and an event horizon with Hawking Radiation. He continues to engage his grey matter to uncover the secrets of the Universe while others attempt to confirm his existing theories.
Dr. Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University alongside illustrations of a black hole and an event horizon with Hawking Radiation. He continues to engage his grey matter to uncover the secrets of the Universe while others attempt to confirm his existing theories.
Why all of these bizarre paradoxes? Because black holes exist in the nebulous space where a singularity meets general relativity – fertile, yet untapped ground for the elusive theory of everything.

Enter two interesting, yet controversial concepts: doubly special relativity and gravity’s rainbow.

Just as the speed of light is a universally agreed-upon constant in special relativity, so is the Planck energy in doubly special relativity (DSR). In DSR, this value (1.22 x 1019 GeV) is the maximum energy (and thus, the maximum mass) that a particle can have in our Universe.

Two important consequences of DSR’s maximum energy value are minimum units of time and space. That is, regardless of whether you are moving or stationary, in empty space or near a black hole, you will agree that classical space breaks down at distances shorter than the Planck length (1.6 x 10-35 m) and classical time breaks down at moments briefer than the Planck time (5.4 x 10-44 sec).

In other words, spacetime is discrete. It exists in indivisible (albeit vanishingly small) units. Quantum below, classical above. Add general relativity into the picture, and you get the theory of gravity’s rainbow.

Physicists Ahmed Farag Ali, Mir Faizal, and Barun Majumder believe that these theories can be used to explain away the aforementioned black hole conundrums – both your controversial spaghettification and the information paradox. How? According to DSR and gravity’s rainbow, in regions smaller than 1.6 x 10-35 m and at times shorter than 5.4 x 10-44 sec… the Universe as we know it simply does not exist.""

Lose Yourself Within Time & Space

http://www.universetoday.com/118794/do-time-and-space-exist-at-the-smallest-scales/

Dangerous Ideas In Science Cosmology: This year (2015), debates in physics circles starting to bewilder

Cosmology is the study of the universe as a whole: its structure, its origins and its fate. Fundamental physics is the study of reality's bedrock entities and their interactions. With these job descriptions it's no surprise that cosmology and fundamental physics share a lot of territory. You can't understand how the universe evolves after the Big Bang (a cosmology question) without understanding how matter, energy, space and time interact (a fundamental physics question). Recently, however, something remarkable has been happening in both these fields that's raising hackles with some scientists. As physicists George Ellis and Joseph Silk recently put it in Nature:

"This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical."

The root of the problem rests with two ideas/theories now central for some workers in cosmology (even if they remain problematic for physicists as a whole). The first is string theory, which posits that the world is made up not of point particles but of tiny vibrating strings. String theory only works if the universe has many "extra" dimensions of space other than the three we experience. The second idea is the so-called multiverse which, in its most popular form, claims more than one distinct universe emerged from the Big Bang. Instead, adherents claim, there may be an almost infinite (if not truly infinite) number of parallel "pocket universes," each with their own version of physics.


Both string theory and the multiverse are big, bold reformulations of what we mean when we say the words "physical reality." That is reason enough for them to be contentious topics in scientific circles. But in the pursuit of these ideas, something else — something new — has emerged. Rather than focusing just on questions about the nature of the cosmos, the new developments raise critical questions about the basic rules of science when applied to something like the universe as a whole.

Here is the problem: Both string theory and the multiverse posit entities that may, in principle or in practice, be unobservable. Evidence for the extra dimensions needed to make string theory work is likely to require a particle accelerator of astronomical proportions. And the other pocket universes making up the multiverse may lie permanently over our "horizon," such that we will never get direct observations of their existence. It's this specific aspect of the theories that has scientists like Ellis and Silk so concerned. As they put it:

"These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any."

Finish Reading Article:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/01/27/381809832/the-most-dangerous-ideas-in-science?