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Category: computing – Page 66

Bubbles That Defy Physics: Scientists Uncover a Mind-Blowing New Phenomenon

A team led by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill has made an extraordinary discovery that is reshaping our understanding of bubbles and their movement. Imagine tiny air bubbles inside a liquid-filled container. When the container is shaken up and down, these bubbles exhibit an unexpected, rhythmic “galloping” motion—bouncing like playful horses and moving horizontally, despite the vertical shaking. This counterintuitive phenomenon, revealed in a new study, has significant technological implications, from improving surface cleaning and heat transfer in microchips to advancing space applications.

These galloping bubbles are already drawing significant attention. Their impact on fluid dynamics was recently recognized with an award for their video entry at the latest Gallery of Fluid Motion, organized by the American Physical Society.

“Our research not only answers a fundamental scientific question but also inspires curiosity and exploration of the fascinating, unseen world of fluid motion,” said Pedro Sáenz, principal investigator and professor of applied mathematics at UNC-Chapel Hill. “After all, the smallest things can sometimes lead to the biggest changes.”

A new approach to reduce decoherence in superconducting qudit-based quantum processors

Quantum computers, which operate leveraging quantum mechanics effects, could soon outperform traditional computers in some advanced optimization and simulation tasks. Most quantum computing systems developed so far store and process information using qubits (quantum units of information that can exist in a superposition of two states).

In recent years, however, some physicists and engineers have been trying to develop quantum computers based on qudits, multi-level units of quantum information that can hold more than two states.

Qudit-based quantum systems could store more information and perform computations more efficiently than qubit-based systems, yet they are also more prone to decoherence.

Graphyne’s transformation: A new carbon form with potential for electronics

Graphyne is a crystalline form of carbon that is distinct from both diamond and graphite. Unlike diamond, where each atom possesses four immediate neighbors, or graphite, where each atom has three, graphyne’s structure combines two-coordinate and three-coordinate carbons.

Computational models suggest that graphyne has highly compelling electronic, mechanical and . It is predicted to be a semiconductor with a band gap appropriate for electronic devices, ultra-high charge carrier mobility far surpassing that of silicon, and ultimate strength comparable to that of graphene.

Applications of graphyne in electronics, energy harvesting and storage, gas separations and catalysis have been proposed. While graphyne was first theoretically predicted more than three decades ago, its remained elusive.

First on-chip multipartite entanglement achieved with optical microcomb

A recent study has realized multipartite entanglement on an optical chip for the first time, constituting a significant advance for scalable quantum information. The paper, titled “Continuous-variable multipartite entanglement in an integrated microcomb,” is published in Nature.

Led by Professor Wang Jianwei and Professor Gong Qihuang from the School of Physics at Peking University, in collaboration with Professor Su Xiaolong’s research team from Shanxi University, the research has implications for quantum computation, networking and metrology.

Continuous-variable integrated quantum photonic chips have been confined to the encoding of and between two qumodes, a bottleneck withholding the generation or verification of multimode entanglement on chips. Additionally, past research on cluster states failed to go beyond discrete viable, leaving a gap in the generation and detection of continuous-variable entanglement on photonic chips.

Future Day — James Fodor — Whole Brain Emulation

Slides here: http://bit.ly/MZMmdp — Whole Brain Emulation & Computational Neuroscience Synopsis Within a few decades, I believe it will be possible to construct working simulations of an entire human brain. In this talk I will explain why I believe this, with reference to recent work in Computational Neuroscience, extrapolations of Moore’s Law, and other such matters. I will also address some common criticisms leveled against whole brain emulation, and briefly discuss some of the many ways I believe this technology will drastically change the face of society in the near future.

I’ll basically be presenting selected material from this publication, with some updates and additions of my own.

http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf.

Science, Technology & the Future — By Design.

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A quantum computing startup says it is already making millions of light-powered chips

The company uses so-called “photonic” quantum computing, which has long been dismissed as impractical.

The approach, which encodes data in individual particles of light, offers some compelling advantages — low noise, high-speed operation, and natural compatibility with existing fibre-optic networks. However, it was held back by extreme hardware demands to manage the fact photons fly with blinding speed, get lost, and are hard to create and detect.

PsiQuantum now claims to have addressed many of these difficulties. Yesterday, in a new peer-reviewed paper published in Nature, the company unveiled hardware for photonic quantum computing they say can be manufactured in large quantities and solves the problem of scaling up the system.

Nanomanufacturing process slashes chip production costs by 99%

The current microelectronics manufacturing method is expensive, slow and energy and resource intensive.

But a Northeastern University professor has patented a new process and printer that not only can manufacture and chips more efficiently and cheaply, it can make them at the nanoscale.

“I thought that there must be an easier way to do this, there must be a cheaper way to do this,” says Ahmed A. Busnaina, the William Lincoln Smith professor and a distinguished university professor at Northeastern University. “We started, basically, with very simple physical chemistry with a very simple approach.”

Physicists capture a strange fractal ‘butterfly’ for the first time

A fractal butterfly pattern produced by an unusual configuration of magnetic fields, first predicted almost 50 years ago, has been seen in detail for the first time in a twisted piece of graphene.

While a physics student in 1976, the computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter predicted that when certain two-dimensional crystals were placed in magnetic fields, their electrons’ energy levels should produce a strange pattern that looks the same no matter how far you zoom in, known as a fractal. At the time, however, Hofstadter calculated that the atoms of the crystal would have to be impossibly close together to produce such a pattern.

Image: Yazdani Lab, Princeton University

The electrons in a twisted piece of graphene show a strange repeating pattern first predicted in 1976, but never directly measured until now.

By Alex Wilkins