#Alain Aspect John

[whats-in-a-sentence]

The outcome of what you do at one place can be linked with what happens at another place, even if nothing travels between the two locations – even if there isn't enough time for anything to complete the journey between the two locations. Einstein's, Podolsky's, and Rosen's intuitively pleasing suggestion that such long-range correlations arise merely because particles have definite, preexisting, correlated properties is ruled out by the data. That's what makes this all so shocking.¹⁴

14. While the locality assumption is critical to the argument of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, researchers have tried to find fault with other elements of their reasoning in an attempt to avoid the conclusion that the universe admits nonlocal features. For example, it is sometimes claimed that all the data require is that we give up so-called realism – the idea that objects possess the properties they are measured to have independent of the measurement process. In this context, though, such a claim misses the point. If the EPR reasoning had been confirmed by experiment, there would be nothing mysterious about the long-range correlations of quantum mechanics; they'd be no more surprising than classical long-range correlations, such as the way finding your left-handed glove over here ensures that its partner over there is a right-handed glove. But such reasoning is refuted by the Bell/Aspect results. Now, if in response to this refutation of EPR we give up realism – as we do in standard quantum mechanics – that does nothing to lessen the stunning weirdness of long-range correlations between widely separated random processes; when we relinquish realism, the gloves, as in endnote 4, become "quantum gloves." Giving up realism does not, by any means, make the observed nonlocal correlations any less bizarre. It is true that if, in light of the results of EPR, Bell, and Aspect, we try to maintain realism – for example, as in Bohm's theory discussed later in the chapter – the kind of nonlocality we require to be consistent with the data seems to be more severe, involving nonlocal interactions, not just nonlocal correlations. Many physicists have resisted this option and have thus relinquished realism.

"The Fabric of the Cosmos" - Brian Greene

[aklingolgesi]

KUANTUM TARTIŞMASINDA KİM HAKLIYDI? | BELL EŞİTSİZŞİĞİ & DOLANIKLIK DENEYLERİ

Einstein ve Bohr arasındaki kuantum çekişmesi uzun süre devam etmiş; Einstein 1955’te, Bohr ise 1962’de hayatını kaybettiğinden ikisi de hangisinin haklı olduğunu öğrenememişti. Derken 1964 yılında bir fizikçi çıktı ve tüm düğümü çözecek bir eşitsizlik ortaya attı. Bu kişi John Stewart Bell’di. 2022 yılında Nobel Fizik Ödülünü kazanan Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser ve Anton Zeilinger; bu ödülü…

[averycanadianfilm]

2022 Nobel Prize lectures in physics

Dec 7, 2022

Alain Aspect: From Einstein’s doubts to quantum technologies: non-locality a fruitful image 

John F. Clauser: Experimental proof that nonlocal quantum entanglement is real

 Anton Zeilinger: A Voyage through Quantum Wonderland Aula Magna, 

Stockholm University, Frescativägen 6, Stockholm 

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 

“for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.

[typhlonectes]

The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It

Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality

One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real.

“Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; 

“Local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings, and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. 

Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead, the evidence shows objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement. As Albert Einstein famously bemoaned to a friend, “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”

This is, of course, deeply contrary to our everyday experiences. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the demise of local realism has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Blame for this achievement has now been laid squarely on the shoulders of three physicists: John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. They equally split the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.” (“Bell inequalities” refers to the pioneering work of the Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell, who laid the foundations for this year’s Physics Nobel in the early 1960s.) 

Colleagues agreed that the trio had it coming, deserving this reckoning for overthrowing reality as we know it. “It is fantastic news. It was long overdue,” says Sandu Popescu, a quantum physicist at the University of Bristol. “Without any doubt, the prize is well-deserved...”

Read more:  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Science

Pop Mech Pro: Science

Your Consciousness Can Enter Alternate Dimensions While You’re Dreaming, Scientist Claims

Strong emotions in repetitive dreams could offer cosmic clues about another version of you, according to this controversial idea. By Stav DimitropoulosPublished: Oct 18, 2024 12:52 PM EDT

How many times have you woken up feeling euphoric or deeply disturbed by a dream so vivid it felt indistinguishable from reality? The kind of dream that lingers. Perhaps you notice recurring motifs: specific places, faces, symbols, or even fantastical settings. You are quick to dismiss these as psychological quirks of the brain, and chances are, you will have forgotten about such dreams by midday.

But what if your dreams weren’t just caprices of the sleepy mind? What if they were revealing glimpses into a mirror realm in which your consciousness was wandering? To go even further, perhaps recurring dreams suggest a connection to another reality. For David Leong, Ph.D., an academic specializing in metaphysics and epistemology (the study of distinguishing opinion from justified belief) this might not be just an interesting hypothesis, but the truth.

“Dreams may be windows into distinct realities governed by their laws, in which the mind, unfettered by the constraints of wakefulness, can explore and interact with new forms of existence,” says Leong, an honorary professor at Charisma University in Turks and Caicos.

His hypothesis builds on the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory, which suggests that every decision or event creates branching realities—an infinite array of parallel universes. Leong applies this idea to consciousness. He speculates that sleep reduces the influence of our physical senses and rational mind, giving consciousness the freedom to bypass the usual boundaries of time and space. While scientific studies don’t currently support this idea, in Leong’s view, dreams might serve as portals to other versions of ourselves existing in other dimensions.

“AT THE MACROSCOPIC LEVEL, WE ASSUME objects have fixed properties like position or velocity. But quantum experiments challenge this assumption,” Leong explains. The observer effect—where simply observing a quantum system can influence its state—shows that reality is far more fluid than it appears. “Seeing is believing” might hold true in our everyday world, suggests Leong, but at the quantum level, it breaks down, likely shifting according to the observer’s interaction.

In 2022, physicists Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger won the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking work on quantum entanglement. Their experiments challenged the classical notion of local realism—the belief that physical properties exist independently of observation. They demonstrated that particles, even when separated by vast distances, could instantly affect each other. This fact suggests a reality far more interconnected and flexible than scientists previously thought.

Building on their research, Leong explores the concept of “local” and “nonlocal” consciousness. Local consciousness is accountable to our five senses, shaped and sculpted by the body’s sensory input. Nonlocal consciousness, however, transcends the senses, allowing us to experience “broader, interwoven realities,” he says. This concept aligns with speculative ideas such as panpsychism, where awareness is considered a fundamental feature of the universe itself, he says.

Fascinating as this may sound, not all dreams serve as gateways to parallel timelines. Whether dreams return is key here. “Recurring dreams, especially those with vivid and consistent scenarios, might suggest deeper connections to other realities,” Leong claims. On the other hand, dreams tied to personal experiences often feel disjointed, with distorted time. The most surreal and incomprehensible dreams are likely the subconscious processing your life here on Earth, he says. But, if it feels like you’re visiting the dream rather than imagining it—like a play with a beginning, middle, and end—you probably are visiting this other world, under Leong’s hypothesis.

Leong also hints that strong emotions in persistent dreams could offer cosmic clues—signals of how another version of you is experiencing life in a parallel world. “Say you have a repetitive dream of being stuck in high school,” he suggests. “While it may reflect unresolved psychological themes, such as feelings of stagnation or anxiety about personal growth, it could also indicate that in another reality, you are still in high school, dealing with the same challenges your waking self has moved beyond.” This emotional resonance—like the frustration of being stuck—could ripple across dimensions, creating a feedback loop between your conscious mind here and one of your alter egos elsewhere.

YET, AS CAPTIVATING AS THIS HYPOTHESIS MIGHT BE, it runs into a significant problem: there’s no empirical evidence to back it up. Quantum phenomena, such as entanglement and nonlocality, challenge our traditional views on time and space. Yet, no scientific studies conclusively support the idea that dreams are portals to other worlds. Mainstream neuroscience and cognitive science, on the other hand, find this hypothesis heretical—if not downright unscientific.

The activation-synthesis theory, for instance, sees dreams as the brain’s attempt to make sense of random neural activity during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. It’s the time when the brain is highly active, colorful dreams occur, and the body experiences temporary muscle paralysis. There’s no evidence of peering into other dimensions whatsoever. Similarly, the memory consolidation theory frames dreams as a tool for organizing daily experiences into long-term memories—not interactions with different selves. The threat simulation theory says dreams serve a survivalist, biological purpose, helping us practice responses to danger—again, there’s no cosmic link.

In addition, almost all of the most prominent schools of modern psychology steer away from metaphysical explanations. Behaviorism, for example, regards dreams as byproducts of learned behaviors, conditioning, or stimuli experienced during waking life, offering no deeper meaning. Some psychologists say dreams are expressions of unresolved conflicts or unintegrated parts of the self. Even the more “liberal” psychoanalysts remain focused on the personal meanings of dreams. Sigmund Freud viewed dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious,” reflecting hidden desires and conflicts. Carl Jung offered a more metaphysical take by proposing that dreams connect us to a collective repository of archetypal experiences shared by all humans. However, he never implied that dreams were gateways to other realities.

Psychologist and physician Dr. Howard Eisenberg explores the intersection of psychology, quantum physics, and consciousness in his book, Dream It to Do It. He suggests that what we perceive as reality might be a collective illusion fueled by Western academia’s blind faith in empirical observation. Generally aligned with Leong’s thinking, Eisenberg argues that perception itself may be responsible for constructing the solidity of our reality.

His argument borrows from the observer effect, which says that observing the world around us is a process that collapses potential realities into one fixed outcome. “In modern quantum mechanics, we no longer view objects as collections of particles but rather as ‘waves of probability,’” Dr. Eisenberg says. There are no physical building blocks, no inherent solidity. Simply put, we—all of us together—created the solids we perceive.

“As strange as this may seem, we are the ones caught in a dreamlike state,” Eisenberg adds.

💡Dig Deeper

Scientists Are Trying to ‘See’ Your Consciousness

Our Consciousness May Come From a Higher Dimension

This Study Backs a Quantum Theory of Consciousness

If dreams truly are doorways to other worlds, they would change the way we live. “Every time you sleep, you wouldn’t just rest—you’d explore. You’d live out alternate versions of yourself, making choices that branch into countless realities,” Leong says. Time would blur across the past, present, and future and across dimensions. Death, too, might lose its finality: “Perhaps you wouldn’t see it as the end, but a transition—another path into a new reality, where consciousness continues to evolve,” he explains.

By logical progression, life itself would feel richer, like a dynamic puzzle of possibilities, pushing us to take risks, explore new paths, and live with the understanding that actions shape not just this life, but infinite versions of ourselves across many realities. Each decision or event could unfold into a fresh act in the ongoing narrative of you. And if one bold or misguided move leads to catastrophe here—well, there would still be countless other dreams to live.

Stav Dimitropoulos

Stav Dimitropoulos’s science writing has appeared online or in print for the BBC, Discover, Scientific American, Nature, Science, Runner’s World, The Daily Beast and others. Stav disrupted an athletic and academic career to become a journalist and get to know the world.

[daughterofhecata]

Once again I aimed for complete blackouts on @batmanisagatewaydrug's and @macrolit's reading bingos and this time, I actually succeded! (Even if I took some liberties with the term 'novel' on the macrolit one, mostly focused on the 'classics' aspect.) Lowkey proud of myself ngl.

Titles for both under the cut, full reading list here.

batmanisagatewaydrug:

graphic novel: Christopher Tauber, Hanna Wenzel: Rocky Beach. Eine Interpretation. [no english title]

horror: Jáchym Topol: Die Teufelswerkstatt [org. title: Chladnou zemí/engl. title: The Devil’s Workshop]

author you’ve never read before: David Henry Hwang: M Butterfly

translation: Władysław Szlengel: Was ich den Toten las [org. title: Co czytałem umarłym/engl. title: What I Read to the Dead]

poetry collection: Richard Siken: Crush

a book recommended by a friend: James Oswald: Natural Causes. An Inspector McLean Novel.

verse novel: Alexander F. Spreng: Der Fluch [no english title]

novella: Thomas Mann: Der Tod in Venedig [engl. title: Death in Venice]

a book w/ vampires: Michael Scott: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2. The Magician.

book w/ a cover you think is cool: Cornelia Funke: Tintenwelt #4. Die Farbe der Rache. [engl. title: The Color of Revenge]

2023 release: Jonathan Kellerman: Unnatural History. An Alex Delaware Novel

book w/ an animal on the cover: Faye Kellerman: Der Zorn sei dein Ende [org. title: The Hunt]

book published before 1980: Josef Bor: Die verlassene Puppe [org. title: Opuštěná panenka/engl. title: The Abandoned Doll]

science fiction: Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed

romance: Akwaeke Emezi: You made a Fool of Death with your Beauty

historical fiction: Alena Mornštajnová: Hana [org. title: Hana/engl. title: Hannah]

450+ pages: James Ellroy: Die Schwarze Dahlie [org. title: The Black Dahlia]

memoir: Jeanette McCurdy: I‘m Glad My Mom Died

re-read a book from school: Frank Wedekind: Frühlings Erwachen [engl. title: Spring Awakening]

short story collection: John Barth: Lost in the Funhouse

non-fiction: Vera Schiff: The Theresienstadt Deception. The Concentration Camp the Nazis Created to Deceive the World.

book w/ a movie adaption: Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

book published in your birthday month: Jan T. Gross: Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.

anthology: Alain Locke: The New Negro

macrolit:

Classic Author A/B/C: James Baldwin: Giovanni‘s Room

Published between 2000-2023: Kim Newman: Professor Moriarty. The Hound of the D‘Urbervilles

Philosophy or Literary Criticism: [various books and essays for three literature courses]

Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay: Harlem Shadows

Children’s Literature: [various Three Investigators books]

Fan Fiction: [various works]

Essays or Satire: Mark Thompson: Leatherfolk. Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice.

Book of Short Stories: John Barth: Lost in the Funhouse

Classic Author G/H/I: Lorraine Vivian Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun

LGBTQ+ Author: Ocean Vuong: Time is a Mother

Published before 1940: Friedrich Schiller: Maria Stuart

Classic Author J/K/L: Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed

Detective, Horror, or Suspense: Maurice Leblanc: Arsène Lupin und der Schatz der Könige von Frankreich [org. title: L'Aiguille creuse/engl. title: The Hollow Needle]

Classic Author M/N/O: Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Classic Author S/T/U: J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

Poetry or Play: Arthur Schnitzler: Reigen [engl. title: La Ronde]

Biography or Non-Fiction: Peter Hallama: Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer. Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust. [no english title]

Classic Author P/Q/R: Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar

Graphic Novel: Christopher Tauber, Hanna Wenzel: Rocky Beach. Eine Interpretation. [no english title]

Published between 1940-1999: Hanna Krall: Dem Herrgott Zuvorkommen [org. title: Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem/engl. title: Shielding the Flame]

Classic Author D/E/F: Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho

Young Adult: Kathy Reichs: Virals #1. Tote können nicht mehr reden. [org. title: Virals]

Gothic Fiction: E.T.A. Hoffmann: Nussknacker und Mausekönig [engl. title: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King]

Classic Author V/W/X/Y/Z: Frank Wedekind: Frühlings Erwachen [engl. title: Spring Awakening]

[scienza-magia]

Meccanica quantistica fuori dall'Universo localmente reale

L’universo non è localmente reale. È ciò che hanno provato i vincitori del premio Nobel per la Fisica del 2022 in seguito a esperimenti di correlazione quantistica tra fotoni. A quanto pare, l’universo non è localmente reale. A rivelarlo sono stati i vincitori del premio Nobel per la Fisica del 2022, Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser e Anton Zeilinger. Ma cosa vuol dire “localmente reale”? Si dice ‘reale’ quando gli oggetti hanno proprietà indipendenti dall’osservazione: per esempio, una mela può essere rossa anche quando nessuno la sta guardando. Mentre ‘locale’ significa che gli oggetti possono essere influenzati solo dall’ambiente circostante e, in particolare, che qualsiasi influenza non può viaggiare con una velocità superiore a quella della luce nel vuoto. Ciò che è stato scoperto è che l’universo non può essere locale e, forse, nemmeno reale. Un apparente paradosso della meccanica quantistica Un famoso esperimento mentale pubblicato nel 1935, il cosiddetto paradosso di Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky e Nathan Rosen (paradosso EPR), era inteso a illustrare la presunta assurdità della meccanica quantistica. Il loro obiettivo era mostrare come in determinate condizioni la teoria può fornire risultati privi di senso.

Niklas Elmehed, Nobel Prize Outreach/a." width="678" height="381" /> Ritratto, in ordine da sinistra a destra, di Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser e Anton Zeilinger, vincitori del premio Nobel per la Fisica nel 2022. Crediti: Niklas Elmehed, Nobel Prize Outreach. Una versione semplificata e modernizzata di EPR funziona più o meno così: abbiamo delle coppie di particelle che vengono espulse in direzioni diverse da una stessa sorgente e raggiungono due osservatori, Alice e Bob, posizionati alle estremità opposte del sistema solare. La meccanica quantistica impone che sia impossibile conoscere lo spin, una proprietà quantistica di ciascuna particella, prima della misurazione. Una volta che Alice ha misurato una delle sue particelle, trova che lo spin risulta up oppure down. I suoi risultati sono casuali, eppure appena dopo aver effettuato la misura, sa immediatamente che la particella corrispondente di Bob deve avere spin, per esempio, down. Eppure lo spin di quest’ultima particella era indefinito prima che fosse misurato lo spin dell’altra. Se le particelle di Alice non hanno uno spin definito prima della misurazione, allora come fanno le particelle di Bob, dall’altra parte del sistema solare, a ‘sapere’ che la misura è stata effettuata e il suo risultato? Nonostante i miliardi di chilometri che separano le particelle accoppiate, la meccanica quantistica prevede che le particelle di Alice sono in qualche modo legate a quelle di Bob (un fenomeno noto come entanglement quantistico). I tre scienziati premiati sono riusciti a studiare fotoni in stato di entanglement. Secondo la meccanica quantistica, quindi, la natura non è localmente reale: le particelle possono avere proprietà indefinite prima della misurazione, come lo spin up o down, e influenzarsi istantaneamente tra loro a prescindere dalla distanza. Ciò però non viola i risultati della teoria della relatività ristretta, in quanto i risultati delle misurazioni sono casuali e quindi l’entanglement non possono essere utilizzate per comunicare a velocità superiore a quella della luce nel vuoto. Fonte: Scientific American. Read the full article

[frank-olivier]

2022 Nobel Prize lectures in physics (December 2022, Aula Magna, Stockholm University, Sweden)

Alain Aspect: From Einstein's doubts to quantum technologies: non-locality a fruitful image

John F. Clauser: Experimental proof that nonlocal quantum entanglement is real

Anton Zeilinger: A Voyage through Quantum Wonderland

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

[nathematicss]

The Universe is Not Locally Real

This was the discovery proven by physicists John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger, who equally shared the 2022 Nobel Prize Award last October 4. But what does their discovery actually mean? And how were they able to prove it? This blog will go on to explain the story of this discovery, and how three brilliant scientists were able to prove Einstein wrong.

image source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/summary/

"The universe is not locally real." This statement is made up of two concepts: locality and realness. Locality refers to the idea that interactions take place within direct spatial neighborhoods. In other words, any object can only influence or be influenced by its surroundings, and these interactions are limited by the speed of light. A cause cannot have an effect instantaneously; something must travel between the cause and the affected, such as a wave or a particle. For example, you can't flick a lightswitch located billions of light years away from the lightbulb and expect it to instantly turn on; the information between the lightswitch and the lightbulb that tells the bulb to turn on cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

Second, the concept of Realism in physics refers to the idea that an object has definite properties independent of observation. In other words, a particle will have a definite size, shape, and charge even without observing it. These properties are inherent to them, whether they are measured or not. This was the belief of scientists such as Einstein. On the other hand, anti-realists believed the opposite. A particle does not have definite properties until the moment they are observed or measured. Their properties exist in a function of possible states, and only when they are observed does a definite measurement exist. This uncertainty is a core concept in quantum physics. Bohr and Heisenberg were among some of the prominent anti-realists.

In the 1930s, Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rozen published a paper posing a thought experiment that would show how the quantum mechanics believed by anti-realists are incomplete, or at worst, incorrect. This was later called the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rozen) argument. The thought experiment made use of quantum entanglement - the idea that the properties of two particles are inherently related if they are entangled. For example, particles A and B are quantumly entangled. If you measure the spin of particle A and it has a clockwise spin, then, in accordance with conservation of angular momentum and with the principles of entanglement, you'd instantly know that particle B has a counter-clockwise spin. Additionally, these properties are unknown until we measure the spin at least one of the particles. Einstein argues that, if you place particles A and B light years away from each other and measure the spin of A to be clockwise, then according to entanglement you'd instantly know the spin of B to be counter-clockwise. But this violates the locality principle, it is impossible for information between these two particles to travel instantly because that would be faster than the speed of light. Thus, Einstein says, particle A must have already been clockwise and B already counter-clockwise from the beginning.

image source: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3328

For quite some time, no one had come up with a good counter-argument to the EPR argument. That was until the 1960s when physicist John Bell came up with the Bell's theorem (also called Bell's inequality). In Bell's Theorem, John Bell assumed that local realism holds true. And from this assumption, using mathematics, he was able to show that there are certain properties that are bounded by classical realism. In other words, if the universe was locally real, then quantum mechanics would be incompatible with classical reality. In short, if we were to prove that the universe is not locally real, then quantum mechanics would be compatible with classical theories.

However, this was still simply theoretical. The physics world needed experimental proof. And this is where our Nobel prize winner John Clauser comes in. In 1969, Clauser, Michael Horne, Abner Shimony, and Richard Holt developed the CSHS Inequality, which was able to provide an experimental framework in support of Bell's Theorem. The results of this theorem would either prove or disprove Bell's Theorem. And in 1972, Clauser finally built the first experimental setup that could be used for this purpose. And the results that he got were in line with the predictions of quantum mechanics. The results violated Bell's theorem, which proved that the universe is not locally real, thus supporting quantum mechanics. The other two Nobel prize winners, Aspect and Zeiilinger, assisted by refining the experimental setup, which helped close some loopholes in the experiment.

And that is the story of the 2022 Nobel prize. Decades after Clauser first started his work on this topic, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences finally validated his work and awarded the Nobel prize to the three brilliant physicists, who helped revolutionize our knowledge about the universe, and proved Einstein wrong.

(Blog, written as a part of our requirements in Science 10: Probing the Physical World)

References:

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.1 (after 1940)

1941 – Norman Rockwell's Willie Gillis character debuts on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. 1957 – Sputnik 1 becomes the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. 1958 – The current constitution of France is adopted. 1960 – An airliner crashes on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 people. 1963 – Hurricane Flora kills 6,000 in Cuba and Haiti. 1965 – Pope Paul VI begins the first papal visit to the Americas. 1966 – Basutoland becomes independent from the United Kingdom and is renamed Lesotho. 1967 – Omar Ali Saifuddien III of Brunei abdicates in favour of his son. 1983 – Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 miles per hour (1,019.468 km/h) at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. 1985 – The Free Software Foundation is founded. 1991 – The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is opened for signature. 1992 – The Rome General Peace Accords end a 16-year civil war in Mozambique. 1992 – El Al Flight 1862 crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam, killing 43 including 39 on the ground. 1993 – Battle of Mogadishu occurs killing 18 U.S. Special Forces, two UN Peacekeepers and at least 600 Somalian militia men and civilians. 1993 – Tanks bombard the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Yeltsin rally outside. 1997 – The second largest cash robbery in U.S. history occurs in North Carolina. 2001 – Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 crashes after being struck by an errant Ukrainian missile. Seventy-eight people are killed. 2003 – The Maxim restaurant suicide bombing in Israel kills twenty-one Israelis, both Jews and Arabs. 2004 – SpaceShipOne wins the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight. 2006 – WikiLeaks is launched. 2010 – The Ajka plant accident in Hungary releases a million cubic metres of liquid alumina sludge, killing nine, injuring 122, and severely contaminating two major rivers. 2017 – Joint Nigerien-American Special Forces are ambushed by Islamic State militants outside the village of Tongo Tongo. 2021 – Bubba Wallace becomes the first African-American Driver in the modern era of NASCAR to win a major race. 2022 – Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger are jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

And as we've seen, it is not that the electron (or any particle for that matter) really was located at only one of these possible positions, but we simply don't know which.²

2. At the end of Chapter 4, I noted that the results of Bell, Aspect, and others do not rule out the possibility that particles always have definite positions and velocities, even if we can't ever determine such features simultaneously. Moreover, Bohm's version of quantum mechanics explicitly realizes this possibility. Thus, although the widely held view that an electron doesn't have a position until measured is a standard feature of the conventional approach to quantum mechanics, it is, strictly speaking, too strong as a blanket statement. Bear in mind, though, that in Bohm's approach, as we will discuss later in this chapter, particles are "accompanied" by probability waves; that is, Bohm's theory always invokes particles and waves, whereas the standard approach envisions a complementarity that can roughly be summarized as particles or waves. Thus, the conclusion we're after – that the quantum mechanical description of the past would be thoroughly incomplete if we spoke exclusively about a particle's having passed through a unique point in space at each definite moment in time (what we would do in classical physics) – is true nevertheless. In the conventional approach to quantum mechanics, we must also include the wealth of other locations that a particle could have occupied at any given moment, while in Bohm's approach we must also include the "pilot" wave, an object that is also spread throughout a wealth of other locations. (The expert reader should note that the pilot wave is just the wavefunction of conventional quantum mechanics, although its incarnation in Bohm's theory is rather different.) To avoid endless qualifications, the discussion that follows will be from the perspective of conventional quantum mechanics (the approach most widely used), leaving remarks on Bohm's and other approaches to the last part of the chapter.

"The Fabric of the Cosmos" - Brian Greene

[swissforextrading]

LHC experiments at CERN observe quantum entanglement at the highest energy yet

LHC experiments at CERN observe quantum entanglement at the highest energy yet Quantum entanglement is a fascinating feature of quantum physics – the theory of the very small. If two particles are quantum-entangled, the state of one particle is tied to that of the other, no matter how far apart the particles are. This mind-bending phenomenon, which has no analogue in classical physics, has been observed in a wide variety of systems and has found several important applications, such as quantum cryptography and quantum computing. In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for groundbreaking experiments with entangled photons. These experiments confirmed the predictions for the manifestation of entanglement made by the late CERN theorist John Bell and pioneered quantum information science. Entanglement has remained largely unexplored at the high energies accessible at particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In an article published today in Nature, the ATLAS collaboration reports how it succeeded in observing quantum entanglement at the LHC for the first time, between fundamental particles called top quarks and at the highest energies yet. First reported by ATLAS in September 2023 and since confirmed by two observations made by the CMS collaboration, this result has opened up a new perspective on the complex world of quantum physics. "While particle physics is deeply rooted in quantum mechanics, the observation of quantum entanglement in a new particle system and at much higher energy than previously possible is remarkable,” says ATLAS spokesperson Andreas Hoecker. “It paves the way for new investigations into this fascinating phenomenon, opening up a rich menu of exploration as our data samples continue to grow." The ATLAS and CMS teams observed quantum entanglement between a top quark and its antimatter counterpart. The observations are based on a recently proposed method to use pairs of top quarks produced at the LHC as a new system to study entanglement. The top quark is the heaviest known fundamental particle. It normally decays into other particles before it has time to combine with other quarks, transferring its spin and other quantum traits to its decay particles. Physicists observe and use these decay products to infer the top quark’s spin orientation. To observe entanglement between top quarks, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations selected pairs of top quarks from data from proton–proton collisions that took place at an energy of 13 teraelectronvolts during the second run of the LHC, between 2015 and 2018. In particular, they looked for pairs in which the two quarks are simultaneously produced with low particle momentum relative to each other. This is where the spins of the two quarks are expected to be strongly entangled. The existence and degree of spin entanglement can be inferred from the angle between the directions in which the electrically charged decay products of the two quarks are emitted. By measuring these angular separations and correcting for experimental effects that could alter the measured values, the ATLAS and CMS teams each observed spin entanglement between top quarks with a statistical significance larger than five standard deviations. In its second study, the CMS collaboration also looked for pairs of top quarks in which the two quarks are simultaneously produced with high momentum relative to each other. In this domain, for a large fraction of top quark pairs, the relative positions and times of the two top quark decays are predicted to be such that classical exchange of information by particles traveling at no more than the speed of light is excluded, and CMS observed spin entanglement between top quarks also in this case. “With measurements of entanglement and other quantum concepts in a new particle system and at an energy… https://home.web.cern.ch/news/press-release/physics/lhc-experiments-cern-observe-quantum-entanglement-highest-energy-yet (Source of the original content)

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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is dedicated to quantum mechanics. Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger all thought about quantum mechanics in 1935. Einstein challenged quantum mechanics and argued that although correct, it was not a complete theory. He thought there must be an underlying structure to quantum mechanics that so far had not revealed itself. Bohr, on the other hand, defended the theory and argued that it was complete. Finally, Schrödinger concluded that entanglement between two particles with a common past was the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics.

Most physicists sided with Bohr and noted Schrödinger’s characterisation of entanglement, but mostly they were not that interested. They were too busy applying quantum mechanics to real world problems, both of fundamental character and for practical applications. Several of these practitioners of quantum mechanics would eventually receive the Nobel Prize in Physics and many of the things we today take for granted, such as streamed television, fast internet, mobile phones, and a plethora of medical diagnostics tools, all have their origins in quantum mechanics. Indeed, the laureates of 2020 and 2021 − Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, Andrea Ghez, Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi − are no exceptions.

While the world moved on, a few physicists continued to think about the foundations of quantum mechanics. In 1964, John Stewart Bell invented a mathematical formula, Bell’s inequality, which pointed to a way to experimentally resolve the conflict between Einstein and Bohr. Most physicists did not pay attention. Why bother with a foundational problem of quantum mechanics that would have no practical consequences? From their perspective, the theory worked. It had been well established in textbooks and taught at universities for decades. Although it was recognised that quantum entanglement was an elusive and hard-to-understand trait of quantum mechanics, few realised what it could be used for.

John Clauser was of a different opinion. When he heard about Bell’s inequality, he became obsessed with how to experimentally test it. He left his main research direction and, working with a younger colleague named Stuart Freedman, managed to perform the very first experimental test of Bell’s inequality. Their experimental effort fifty years ago, done on a shoestring budget, showed that quantum mechanics violated Bell’s inequality and that quantum mechanics correctly predicted the outcome of their experiment. Sadly, neither Bell nor Freedman is still with us today.

John Clauser’s experiment appeared convincing and suggested that Bohr was more correct than Einstein. But Bell realised that there were a few shortcomings in Clauser’s experiment, shortcomings that seemed almost impossible to overcome. It is now that Alain Aspect entered the scene. Together with colleagues in France, he managed to overcome these shortcomings and performed a series of experiments that were broadly recognised. These experiments were even highlighted in Swedish newspapers, though sometimes stretched well beyond their actual results.

The experimental test of Bell’s inequality now entered a new era, thanks to Anton Zeilinger and his collaborators. While Zeilinger and others continued to close some remaining loopholes in the Clauser and Aspect experiments, even more importantly, they demonstrated how the elusive concept of quantum entanglement can be useful. This was a giant leap from Zeilinger’s Austrian predecessor Schrödinger, and it is remarkable how the circle began in Austria and was closed in Austria. We have entered the second quantum revolution!

Professor Aspect, Dr Clauser and Professor Zeilinger, you have been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. It is an honour and a privilege to convey to you, on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, our warmest congratulations.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2022

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Bell's Inequality: The weirdest theorem in the world | Nobel Prize 2022 Last year, in 2022, John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Their groundbreaking work was built upon one of the most significant discoveries in the history of physics: Bell's Theorem, which was originally formulated by the late John Stewart Bell. In this video, we delve into the reasons why Bell's Theorem stands as one of the most important and perplexing results in the annals of physics. Join us as we celebrate the achievements of these three remarkable scientists who, through their contributions, laid the foundation for cutting-edge technologies rooted in quantum information. https://ift.tt/QkbmtPJ #qiskit #ibm #nobelprize via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OM0jSTeeBg

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'This year he earned a Golden Globe nomination for his compelling work as a man who encounters the ghosts of his parents in Andrew Haugh's Strangers . But for the Irishman Andrew Scott, that was one of many recognitions, including another nomination for the same award as best supporting actor for playing the priest in the comedy series Fleabag , for which he won the Critics Choice, and the Bafta in the same category for playing Jim Moriarty in the British Sherlock . But if something was missing in his career to become the man of the moment, it is his leading role in Ripley , the eight-episode miniseries that arrives on Netflix on Thursday the 4th and in which, from the hand of Steve Zaillian, Oscar winner for the script for Schindler's List , has given new life to the iconic con artist created by Patricia Highsmith and previously portrayed on film by Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, Matt Damon, John Malkovich and Barry Pepper.

How difficult was it to forget about Matt Damon as Tom Ripley when working on the series?

It wasn't a problem. Obviously that's a movie that people love and I'm one of its biggest fans. I love the performances of everyone who participated. Therefore, that was one of our concerns, because when people hear about this project, the first thing they ask is if it is a remake, and what sense does it make to remake something that already had a very successful version. But from the beginning I knew that was exactly what Steven Zaillian, our writer and director, wanted to avoid. There have been several adaptations of this story over the years, but Steven had a very peculiar vision from the day he read the novel many years ago. The opportunity to tell it in a miniseries was a very interesting dynamic for him. For example, he was convinced that it had to be filmed in black and white.

Because it says?

Because that was the starting point to explain to the audience how they should see it, which is very similar to how we would read a novel, which does not take us two hours. We read it over a certain period of time, which allows us to pay attention to certain aspects. Sometimes it is the plot and other times it is the characters that catch our attention. In the miniseries, we have the opportunity to share some time with them and see how mine thinks and makes mistakes. As with all great literary characters, Tom Ripley has a certain reputation as a psychopath or serial killer. But those appreciations never interested me. I don't see him as a natural serial killer. I think he is someone who is very fallible and does what he doesn't have to do. We see how he makes mistakes in real time, but at the same time we can see that he has a natural talent for deceiving. The truth is that the first time I spoke with Steve I put aside my concern about previous interpretations. And I'm sure the same will happen to viewers when they see the unique look we have at this story.

Don't you see him as a psychopath either?

No, I always had a lot of resistance to diagnosing the character with a very specific psychiatric definition. I think the reason why he has endured over time and has become an icon is because he continues to generate many doubts in us. We find it fascinating, terrifying and uncomfortable because we don't have much information about it. What Tom tells about him is not very reliable. One cannot be very sure what his nationality is, his age or his sexual orientation.

Have you ever encountered a real-life Tom Ripley?

It's something I get asked often. But I think what attracts us to the character is not whether we know someone like him, but what part of Tom Ripley we carry inside. That's what Patricia Highsmith achieved in her novel, because we side with this man who does a lot of bad things, because he is someone who has been ignored by society and who has many talents. He is a con artist, a true con artist, who resorts to tricks to make a living. But he is ignored, and he does not have access to any of the things that the other characters in the story enjoy, such as art, music, and beauty. When ignored people discover that something like this exists, they find within themselves the fury that they have always carried inside. In the story there is a very interesting and subtle message, which is that everyone has the right to enjoy beauty and art. It's not just for the rich.

How did you get into Tom Ripley's head?

I do not practice the theory of the method. But it was a challenge because ideologically we are very different, although you always have to find some connection with the characters you play. I've only murdered four people... Seriously, when you're filming for a year, the macabre scenes only take a little while. Most of them were domestic moments, in which they talked about unrequited love or loneliness. The complicated thing for me was the energy that the whole process required, because there was a good dose of action scenes. Plus, Tom is in 95 percent of the scenes in an eight-hour series, and that requires a tremendous amount of acting. I had to be available all the time. It was like this for a year, without rest. In psychological terms, I played a very lonely character, who is far from home and has to deal with the language barrier. It was a great privilege, but it was also a challenge.

Would you at least say that Tom Ripley is a villain?

Although they have every right to say that it is, but I don't see it that way. He seems like a very complex person to me, and to say that he is a villain is to simplify him. I certainly think he's an antihero. As I said, I think the great achievement of the story, which is palpable in the miniseries, is that as a viewer you want someone we shouldn't support to do well. We want you to get your way. And that's because we see ourselves as Tom Ripley. The idea was for the audience to discover what it's like to be someone like him. We all have our share of darkness, and in some ways we are a mystery to ourselves, even if we are not necessarily murderers. It's funny, because of all the characters I've played, this is the one that raises the most questions from the audience. And I love that, because questions about his sexual orientation or his nationality will never be answered. We will never know.'

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With ‘Gems’ From Black Collections, the Harlem Renaissance Reappears

An ambitious new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art uncovers work by long-ignored artists with the help of loans from Black colleges and family collections.

Laura Wheeler Waring’s “Girl in Pink Dress,” circa 1927, at the conservation studio of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The artist’s grandniece was determined to bring Waring the recognition she deserved.Credit...Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times.

By Aruna D’Souza Feb. 18, 2024

How do you measure the United States in the 20th century without Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington?

You wouldn’t dream of it. The writers, poets, singers and musicians of the movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, centering around the New York neighborhood from 1919 to the end of the 1930s, loom large in the American cultural imagination. The period was when “Harlem became the symbol for the international black city,” as the novelist Ishmael Reed described it.

But what about the painters Laura Wheeler Waring, Charles Henry Alston and Malvin Gray Johnson? Or the sculptor Richmond Barthé? Hardly household names. And while other visual artists — Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley Jr., Augusta Savage — have long been celebrated, their contributions have until recently been too often treated as a byway, separate from the rest of European and American modernism.

An ambitious new exhibition, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” opening Feb. 25 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hopes to shift our view of the time when Harlem, energized by the arrival of thousands of African Americans through the Great Migration, flourished as a creative capital.

Archibald Motley Jr., “Black Belt” (1934), inspired by jazz culture, was loaned to the Met by the Hampton University Museum, in Virginia.Credit...Estate of Archibald John Motley Jr./Bridgeman Images, via Hampton University.

Maquette of Augusta Savage’s sculpture “Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp),” 1939. A massive version appeared at the 1939 World’s Fair celebrating African African contributions to music. Credit... University of North Florida, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Charles Henry Alston, “Girl in a Red Dress,” 1934. The painting, acquired in 2021 by the Met, is one of 21 objects from the museum’s collection in the show.Credit...Estate of Charles Henry Alston, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“When I was a student, none of the survey courses of 20th century art I took included the Harlem Renaissance,” said Denise Murrell, the show’s curator. “This was the first moment where you have Black artists portraying all aspects of a new, modern city life that’s taking shape in the ’20s through the ’40s. They were so international, spending extended periods of time in Europe and engaging with avant-garde aesthetics. They were in the middle of all of these crosscurrents, not as observers but as participants.”

And after years of being the subject of racial stereotyping, Black artists were able to tell their own stories, Murrell said. “They were trying to define, to be self-defining, to articulate their own sense of who they saw themselves being and becoming.”

Denise Murrell, the curator of the “Harlem Renaissance,” inside the conservation studio with a Waring painting behind her. She hopes the show will highlight the Harlem Renaissance’s central role in American and European modernism.Credit... Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times

Murrell, who completed a Ph.D. in art history at Columbia University after a 20-plus year career in finance, joined the Met in 2020. Now she’s taking up the challenge set by Alain Locke, a trailblazing critic during the Harlem Renaissance whose 1925 essay “The New Negro” became a touchstone for Black aesthetics. Locke encouraged artists to draw on African art — not the way European artists were doing, as a form of primitivism, but as an ancestral tradition. At the same time, he insisted that they should work in dialogue with, and show their work alongside, European modernists.

The Met exhibition will include around 160 paintings, sculptures, photographs, as well as books, posters, films and ephemera. Among these will be works by a handful of European modernist painters — Kees van Dongen, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch among them — who were in dialogue with Harlem Renaissance artists, writers and musicians. The move is intended to underline Murrell’s thesis that this was indeed a trans-Atlantic movement.

‘Stupefying, clueless racism’

Installation view of “Harlem on My Mind: The Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968,” at the Met, 1969. At left: a mural of James Van Der Zee’s photograph of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., with the Sunday School of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, 1925. On the back wall: a 1925 photograph of a bank board.Credit...The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This is the second time the museum is doing an exhibition about Harlem; the first was in 1969. “Harlem on My Mind” was the brainchild of Thomas Hoving, a new director at the Met, who was anxious to bring diverse audiences into the institution, and an independent curator, Allon Schoener, who had a reputation for novel, multimedia displays that delved into the history of New York City.

Though the museum had collected and displayed African art, it had never broached the subject of African American culture. So it came as a surprise to Black artists, curators and community leaders to discover that “Harlem on My Mind” didn’t include a single painting or sculpture by an African American artist. Instead, Schoener relied on documentary photography, text, sound and other immersive strategies to convey the vitality of Harlem and its people.

The outcry was immediate: Several artists, including Benny Andrews, Camille Billops and Cliff Joseph, formed the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition. They picketed the museum every day, eventually drawing the attention of local news crews.

Demonstrators picketing outside “Harlem on My Mind” at the Met, 1969.Credit... Jack Manning/The New York Times

Murrell let out a sigh when asked about the show. “I was not hired by the Met to do a corrective show to get them over ‘Harlem on My Mind,’ ” she said firmly. “When you realize what the curators of that show were actually saying — ‘Well, there was no fine art in Harlem, so we don’t have to include any artists’ — you can see the stupefying, clueless racism of the endeavor, and that is a historical context that I think we inevitably do have to address.”

One of the bright spots of “Harlem on My Mind,” according to Murrell, was the presence of work by the photographer James Van Der Zee (1886-1983), who chronicled Harlem life during his long and prolific career. In 2021, the museum entered into a partnership with the Studio Museum in Harlem and Van Der Zee’s widow to establish an archive of his work, including 20,000 prints. Murrell’s exhibition will include some that have never before been shown. (The Met’s show comes more than 35 years after the Studio Museum’s own 1987 exhibition on the art of the Harlem Renaissance.)

A legacy built by Black institutions

William H. Johnson, “Woman in Blue,” circa 1943, oil on burlap. Works like this were collected mostly by historically Black colleges and universities like Clark Atlanta University Art Museum.Credit... via Clark Atlanta University Art Museum

Despite the lessons learned from “Harlem on My Mind,” the Met did not prioritize collecting work by African American artists until relatively recently. Only 21 objects in the upcoming show are from the Met’s collection, along with the suite of Van Der Zee’s photographs.

“We have such a spotty collection in terms of African American painting and sculpture, like all other P.W.I.s,” said Murrell, using the acronym for “predominantly white institutions.” To look at the movement in depth, the Met turned to loans from a handful of collectors and museums who have formed a rich repository of work by Black modernists of the early 20th century, including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Manhattan and the Walter O. and Linda Evans collection in Savannah. (The National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., which also lent works to the Met, had received donations from the Harmon Foundation in the 1960s.)

Jacob Lawrence, “The Photographer,” 1942. Watercolor, gouache and graphite on paper. Lawrence’s painting captures the ethos of the Harlem Renaissance: Black artists and photographers depicting their own communities.Credit...2023 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Aaron Douglas, “Miss Zora Neale Hurston,” 1926, from Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tenn. Many artists in the show portrayed writers, musicians and performers of the era, though the artists themselves did not receive the same recognition. Credit...Heirs of Aaron Douglas/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Most important, it meant diving into the holdings of a group of historically Black colleges and universities, which were acquiring works from the start: Fisk University, Howard University, Clark Atlanta University, and Hampton University.

Because many museums at H.B.C.U.s have not had the financial resources or staffing to put their collections online, Murrell traveled to each campus in person to understand the full extent of their holdings. Kathryn Coney-Ali, the co-executive director at Howard University’s Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which lent six pictures, said she was heartened that well-resourced institutions — including the Met, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Mellon and Ford Foundations “are seeing that there’s a need to preserve these collections, these assets, these cultural effects, at historically Black colleges and university because they’re gems.”

A family reunited, an artist rediscovered

Inside the Met's conservation studio, from left: Motley’s “Portrait of the Artist's Father,” circa 1922; and three paintings by Waring, “Mother and Daughter" (circa 1927), “Girl in Green Cap” (1930) and “Self Portrait” (1940).Credit...Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times

Some of those gems had been tucked away in attics and basements of artists’ families.

Roberta Graves had been on a yearslong mission to interest museums and curators in the work of her great-aunt, Laura Wheeler Waring, who had studied in Philadelphia and Paris and made a name in painting elegant portraits of the Black bourgeoisie and intellectuals starting in the 1920s.

The steward of about 30 of Waring’s paintings, hundreds of watercolors and her archive, Graves had been trying to garner attention for years — to no avail, she said in a phone interview.

In 2014, Graves recalled, a representative from the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, visited the archive and suggested that, to avoid the headache of trying to find a home for the work, the family “might be better off burning” their Waring holdings. (The museum told The New York Times it had decided not to pursue further conversation about the works in question but that it would never have disparaged an artist’s legacy.) Not even the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Waring’s alma mater, seemed particularly enthused at the time.

Graves was so determined that she teamed up with another great-niece of Waring’s, Madeline Murphy Rabb. The two families — the Warings and the Wheelers — had been involved in a legal battle over the artist’s estate, and relations were strained. That was ancient history, as far as Graves was concerned. “I said, together we’re a much stronger force.”

Rabb had also found that recognition for Waring’s contributions was an uphill battle. “I’ve stalked curators, I’ve stalked presidents of museums,” she said in a phone conversation. “I consider it a responsibility.”

Just before the pandemic shutdown, they connected with Murrell, who had included a work by Waring in “Posing Modernity,” her much-praised exhibition at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in 2018.

When the three women finally met in Rabb’s Chicago living room to discuss plans for the Met’s show, there was celebratory dancing, Rabb recalled. The exhibition will now include nine works by Waring, including five paintings lent by Graves and Rabb.

Discoveries and appreciation

Isabelle Duvernois, a conservator at the Met, inspecting Waring’s “Yellow Roses” (undated).Credit...Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times

Duvernois cleaning a section of Waring’s “Mother and Daughter,” circa 1927.Credit... Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times

Murrell, right, the curator for the show, and Shawn Digney-Peer, a conservator, inspecting Waring’s self portrait, loaned by the artist’s grand-niece, Roberta Graves.Credit... Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times

Murrell and her colleagues realized that while some loans — like Aaron Douglas’s 1934 mural “From Slavery to Reconstruction,” part of his series “The Aspects of Negro Life,” normally installed high on a wall at the Schomburg Center — needed only a simple surface cleaning, others required extensive restoration. To stabilize these works, the Met relied on its team of veteran conservators, as well as those of museums around the country, and independent experts.

I met with Isabelle Duvernois and Shawn Digney-Peer in the Met’s conservation lab on the third floor mezzanine. They showed me a circa 1922 portrait that Archibald Motley Jr. made of his father, lent by the artist’s family. The picture is very dark, almost somber — utterly unlike the crowded scenes of jazz age sociability that Motley was best known for. The older man sits, elegantly dressed, in an armchair, with a book in his hand, a painting of a racing scene behind his head, and a small Asian porcelain figurine tucked along the canvas’s edge. It reflects the respect his father commanded in his community more than his actual power — Motley Sr. was a Pullman porter. Duvernois and Digney-Peer were surprised to learn that the tonality, which they first attributed to aging varnish, was entirely intentional on the painter’s part. “When it’s lit well, it doesn’t look dark; it hums,” said Digney-Peer.

“It’s made like an old master painting,” added Duvernois.

In the conservation lab, Waring’s 1930 “Girl in Green Cap,” on loan from Howard University, yielded the biggest surprise: “We saw an unusual passage in the background, so we did some infrared imaging and X-radiography,” Digney-Peer said. There was a second painting underneath — a portrait of two young girls, sitting side by side.

The Met's conservators were surprised to find a fully developed portrait of two girls hidden underneath Waring’s 1930 painting “Girl in Green Cap,” discovered in this radiograph.Credit... Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times

Murrell expects this type of conservation work will continue long after the exhibition. “We have the new wing,” she said, referring to the Met’s planned galleries for modern and contemporary art, the Tang Wing, due in 2029, at an estimated cost of $500 million.

“We want to have a very major Harlem Renaissance presence when that reopens,” she said. “We’re going to have acquisitions, and it’ll be an ongoing project.”

It’s hard not to share Murrell’s excitement for the upcoming show, and for its potential to reorient the view of an era scholars thought they knew. “It’s both a celebration of the period, a reintroduction of the period, a new introduction for people of a certain generation and from a certain art historical point of view,” the curator said.

If she’s right, students of succeeding generations will never take survey courses of art history that fail to include the Harlem Renaissance. And Murrell said she is optimistic, as well, that showcasing works from H.B.C.U. collections will “attract new support that goes directly to those museums, so they can build out their infrastructure and show more of what they have.

“There’s no reason a Fisk or a Hampton, with their impressive museums, couldn’t do a show of this scale,” she said, “if they only had the resources.”

Aruna D'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art and is the author of “Whitewalling: Art, Race & Politics in 3 Acts.” In 2021 she was awarded a Rabkin Prize for Art Journalism. More about Aruna D’Souza