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Saturday Quotes: Football metaphors in physics, vet treats adorable baby rhino’s broken leg

Credit: University of Liverpool.

This week, researchers reported an effective way to protect working dogs from heatstroke: training them to immerse their heads in cold water. New computational techniques have led to a breakthrough in understanding the so-called “pseudogap” in quantum physics, which could lead to room-temperature superconductivity. And many scientists agree. Evidence now supports global action to combat microplastics. And several other events have happened. Among them:

Physicists have actually argued the same thing.

Niels Bohr, the father of electron energy levels, and John von Neumann, the father of the quantum mathematical framework, independently developed concepts regarding the measurement of quantum systems. Bohr wanted and demanded a distinction between the quantum system being analyzed and the classical measurement system used to measure it. Von Neumann argued that quantum physics should apply universally to everything, including classical measurement devices.

Physicists have traditionally seen this as the physical equivalent of two CG football helmets banging together during an exciting NFL broadcast. But a new paper argues that the two football helmets might actually have been affectionately rubbing together like happy kittens. Specifically, author Federico Laudisa of the University of Trento suggests that a detailed analysis of von Neumann’s conceptual approach actually coincided with Bohr’s view.

CMB/Distance Ladder Competition

While the possibility of a reconciliation between Bohr and von Neumann is all well and good, a recent discrepancy in astrophysics has astrophysicists plagued by two measures of the universe’s expansion rate that, in theory, should not agree at all. This has been dubbed the “cosmological crisis,” and researchers are addressing it with calls for paradigm-shifting new physics and proposals for a different shape of the universe.

Imagine two CG football helmets (I get paid per metaphor, but I’m not allowed to go over budget). One helmet is for the Distance Ladder team. The other is for the Cosmic Microwave Background team.

In physics, distance ladders are based on the redshift of light from distant galaxies caused by the Doppler effect: the more distant the galaxy, the faster it is moving away and the greater the redshift. Measuring the redshift of very distant Type 1a supernovae provides conclusive evidence that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.

The cosmic microwave background consists of light emitted when our cosmic skull had not yet healed at its fragile fontanelles – when the universe was only a few hundred thousand years old, and when a hot, perfectly uniform plasma filled the entire universe, disturbed only by sound waves thought to have originated in the Big Bang. Combined with precision measurement techniques, the CMB provides a solid metric for the expansion of the universe.

But these two CG football helmets did collide violently in real life, and the measurements differed by about 10%, which is a huge difference for scientists, and for those looking for a 5-sigma statistical threshold. Either way, this article serves as a kind of pre-show for the upcoming battle to get the two measurements to match.

Applying horse knowledge to rhino injuries

A large team of specialist equine surgeons from the University of Liverpool’s Leahurst Equine Hospital have performed a rare surgery on a large non-equine mammal at Knowsley Safari in Merseyside, successfully repairing a broken leg in a young southern white rhino.

Earlier this year, staff at Knowsley Safari noticed the rhino Amara dragging her right front leg, and a radiology scan revealed a fractured ulna. Unable to find any records of treatment for such injuries in rhinos, staff turned to another large animal specialty – equine veterinarians who already have expertise in similar injuries in horses.

Veterinarians spent five hours treating the anesthetized rhino in its enclosure, which included keyhole surgery. “Amara’s surgery was unlike anything we’d ever done before. We knew we could place a camera inside the joint, but because the procedure was unprecedented we didn’t know how much space we would need or how much of the area we would be able to see,” said Dr David Stack, senior lecturer in equine surgery at the University of Liverpool.

For 27 weeks, Amara wore a full leg cast and lived in an enclosure with her mother to prevent her from reinjuring herself. She is now reportedly living and playing outdoors with her fellow rhinos at Knowsley Safari Park. Veterinarians are documenting her treatment and recovery in case she finds herself in a similar situation in the future.

© 2024 Science X Network

Source: Saturday Citations: Football Metaphors in Physics; Veterinarian Treats Adorable Baby Rhino’s Broken Leg (September 21, 2024) Retrieved September 21, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-saturday-citations-football-metaphors-physics.html

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