News bits: New kind of quantum entanglement discovered, etc.

New kind of entanglement lets scientists see inside atomic nuclei: The Brookhaven National Laboratory writes:

First-ever observation of quantum interference between dissimilar particles offers new approach for mapping distribution of gluons in atomic nuclei—and potentially more

Nuclear physicists have found a new way to use the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a particle collider at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory—to see the shape and details inside atomic nuclei. The method relies on particles of light that surround gold ions as they speed around the collider and a new type of quantum entanglement that’s never been seen before.

Through a series of quantum fluctuations, the particles of light (a.k.a. photons) interact with gluons—gluelike particles that hold quarks together within the protons and neutrons of nuclei. Those interactions produce an intermediate particle that quickly decays into two differently charged “pions” (π). By measuring the velocity and angles at which these π+ and π- particles strike RHIC’s STAR detector, the scientists can backtrack to get crucial information about the photon—and use that to map out the arrangement of gluons within the nucleus with higher precision than ever before.  

“We measure two outgoing particles and clearly their charges are different—they are different particles—but we see interference patterns that indicate these particles are entangled, or in sync with one another, even though they are distinguishable particles,” said Brookhaven physicist and STAR collaborator Zhangbu Xu.  

RHIC operates as a DOE Office of Science user facility where physicists can study the innermost building blocks of nuclear matter—the quarks and gluons that make up protons and neutrons. They do this by smashing together the nuclei of heavy atoms such as gold traveling in opposite directions around the collider at close to the speed of light. The intensity of these collisions between nuclei (also called ions) can “melt” the boundaries between individual protons and neutrons so scientists can study the quarks and gluons as they existed in the very early universe—before protons and neutrons formed.

Nerds Daniel Brandenburg and Zhangbu Xu nerding

around with the STAR detector on the RHIC

Well, looks like 2023 is starting off with a big bang. Keep up the good work nerds -- smash those atoms real hard!

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Commentator tears the Supreme Court a new one: In delightful commentary on Chief Justice Roberts year end report, Dahlia Lithwick writing for Slate is scathing and funny at the same time:

The Chief Justice is burying his head in the sand 

when it comes to the biggest problem with SCOTUS

It’s been eight long months since the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion in the landmark abortion case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. When it happened last May, Chief Justice John Roberts described it as a “a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court.” As the nominal head of that Court, it was up to Roberts to investigate the leak, and then presumably do something about it, but in the intervening months, the internal investigation of the leak—as ordered by Roberts—has plodded on without any disclosures to the public about what Harriet the Spy and Inspector Gadget, or whichever crack detective tasked with solving the crime has turned up.

This shocking leak, for which Sen. Ted Cruz once insisted that someone be “fired instantly” and also “prosecuted” and also “serve real jail time,” has already gone the way of the great un-crackable mysteries of our time. .... Justice Clarence Thomas may have once characterized it as “an infidelity” that had profoundly shattered trust among the Justices, but apparently the Court opted to continue operating without the restoration of that trust. So much so, that it need never be discussed again. .... Weird. In a building populated by about 500 employees, almost none of whom would have had access to a near-final draft opinion, the identity of the Dobbs leaker is going the way of the Bermuda Triangle and Amelia Earhart. Though the leak supposedly traumatized the institution and its members, the agreement seems to be that we need never speak of it again.

So perhaps nobody should be surprised that this great Supreme Court mystery—a breach of trust in an order of magnitude previously unheard of—appeared nowhere in the pages of the Chief Justice’s annual year-end report on the federal judiciary. That report, which dropped, as it does, on New Year’s Eve, was widely covered for its lack of references to several important issues that faced the Court this year. These included: the Dobbs leak, the Supreme Court Historical Society’s perplexing role as secret pipeline for SCOTUS access-seekers and their fat wallets, and any references to Justice Clarence Thomas’ continued insistence on ruling on cases that directly affect his own wife (this would seem to violate the ethics rules that bind the Supreme Court, but as we now know, they do not bind the Supreme Court). None of these crises were mentioned in the report. Why? because these controversies all make the court look hinky AF, and Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t want that.

The real mystery, then, isn’t merely how Roberts’ year-end report ended up centering threats to American judges as the most urgent concern of the past calendar year. .... No, the real whodunnit following Roberts’ report, has to be this: Who killed the last vestige of shame down on One First Street? Because Benoit Blanc, call your office. I want to report a murder.

To take on that actual responsibility would demand accepting a leadership role that includes speaking truth to uncheckable power, even if that uncheckable power belongs to the court. The Chief Justice knows well what crises have beset the high court and its reputation this past term. But all he wanted to talk about was how that manifests as threats to judges.

But certainly the expectations of a court reflecting on its own complicity in public’s distrust of it were at zero by the time Samuel Alito was giving triumphal insult-comic speeches about Dobbs in Rome this past summer, and when Ginni Thomas was still insisting that the 2020 election was stolen by Biden in September, as her husband rules on Jan. 6 cases. Indeed, it has become fairly obvious that if you can’t beat the ethical challenges at the court, you can just join them. Or at least cover for them.

And that, it seems, is the play. The Chief Justice continues to doggedly reframe public anger at the court as one of two things: the public’s problem, and also a security risk to the Justices. .... the public is struggling to understand how it can possibly have faith in a court with no braking mechanism on its effort to remake the constitution in two years. In response to that anger, the court put up security fencing. Now imagine if the Chief Justice had spoken candidly about that.

One is left with the dispiriting sense of John Roberts as doubly cursed: Unlike some of his conservative colleagues, he is well aware of the multiple ways in which the Justices themselves are doing violence to the court’s reputation as unbiased and above the fray. However, because there’s nothing he thinks he can do about it, he’s refusing to acknowledge it. He’s taking all the evidence of the shoddy and unethical behavior and sweeping it under the carpet, then pointing at the mound of carpet crap and blaming it on the American public.  

As pregnant Americans attempt to reimagine dealing with their pregnancy losses, their thwarted birth control needs, their new economic realities, and their live saving medical needs thanks to Dobbs, the Chief Justice’s choice to center himself and his colleagues –ensconced in the protections of lifetime tenure – was a choice to blind himself to suffering of which he is well aware. Judges are suffering after the 2022 term. So are millions of others. Refusing to see the connection is the problem, not the solution.

That nicely sums the condescending arrogance and ghastly disingenuousness of Christofascist Republican elites. Roberts is a master of sophisticated propaganda tactics like misdirection, obfuscation, lies of omission and the like. In the immediate future and for the foreseeable future, we can reasonably expect more insulting lies of omission and blatant deceit from arrogant Republican judges like Roberts. 

Q: Although Lithwick claims that judges are suffering, is that true? (seems that would mostly depend on how one defines suffering, e.g., loss of public trust, physical threats, insults by the public, cognitive dissonance, whatever)

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From the Flogging Dead Horses Files: Juan Williams writes in The Hill:

The rotten state of House Republicans

McCarthy has been reduced to a weakling. He will be constantly cringing under fear that a snap vote by the far right will oust him. Such a vote can now be called if even one GOP member asks for it.

They have picked a Speaker but they have no real leader.

And with Trump in decline, there is no national leader of the party going into the 2024 cycle.

Looking back to 2021, President Biden made the right call by not negotiating with hardline House Republicans during his first two years in the White House.

He relied on Speaker Pelosi.

Even with a narrow majority, her expert leadership freed him from the chaos politics of the GOP’s far-right.  

The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page recently described the House radicals’ lack of interest in good governing this way:

Too many of them are “more comfortable in opposition in the minority…which is easier because no hard decisions or compromises are necessary. You can rage against ‘the swamp,’ without having to do anything to change it. This is the fundamental and sorry truth behind the Speaker spectacle and the performative GOP politics of recent years.”

So, another commentator sees chaos, dysfunction and nastiness ahead for the next two years. That seems to be a reasonable prediction. We will find out pretty soon what the House can and cannot do, and just how nasty it is going to be.