may 2020
Thousands of Swedes have been pioneering the use of futuristic microchips that are implanted under the skin of the hand.
The technology is used for everyday tasks like accessing your smartphone, opening the front door or setting an alarm.
Category: computing – Page 626
DARPA has selected seven university and industry teams for the first phase of the Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices (ONISQ) program. Phase 1 of the program began in March and will last 18 months.
ONISQ aims to exploit quantum information processing before universal fault-tolerant quantum computers are realized, which isn’t expected for many years. The program is pursuing a hybrid concept that combines intermediate-sized quantum devices (hundreds to thousands of quantum bits, or qubits) with classical computing systems to solve a particularly challenging set of problems known as combinatorial optimization.
ONISQ seeks to demonstrate a quantitative advantage of quantum information processing by leapfrogging the performance of classical-only systems in solving optimization challenges. If successful, ONISQ could be applied to optimization problems of interest to defense and commercial industry, such as global logistics management, electronics manufacturing, and protein-folding.
“In one sense, universities have become victims of their own success at teaching online, but some academics are concerned that continued closures could hurt poorer students without access to computers or study space, while others mourn the loss of face-to-face connection while teaching.” Universities have become bloated cliques. Has Covid shown we don’t need mini-towns and fat fees? Poorer students might welcome online courses at 10% of the cost surely and shorter completion time, surely?
Governments are prioritising reopening schools and businesses over campuses. But some academics fear the impact on disadvantaged students – and on their teaching.
Army researchers predict quantum computer circuits that will no longer need extremely cold temperatures to function could become a reality after about a decade.
For years, solid-state quantum technology that operates at room temperature seemed remote. While the application of transparent crystals with optical nonlinearities had emerged as the most likely route to this milestone, the plausibility of such a system always remained in question.
Now, Army scientists have officially confirmed the validity of this approach. Dr. Kurt Jacobs, of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory, working alongside Dr. Mikkel Heuck and Prof. Dirk Englund, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became the first to demonstrate the feasibility of a quantum logic gate comprised of photonic circuits and optical crystals.
Bitcoin News.
Visa International has filed for a cryptocurrency system patent that is meant to replace physical currency. The system, which utilizes both central banks and commercial banks, leverages a private blockchain to improve the payment ecosystem.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published on Thursday a patent application entitled “digital fiat currency,” filed by Visa International Service Association on Nov. 8, 2019.
The filing is for a fiat-linked cryptocurrency system using “a private permissioned distributed ledger platform.” It describes a central computer, its responsibilities, and key roles of the system: central entities, validating entities, redeeming entities, and users. “A central entity may be a central bank, which regulates a monetary supply,” the document details. Validating entities “are blockchain nodes, which may be peers such as banks.” Redeeming entities “may accept physical currency for exchange for digital fiat currency,” such as an ATM or a bank branch location.
Quantum entanglement is a process by which microscopic objects like electrons or atoms lose their individuality to become better coordinated with each other. Entanglement is at the heart of quantum technologies that promise large advances in computing, communications and sensing, for example, detecting gravitational waves.
Entangled states are famously fragile: In most cases, even a tiny disturbance will undo the entanglement. For this reason, current quantum technologies take great pains to isolate the microscopic systems they work with, and typically operate at temperatures close to absolute zero. The ICFO team, in contrast, heated a collection of atoms to 450 Kelvin in a recent experiment, millions of times hotter than most atoms used for quantum technology. Moreover, the individual atoms were anything but isolated; they collided with each other every few microseconds, and each collision set their electrons spinning in random directions.
The researchers used a laser to monitor the magnetization of this hot, chaotic gas. The magnetization is caused by the spinning electrons in the atoms, and provides a way to study the effect of the collisions and to detect entanglement. What the researchers observed was an enormous number of entangled atoms—about 100 times more than ever before observed. They also saw that the entanglement is non-local—it involves atoms that are not close to each other. Between any two entangled atoms there are thousands of other atoms, many of which are entangled with still other atoms, in a giant, hot and messy entangled state.
Quantum entanglement is a process by which microscopic objects like electrons or atoms lose their individuality to become better coordinated with each other. Entanglement is at the heart of quantum technologies that promise large advances in computing, communications and sensing, for example detecting gravitational waves.
Entangled states are famously fragile: in most cases even a tiny disturbance will undo the entanglement. For this reason, current quantum technologies take great pains to isolate the microscopic systems they work with, and typically operate at temperatures close to absolute zero. The ICFO team, in contrast, heated a collection of atoms to 450 Kelvin, millions of times hotter than most atoms used for quantum technology. Moreover, the individual atoms were anything but isolated; they collided with each other every few microseconds, and each collision set their electrons spinning in random directions.
The researchers used a laser to monitor the magnetization of this hot, chaotic gas. The magnetization is caused by the spinning electrons in the atoms, and provides a way to study the effect of the collisions and to detect entanglement. What the researchers observed was an enormous number of entangled atoms — about 100 times more than ever before observed. They also saw that the entanglement is non-local — it involves atoms that are not close to each other. Between any two entangled atoms there are thousands of other atoms, many of which are entangled with still other atoms, in a giant, hot and messy entangled state.
For fun, Apple software developer, Forrest Heller, pits a USB-C charger chip against the computer that landed astronauts on the moon. Here’s what he found.
Quantum technology is currently one of the most active fields of research worldwide. It takes advantage of the special properties of quantum mechanical states of atoms, light, or nanostructures to develop, for example, novel sensors for medicine and navigation, networks for information processing and powerful simulators for materials sciences. Generating these quantum states normally requires a strong interaction between the systems involved, such as between several atoms or nanostructures.
Until now, however, sufficiently strong interactions were limited to short distances. Typically, two systems had to be placed close to each other on the same chip at low temperatures or in the same vacuum chamber, where they interact via electrostatic or magnetostatic forces. Coupling them across larger distances, however, is required for many applications such as quantum networks or certain types of sensors.
A team of physicists, led by Professor Philipp Treutlein from the Department of Physics at the University of Basel and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (SNI), has now succeeded for the first time in creating strong coupling between two systems over a greater distance across a room temperature environment. In their experiment, the researchers used laser light to couple the vibrations of a 100 nanometer thin membrane to the motion of the spin of atoms over a distance of one meter. As a result, each vibration of the membrane sets the spin of the atoms in motion and vice versa.
O,.,o.
The weird world of quantum physics is being harnessed for some fascinating use cases. In the latest example, physicists have developed and demonstrated a “quantum radar” prototype that uses the quantum entanglement phenomenon to detect objects, a system which could eventually outperform conventional radar in some circumstances.
Quantum entanglement describes the bizarre state where two particles can become linked so tightly that they seem to communicate instantly, no matter how far apart they are. Measuring the state of one particle will instantly change the state of the other, hypothetically even if it’s on the other side of the universe. That implies that the information is moving faster than the speed of light, which is thought to be impossible – and yet, it’s clearly and measurably happening. The phenomenon even unnerved Einstein himself, who famously described it as “spooky action at a distance.”
While we still don’t entirely understand why or how it works, that’s not stopping scientists figuring out ways to use it to our advantage. Strides are being made towards creating quantum computers and a quantum internet, both of which would be super fast and nigh-unhackable. And now, in a new study by physicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), MIT and the University of York, the phenomenon been applied to radar.