QUANTUM MECHANICS
Welcome back to another blog post! Today, we’ll be looking at everything zoomed in, but we’ll need more than a microscope. Think of some of the smallest things you know of such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew more about these particles? This is where quantum mechanics comes in, describing the behavior of microscopic particles at the subatomic level.
Quantum mechanics is still a very disputed field — there is a lot of disagreement by physicists on some concepts because after all, we can’t be too sure about what happens at the level of some of the smallest things in nature.
But what are some of these concepts? Let’s first talk about wave-particle duality, the idea that small objects (subatomic particles) exhibit characteristics of both waves and particles. Imagine throwing a bowling ball at a wall. Most likely, the bowling ball will bounce off the wall, and this will be a collision. But theoretically, what if we shrunk the bowling ball down to the size of an electron, and threw this at a wall? It might actually diffract, acting like a wave, and producing fringes. This is because electrons and other microscopic particles can have characteristics of both solid particles and of waves with specific wavelengths and frequencies, whereas light is made up of particles called photons. This concept merges the lines between what we initially knew about waves and particles.
Another fascinating topic is the quantization of energy. In the macroscopic world (objects we can see), if someone throws a bowling ball in the air, it can have any amount of energy, depending on how the ball is thrown. But, in the quantum world, energy can only come in multiples of “quanta”, where there are certain amounts of energy that particles can possess. Without this phenomena, atoms likely wouldn't stay together, we wouldn’t have colorful light with our fireworks, and the universe as we know it would be completely different!
To this day, we’re still continuing to understand quantum mechanics as it’s a vast field with many applications for the modern world. We’re now seeing advancements in quantum computing, medical imaging, cryptography, and so many other fields as we uncover particle behavior at the subatomic level. With all of this innovation, how do you think we can continue to dive even deeper into understanding how our universe works?
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
We’ve all heard the term “Artificial Intelligence” being thrown around a lot, from our phones to web applications, to almost any device that we use. But, what even is artificial intelligence, how does it work, and most importantly, what does it mean for the future?
Artificial intelligence is defined as the ability of a machine to think and learn as though it’s a human. Think about all of the AI in your life – from TV recommendations for your next movie to applications like ChatGPT, AI has become pivotal in our lives and in so many fields including medicine, agriculture and many others.
How does it work? Well, just like humans learn from experience, AI learns from massive amounts of data. For instance, if we wanted to create an AI model that can give movie recommendations, we would train it on lots of data relating to the movies you’ve watched. From there, the model learns to make predictions from analyzing patterns in the data and can continuously improve its performance over time with algorithms. This process, called machine learning, is one of many branches of AI, amongst natural language processing and deep learning, all of which work with data differently and are fascinating concepts to explore!
While AI can help reduce human error in surgeries, or can help diagnose diseases from its ability to analyze and predict based on data, many also believe it poses a threat to humans. As AI becomes “smarter,” many fear it will take over jobs, lead to data breaches, or be used for deepfakes, which are manipulated videos or recordings meant to spread false information about a person.
While AI is rapidly advancing into so many different fields and into our lives, we have to take a step back and understand how AI works and what it could mean for the future. From considering ethics, bias, and control when looking at AI, we can make safer choices for ourselves, and more importantly, use AI to complement our lives. So, what will you explore next in the world of AI?
Learn more about AI here:
DARK MATTER AND ENERGY
If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be? If you chose invisibility, well then this blog post is for you! Today, we’re going to be talking about dark matter, stuff that’s invisible but has mass. In fact, about 95% of our universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, so galaxies, asteroids, and other space phenomena only make up about 5% of the universe!
Dark matter and energy aren’t visible but are certainly observable; they’re constantly changing our universe, from the stars to the planets to everything we can see. Dark matter is what keeps galaxies from falling apart as they spin, thus keeping our solar system together, and creating the basis of our universe.
Since we can’t see dark matter, how do we even know it exists? The answer is gravity. When measuring the total gravity detected, it far surpasses all of the normal matter (stars, dust, etc.), leaving us to believe that another substance is present.
When we talked about the Big Bang in our first blog post, we noticed that our universe is still expanding, even to this day! How is this possible? The mysterious substance behind this is called dark energy, something that has caused our universe to expand faster and faster over the years.
Isn’t it absolutely unbelievable that we still don’t understand about 95% of our universe? Scientists and physicists, among others, are still trying to make sense of dark matter and energy and NASA is currently working on a telescope to explore our universe in more depth so that we can uncover the secrets it holds. So, this begs the question: how will you explore the unknown?
Explore dark matter and dark energy here:
CRISPR
Welcome back to another post of the G4G blog! You’ve probably heard of DNA: the molecule carrying a genetic recipe for each one of us. But what happens if you cut an organism’s DNA, and is this even possible? Enter CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), acting as a pair of scissors to cut sequences of DNA. After gene editing with CRISPR was discovered by the first female team to win a Nobel Prize, this technology has rapidly progressed to agriculture, medicine, and many other fields, revolutionizing the potential of each. By editing the genes of crops, drought and disease-resistant plants are now possible, along with reductions in food waste and costs. In medicine, many genetic diseases consider CRISPR as a cure, including cancers, genetic disorders, Huntington’s disease, and many others.
But how does this work exactly? A protein Cas9 is able to cut target DNA, allowing humans to change the sequence when the DNA is repaired. CRISPR is also able to eliminate a gene’s function entirely, or control the effect of a gene. Let’s look at an example of CRISPR in action!
CRISPR was first seen as part of an immune system to fight dangerous germs infecting healthy bacteria. By taking pieces of DNA from attacking viruses, the bacteria tries to find matches through comparing DNA sequences, identifying whether or not something is a virus. When there is, CRISPR proteins destroy the virus DNA with their scissor-like power.
With all this said, CRISPR seems pretty cool, completely changing the world of gene editing, and providing solutions for so many issues. But there’s a slight problem: who gets to decide when to use it? People are still considering the ethics and limitations of CRISPR, debating how far it should go to advance the genes of organisms. Things like designer babies, prevention of disease, or enhancing intelligence all require some thought, and we need to consider where we invest our resources to advance this amazing technology. So what do you think: where should CRISPR be used?
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THE BIG BANG
Let’s start this blog off by talking about the Big Bang, a widely accepted theory by most physicists that describes the origin of our universe. No, the Big Bang wasn’t a giant explosion, as fun as that sounds, but it was more about the universe expanding into what it is today! Would you believe that the energy of the universe - the same energy that’s behind stars, galaxies, and planets - was first confined to a space smaller than an atom? But this is where our story starts: about 13.8 billion years ago, when the universe was still just a hot soup of particles whizzing around, filled with energy. Then, along comes the Big Bang: a rapid expansion of the tiny particles, as everything inflated and stretched while cooling to lower temperatures at the sametime. New particles formed, and then slowly atoms came into existence. Matter turned into galaxies and stars, and from just about nothing, the universe quickly expanded into the infinite realms of space and continues to expand even to this day.
But the most fascinating thing about the Big Bang isn’t just that it explains the mysterious galaxies, beautiful stars, and enormous planets that we have today. At the end of the day, the Big Bang is just a theory – it’s backed by evidence, but there’s many other ideas out there that try to explain the origins of our universe.
Even to this day, the beginning of our universe is still an enormous mystery, and because the universe itself is so vast, that means there’s many other hidden secrets still waiting to be discovered. But, with curiosity, dedication, and a dash of imagination, we can get closer and closer to understanding the existence of our cosmos. So tell me, what will you discover?
You can explore and learn more about our universe here:
What Is the Big Bang? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids
