411)Catching a Microwave Pulse Transitioning from the Quantum-Physics World to the Classical-Physics World, from probability to certainty.

"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)

"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)

"This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)

".....The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K.)

"Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul."(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)

Chapter 30, Verse 27: He originates creation; then refashions it - for Him an easy task. His is the most Sublime Symbol in the heavens and the earth(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

The above are 9 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html



Photons caught in the act

By Davide Castelvecchi
Web edition : Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Physicists watch a microwave pulse lose its quantum weirdness

Physicists have made the first "movie" of a microwave pulse transitioning from the quantum-physics world to the classical-physics world.

Reporting in the Sept. 25 Nature, the researchers say that their method may help in understanding at what point in nature quantum physics ends and classical physics begins. It could also shed light on how to keep information inside future computers that would take advantage of quantum physics.

Quantum objects — generally, anything that's small enough to be ruled by quantum physics — can exist in multiple forms at the same time. An atom, for example, can be in two places at the same time, as can the crests and troughs of electromagnetic waves, such as in a microwave pulse.

Any disturbance from the outside world can cause a loss of this quantum innocence — loss of coherence, in physics parlance. The state of the object becomes progressively more definite, until the object picks one state, as would be expected from everyday experience. Normally, physicists cannot capture all the information contained in quantum coherence, since a measurement produces an answer that's just one in a range of possible outcomes.

Serge Haroche of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Collège de France in Paris and his collaborators have now observed this transition in a microwave pulse trapped between two mirrors. The researchers probed the pulse by shooting thousands of rubidium atoms across it, one atom at a time. Each atom extracted a small amount of information from the pulse, without destroying its coherence.

The near-perfect mirrors allowed the photons in the microwave pulse to bounce back and forth, establishing a standing wave that lasted several milliseconds. Through the reflections, the pulse, bit by bit, lost coherence, and the position of the peaks and troughs came closer to being definite.

At the same time, the path the pulse follows to lose coherence is also different each time. To obtain the most complete picture of the process, the researchers repeated the measurement thousands of times on identical pulses.

"This is fascinating work," comments physicist Mikhail Lukin of Harvard University. It is unique, he adds, "in that it allows one to look directly, in real time, into what happens with a quantum state of light as it loses coherence."

Haroche says that the team is constantly improving the apparatus so it can preserve the coherence of pulses of higher intensities. Higher-intensity pulses tend to behave more like classical than quantum objects. Thus, the researchers hope to learn more about the boundary between the quantum and the classical world.

Haroche also says that his team might be able to learn how to use the atoms to restore a pulse's coherence before it is completely lost. This ability could help researchers design quantum data storage for future quantum computers. Such machines would use the multiple states of quantum objects to essentially perform myriad calculations all at once.


Easy Nash

The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)