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Category: computing – Page 264

Here’s my new article for Aporia Magazine. A lot of wild ideas in it. Give it a read:

Regardless of the ethics and whether the science can even one day be worked out for Quantum Archaeology, the philosophical dilemma it presents to Pascal’s Wager is glaring. If humans really could eradicate the essence of death as we know it—including even the ability to ever permanently die—Pascal’s Wager becomes unworkable. Frankly, so does my Transhumanist Wager. After all, why should I dedicate my life and energy to living indefinitely through science when, by the next century, technology could bring me back exactly as I was—or even as an improved version of myself?

Outside of philosophical discourse, billions of dollars are pouring into the anti-aging and technology fields—much of it from Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. Everyone from entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerburg to nonprofits like XPRIZE to giants like Google is spending money on ways to try to end all diseases and overcome death. Bank of America recently reported that they expect the extreme longevity field to be worth over $600 billion dollars by 2025.

Continue reading “How to bring back the dead” | >

Daniel Lidar, the Viterbi Professor of Engineering at USC and Director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology, and first author Dr. Bibek Pokharel, a Research Scientist at IBM Quantum, achieved this quantum speedup advantage in the context of a “bitstring guessing game.”

By effectively mitigating the errors often encountered at this level, they have successfully managed bitstrings of up to 26 bits long, significantly larger than previously possible. (For context, a bit refers to a binary number that can either be a zero or a one).

Quantum computers promise to solve certain problems with an advantage that increases as the problems increase in complexity. However, they are also highly prone to errors, or noise. The challenge, says Lidar, is “to obtain an advantage in the real world where today’s quantum computers are still ‘noisy.’”.

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The experiments are the first of their kind and could lead to new advances in computing.

A team at the University of Chicago.

Founded in 1,890, the University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Located on a 217-acre campus in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, near Lake Michigan, the school holds top-ten positions in various national and international rankings. UChicago is also well known for its professional schools: Pritzker School of Medicine, Booth School of Business, Law School, School of Social Service Administration, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Divinity School and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

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NASA and a team of partners has demonstrated a space-to-ground laser communication system operating at a record breaking 200 gigabit per second (Gbps) data rate. The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) satellite payload was designed and built by[MIT Lincoln Laboratory]. The record of the highest data rate ever achieved by a space-to-Earth optical communication link surpasses the 100 Gbps record set by the same team in June 2022.

[NASA] and a team of partners has demonstrated a space-to-ground laser communication system operating at a record breaking 200 gigabit per second (Gbps) data rate. The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) satellite payload was designed and built by [MIT Lincoln Laboratory]. The record of the highest data rate ever achieved by a space-to-Earth optical communication link surpasses the 100 Gbps record set by the same team in June 2022.

TBIRD makes passes over an ground station having a duration of about six-minutes. During that period, multiple terabytes of data can be downlinked. Each terabyte contains the equivalent of about 500 hours of high-definition video. The TBIRD communication system transmits information using modulated laser light waves. Traditionally, radio waves have been the medium of choice for space communications. Radio waves transmit data through space using similar circuits and systems to those employed by terrestrial radio systems such as WiFi, broadcast radio, and cellular telephony. Optical communication systems can generally achieve higher data rates, lower loses, and operate with higher efficiency than radio frequency systems.

Continue reading “NASA Team Sets New Space-to-Ground Laser Communication Record” | >

When interacting with another person, you likely spend part of your time trying to anticipate how they will feel about what you’re saying or doing. This task requires a cognitive skill called theory of mind, which helps us to infer other people’s beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions.

MIT neuroscientists have now designed a that can predict other people’s emotions—including joy, gratitude, confusion, regret, and embarrassment—approximating human observers’ social intelligence. The model was designed to predict the emotions of people involved in a situation based on the prisoner’s dilemma, a classic game theory scenario in which two people must decide whether to cooperate with their partner or betray them.

To build the model, the researchers incorporated several factors that have been hypothesized to influence people’s emotional reactions, including that person’s desires, their expectations in a particular situation, and whether anyone was watching their actions.

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One thing all quantum computers have in common is the fact that they manipulate information encoded in quantum states. But that’s where the similarities end, because those quantum states can be induced in everything from superconducting circuits to trapped ions, ultra-cooled atoms, photons, and even silicon chips.

While some of these approaches have attracted more investment than others, we’re still a long way from the industry settling on a common platform. And in the world of academic research, experimentation still abounds.

Now, a team from the University of Chicago has taken crucial first steps towards building a quantum computer that can encode information in phonons, the fundamental quantum units that make up sound waves in much the same way that photons make up light beams.

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Scientists have demonstrated entanglement and two-particle interference with phonon using an acoustic beam splitter.

Phonons are to sound what photons are to light. Photons are tiny packets of energy for light or electromagnetic waves. Similarly, phonons are packets of energy for sound waves. Each phonon represents the vibration of millions of atoms within a material.

Both photons and phonons are of central interest to quantum computing research, which exploits the properties of these quantum particles. However, phonons have proven challenging to study due to their susceptibility to noise and issues with scalability and detection.

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Quantum information (QI) processing may be the next game changer in the evolution of technology, by providing unprecedented computational capabilities, security and detection sensitivities. Qubits, the basic hardware element for quantum information, are the building block for quantum computers and quantum information processing, but there is still much debate on which types of qubits are actually the best.

Research and development in this field is growing at astonishing paces to see which system or platform outruns the other. To mention a few, platforms as diverse as superconducting Josephson junctions, trapped ions, topological qubits, ultra-cold neutral atoms, or even diamond vacancies constitute the zoo of possibilities to make qubits.

So far, only a handful of platforms have been demonstrated to have the potential for quantum computing, marking the checklist of high-fidelity controlled gates, easy qubit-qubit coupling, and good isolation from the environment, which means sufficiently long-lived coherence.

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At Apple’s WWDC23, I think I saw the future. [Pausing to ponder.] Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw the future–or at least Apple’s vision of the future of computing. On Tuesday morning, I got to try the Apple Vision Pro, the new $3,499 mixed-reality headset that was announced this week and ships next year.

I’m here to tell you the major details of my experience, but the overall impression I have is that the Vision Pro is the most impressive first-gen product I’ve seen from Apple–more impressive than the 1998 iMac, or the 2007 iPhone. And I’m fully aware that other companies have made VR headsets, but Apple does that thing that it does, where it puts its understanding of what makes a satisfying user experience and creates a new product in an existing market that sets a higher bar of excellence.

Yes, it’s expensive, and yes, this market hasn’t proven that it can move beyond being niche. Those are very important considerations to discuss in other articles. For now, I’ll convey my experiences and impressions here, from a one-hour demonstration at Apple Park. (I was not allowed to take photos or record video; the photos posted here were supplied by Apple.) The device I used is an early beta, so it’s possible—likely even—that the hardware or software could change before next year.

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