Step right up folks and take a gander at my pick of the week. This is by far the most interesting thing I have read in awhile, and raises fundamental questions about the basic structure of our known cosmos.
Sorry about the wikilinks.
Side Note:
By the way New Yorkers, the Kandinsky show at the guggenheim closes on the 13th. They built this museum to house this very collection, the birth of modern abstract. Do not regret missing this show.
Golden Ratio Discovered in Quantum World: Hidden Symmetry Observed for the First Time in Solid State Matter
ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2010)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...
On the atomic scale particles do not behave as we know it in the macro-atomic world. New properties emerge which are the result of an effect known as the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In order to study these nanoscale quantum effects the researchers have focused on the magnetic material cobalt niobate. It consists of linked magnetic atoms, which form chains just like a very thin bar magnet, but only one atom wide and are a useful model for describing ferromagnetism on the nanoscale in solid state matter.
When applying a magnetic field at right angles to an aligned spin the magnetic chain will transform into a new state called quantum critical, which can be thought of as a quantum version of a fractal pattern," Prof. Alan Tennant, the leader of the Berlin group, explains. "The system reaches a quantum uncertain-- or a Schrödinger cat state. This is what we did in our experiments with cobalt niobate. We have tuned the system exactly in order to turn it quantum critical."
By tuning the system and artificially introducing more quantum uncertainty the researchers observed that the chain of atoms acts like a nanoscale guitar string.
Dr. Radu Coldea from Oxford University, who is the principal author of the paper and drove the international project from its inception a decade ago until the present, explains: "Here the tension comes from the interaction between spins causing them to magnetically resonate. For these interactions we found a series (scale) of resonant notes: The first two notes show a perfect relationship with each other. Their frequencies (pitch) are in the ratio of 1.618..., which is the golden ratio famous from art and architecture." Radu Coldea is convinced that this is no coincidence.
The golden ratio in reference to your face:
Here is an example of the golden ratio in harmony with the Fibonacci sequence:
"It reflects a beautiful property of the quantum system -- a hidden symmetry. Actually quite a special one called E8 by mathematicians, and this is its first observation in a material," he explains.
The observed resonant states in cobalt niobate are a dramatic laboratory illustration of the way in which mathematical theories developed for particle physics may find application in nanoscale science and ultimately in future technology," Prof. Tennant remarks on the perfect harmony found in quantum uncertainty instead of disorder. "Such discoveries are leading physicists to speculate that the quantum, atomic scale world may have its own underlying order. Similar surprises may await researchers in other materials in the quantum critical state."
One day when science maps out the grander universe with connection theory and observation, they will realize it has its own order as well, still governed by the Golden Ratio. As is the quantum world, as is ours, as are the other orders we have yet to even conceive.
Part of the geometric background of everything the Golden Ratio is.
Soon humanity will realize that the Big Bang wasn't the start of it all, but a small reaction, on an order above us, making Earth and our Solar System, look quantumly small.
Even our own galaxy might just be a lepton in the grand scheme of an order on the lattice above us.
The hubris of humanity is going to be taken down a notch, when we realize our exact position in the grander cosmoses order of everything.
Edit Note: Cleaned it up a bit, since y'all liked it.
