Researchers report on quantum advantage — saying entangled particles enabled players to outperform the best classical strategies.
Category: particle physics – Page 56
World’s Most Accurate Clocks Could Redefine Time
A strontium optical clock produces about 50,000 times more oscillations per second than a cesium clock, the basis for the current definition of a second.
Advances in atomic clocks may lead to a redefinition of the second, replacing the caesium standard (recent work on thorium nuclear transitions is still a long way from taking that role).
Also, NIST uses egg incubators(!) to control temperature & humidity.
New atomic clocks are more accurate than those used to define the second, suggesting the definition might need to change.
By Jay Bennett edited by Clara Moskowitz
Inside a laboratory nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, amid a labyrinth of lenses, mirrors, and other optical machinery bolted to a vibration-resistant table, an apparatus resembling a chimney pipe rises toward the ceiling. On a recent visit, the silvery pipe held a cloud of thousands of supercooled cesium atoms launched upward by lasers and then left to float back down. With each cycle, a maser—like a laser that produces microwaves—hit the atoms to send their outer electrons jumping to a different energy state.
New state of matter powers Microsoft quantum computing chip
Since their invention, traditional computers have almost always relied on semiconductor chips that use binary “bits” of information represented as strings of 1’s and 0’s. While these chips have become increasingly powerful and simultaneously smaller, there is a physical limit to the amount of information that can be stored on this hardware. Quantum computers, by comparison, utilize “qubits” (quantum bits) to exploit the strange properties exhibited by subatomic particles, often at extremely cold temperatures.
Two qubits can hold four values at any given time, with more qubits translating to an exponential increase in calculating capabilities. This allows a quantum computer to process information at speeds and scales that make today’s supercomputers seem almost antiquated. Last December, for example, Google unveiled an experimental quantum computer system that researchers say takes just five minutes to finish a calculation that would take most supercomputers over 10 septillion years to complete—longer than the age of the universe as we understand it.
But Google’s Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) is based on different technology than Microsoft’s Majorana 1 design, detailed in a paper published on February 19 in the journal Nature. The result of over 17 years of design and research, Majorana 1 relies on what the company calls “topological qubits” through the creation of topological superconductivity, a state of matter previously conceptualized but never documented.
A harsh environment for life, an ideal environment for research
An interesting glimpse into the adventurous world of neutrino research in Antarctica!
At McMurdo, Karle must wait for the weather to permit the final leg of the trip. “It is not uncommon to spend several days in McMurdo,” he says. (Karle’s record is 10.) When it’s time, he takes a 3.5-hour flight on a ski-equipped LC-130 aircraft to reach the South Pole. Anyone or anything else that goes to the South Pole must take a similarly tedious route.
There’s a reason scientists have endured the challenges of the climate, the commute and the cost for over half a century—since members of the US Navy completed the original Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in 1957. Despite all the trouble it takes to get there, the South Pole is an unparalleled environment for scientific research, from climate science and glaciology to particle physics and astrophysics.
This sentiment was echoed by the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel in its 2023 report, a decadal plan for the future of particle physics research in the United States. Under its recommendation to “Construct a portfolio of major projects that collectively study nearly all fundamental constituents of our universe and their interactions,” the report prioritized support for five specific projects—two of which are located at the South Pole: cosmic microwave background experiment CMB-S4, the top priority, and neutrino experiment IceCube-Gen2, recommended fifth. Because of the high scientific priority of these projects, the report also urged maintenance of the South Pole site.
Scientists map the forces acting inside a proton
Scientists have now mapped the forces acting inside a proton, showing in unprecedented detail how quarks—the tiny particles within—respond when hit by high-energy photons.
The international team includes experts from the University of Adelaide who are exploring the structure of sub-atomic matter to try and provide further insight into the forces that underpin the natural world.
“We have used a powerful computational technique called lattice quantum chromodynamics to map the forces acting inside a proton,” said Associate Professor Ross Young, Associate Head of Learning and Teaching, School of Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences, who is part of the team.
Floating nuclear power plants to be mass produced for US coastline
UK-based Core Power has announced that it plans to mass produce a fleet of floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) using advanced reactor design and modular shipbuilding to be anchored off the US coast in about 10 years.
Nuclear power is enjoying something of a renaissance with many countries turning to the atom to meet their energy needs. However, the bottleneck for increasing the nuclear sector isn’t with manufacturing reactors. It’s the civil engineering side of things, with most of the time and cost going to securing real estate for building the foundations and buildings for the plant as well as navigating a bewildering maze of permits, licenses, and planning permissions.
To get around this as well as speed up production, Core Power plans to use Generation 4 reactor design combined with conventional modular shipbuilding methods to crank out floating nuclear plants on an assembly line basis. To reflect this, the company is referring to this as the “Liberty program” in a call back to the famous Liberty ships of the Second World War that were built at a speed of as fast as four days for one hull.
Two AIs Discuss: Retrocausality and Precognition, is the Future Already Written?!
“Retrocausality” by Antonella Vannini and Ulisse Di Corpo Book Link: https://amzn.to/3X6UGhx.
“Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious” by Eric Wargo Book Link: https://amzn.to/4bdmWVV
“Psychology and Retrocausality: How the Future Determines Love, Memory, Evolution, Learning, Depression, Death, and What It Means to Be Human” by Mark Hatala Book Link: https://amzn.to/4k7kdBj.
The exploration of retrocausality challenges classical views of time and causality, suggesting that effects can precede their causes, influencing our understanding of quantum mechanics, consciousness, and free will. Retro causality offers potential resolutions to issues like non-locality in quantum physics by allowing communication between particles to travel backward in time, which could eliminate the need for higher dimensional configuration spaces and reconcile quantum theory with special relativity. Experimental investigations into retro-causality involve analyzing subtle effects, such as heart rate variations, and require careful methodologies to distinguish genuine retrocausal phenomena from experimental artifacts, while theoretical frameworks explore how retrocausality might address paradoxes and be compatible with concepts like time symmetry.
Thinkers in physics and philosophy are increasingly considering retrocausality as a potential framework to address foundational issues, including the measurement problem and the reconciliation of quantum mechanics with general relativity, potentially impacting our comprehension of time, causality, and the nature of reality itself. Discussions around retrocausality extend into areas like decision theory, existential risk, and the nature of consciousness, with some researchers exploring goal-oriented approaches and the potential for retrocausality to enhance artificial intelligence and our understanding of human cognition. Some notable scientists involved:
• Roger Penrose is noted for his views aligning with retrocausal concepts and his work on the science of consciousness with Stuart Hameroff.
• Yakir Aharonov is cited regarding time in quantum mechanics and weak value amplification.
• Ruth Kastner is mentioned in the context of retrocausality and the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics.
• Hu Price’s work is at the center of the study of existential risk.
• Ken Wharton is a professor of physics and astronomy working on time-symmetric and causally neutral models of physics.
• Matthew Leifer is mentioned regarding block universe ontological models and frameworks for theories with retrocausality.
• Daniel Rohrlich is mentioned for his work on fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics and his views on retrocausality.
• Richard Feynman is mentioned in the context of interaction with the absorber as the mechanism of radiation.
• Simon Shnoll is mentioned for his work showing that the assumption of normal distribution is only mathematical, and that in life sciences and also in physics it is false.
• David Lucas is mentioned in the context of trapped-ion processing modules.
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