Lifeboat Foundation

Algorithm set for deployment in Japan could identify giant temblors faster and more reliably.

Two minutes after the world’s biggest tectonic plate shuddered off the coast of Japan, the country’s meteorological agency issued its final warning to about 50 million residents: A magnitude 8.1 earthquake had generated a tsunami that was headed for shore. But it wasn’t until hours after the waves arrived that experts gauged the true size of the 11 March 2011 Tohoku quake. Ultimately, it rang in at a magnitude 9—releasing more than 22 times the energy experts predicted and leaving at least 18,000 dead, some in areas that never received the alert. Now, scientists have found a way to get more accurate size estimates faster, by using computer algorithms to identify the wake from gravitational waves that shoot from the fault at the speed of light.

“This is a completely new [way to recognize] large-magnitude earthquakes,” says Richard Allen, a seismologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study. “If we were to implement this algorithm, we’d have that much more confidence that this is a really big earthquake, and we could push that alert out over a much larger area sooner.”

Continue reading “Gravity signals could detect earthquakes at the speed of light” »

A new two component-based glass/polydimethylsiloxane microfluidic pH-responsive carbon nanotube chip can efficiently capture or release cancer cells from blood samples.

A group of researchers from Pisa, Jyväskylä, San Sebastian and MIT have demonstrated how a heterostructure consisting of superconductors and magnets can be used to create unidirectional current like that found in semiconductor diodes.

These novel superconductor diodes, however, operate at much lower temperatures than their semiconductor counterparts and are therefore useful in quantum technologies.

Modern computers use electrons to process information, but this design is starting to reach theoretical limits. However, it could be possible to use magnetism instead and thereby keep up the development of both cheaper and more powerful computers, thanks to work by scientists from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) and University of Copenhagen. Their study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

“The function of a computer involves sending electric current through a microchip. While the amount is tiny, the current will not only transport information but also contribute to heating up the chip. When you have a huge number of components tightly packed, the heat becomes a problem. This is one of the reasons why we have reached the limit for how much you can shrink the components. A computer based on magnetism would avoid the problem of overheating,” says Professor Kim Lefmann, Condensed Matter Physics, NBI.

“Our discovery is not a direct recipe for making a computer based on magnetism. Rather we have disclosed a fundamental magnetic property which you need to control, if you want to design a such computer.”

The current state of affairs, however, is a bit more complicated. While quantum computers have officially gone from theory to fact—a remarkable achievement—none are yet practical.

To realize a useful quantum computer, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and others are pouring resources into machines that run on a menagerie of qubits. The most popular approach, favored by Google and IBM, involves tiny loops of superconducting wire. Honeywell and IonQ are pursuing atomic qubits made of trapped ions. Researchers in China are building intricate, Rube-Goldberg-like machines on lab benches to run quantum computations with mirrors and light.

Continue reading “The Ideal Qubit? Future Quantum Computers Could Crunch Data With Single Electrons on Neon Ice” »

Computational detective work by U.S. and German physicists has confirmed that cerium zirconium pyrochlore is a 3D quantum spin liquid.

Despite the name, quantum spin liquids are solid materials in which quantum entanglement and the geometric arrangement of atoms frustrate the natural tendency of electrons to magnetically order themselves in relation to one another. The geometric frustration in a quantum spin liquid is so severe that electrons fluctuate between quantum magnetic states no matter how cold they become.

Theoretical physicists routinely work with quantum mechanical models that manifest quantum spin liquids, but finding convincing evidence that they exist in actual physical materials has been a decades-long challenge. While a number of 2D or 3D materials have been proposed as possible quantum spin liquids, Rice University physicist Andriy Nevidomskyy has said there’s no established consensus among physicists that any of them qualify.

Cryostasis Revival by Robert Freitas is the first comprehensive technical exposition how to revive cryonics patients in the future. This 700+ page book with thousands of references, and technical color illustrations, is now available on Amazon in a limited textbook hardcover edition.

Cryostasis is an emergency medical procedure in which a human patient is placed in biological stasis at cryogenic temperatures. A cryopreserved patient can be maintained in this condition indefinitely without suffering additional degradation, but cannot yet be revived using currently available technology. This book presents the first comprehensive conceptual protocol for revival from human cryopreservation, using medical nanorobots. The revival methods presented in this book involve three stages: collecting information from preserved structure, computing how to fix damaged structure, and implementing the repair procedure using nanorobots manufactured in a nanofactory – a system for atomically precise manufacturing that is now visible on the technological horizon.

A theoretical study shows that long-range entanglement can indeed survive at temperatures above absolute zero, if the correct conditions are met.

Quantum computing has been earmarked as the next revolutionary step in computing. However current systems are only practically stable at temperatures close to absolute zero. A new theorem from a Japanese research collaboration provides an understanding of what types of long-range quantum entanglement survive at non-zero temperatures, revealing a fundamental aspect of macroscopic quantum phenomena and guiding the way towards further understanding of quantum systems.

When things get small, right down to the scale of one-thousandth the width of a human hair, the laws of classical physics get replaced by those of quantum physics. The quantum world is weird and wonderful, and there is much about it that scientists have yet to understand. Large-scale or “macroscopic” quantum effects play a key role in extraordinary phenomena such as superconductivity, which is a potential game-changer in future energy transport, as well for the continued development of quantum computers.

The development of experimental platforms that advance the field of quantum science and technology (QIST) comes with a unique set of advantages and challenges common to any emergent technology. Researchers at Stony Brook University, led by Dominik Schneble, PhD, report the formation of matter-wave polaritons in an optical lattice, an experimental discovery that permits studies of a central QIST paradigm through direct quantum simulation using ultracold atoms. The scientists project that their novel quasiparticles, which mimic strongly interacting photons in materials and devices but circumvent some of the inherent challenges, will benefit the further development of QIST platforms that are poised to revolutionize computing and communication technology.

The research findings are detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature Physics.

The study sheds light on fundamental polariton properties and related many-body phenomena, and it opens up novel possibilities for studies of polaritonic quantum matter.