New research posits that life originated somewhere in the cosmos — and that it traveled through space on tiny particles of cosmic dust.
RFID tags are commonly used to verify the authenticity of products, but they have some drawbacks. They are relatively large, expensive, and vulnerable to counterfeiting. A team of MIT engineers has developed a new type of ID tag that overcomes these limitations by using terahertz waves, which are smaller and faster than radio waves.
The new tag is a cryptographic chip several times smaller and cheaper than RFID tags. It also offers improved security, using the unique pattern of metal particles in the glue that attaches the tag to the item as a fingerprint. This way, the authentication system will detect tampering if someone tries to peel off the tag and stick it to a fake item.
Scientists have blazed a new trail for studying how atoms respond to radiation, by tracking the energetic movement of excited electrons.
Does life appear independently on different planets in the galaxy? Or does it spread from world to world? Or does it do both?
New research shows how life could spread via a basic, simple pathway: cosmic dust.
One thing scientists have learned in the past few decades is that life on Earth might have had an early start.
The invisible substance called dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Perhaps, a new study suggests, this strange substance arises from a ‘dark mirror universe’ that’s been linked to ours since the dawn of time.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in collaboration with Kansas State University, has discovered slab waveguides based on the two-dimensional material hexagonal boron nitride. This milestone has been reported in the journal Advanced Materials.
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a class of materials that can be reduced to the monolayer limit by mechanically peeling the layers apart. The weak interlayer attractions (van der Waals attraction) allow the layers to be separated via the so-called “Scotch tape” method.
The most well-known 2D material, graphene, is a semimetallic material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms. Recently, other 2D materials including semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and insulating hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) have also garnered attention. When reduced near the monolayer limit, 2D materials have unique nanoscale properties that are appealing for creating atomically thin electronic and optical devices.
Infleqtion is unique amongst quantum companies due its participation in so many different segments of the quantum computing industry including quantum components, quantum computers, quantum software, and quantum sensors. This strategy of a broad product portfolio provides both advantages and disadvantages for a company. The potential advantages include achieving synergy between different product areas with the neutral atom, atomic prism, photonic, software, and other technologies they have developed over the years. It also brings some diversity in the revenue streams because some products will provide early revenue while others might take a few years of development before they can make a revenue contribution. The potential disadvantages could include execution risks if the engineering resources are spread too thin. Also, there may be different sets of customers and sales channels for the different product lines which can increase the complexities of managing a sales force, calling on customers, and generating new business.
Nonetheless, Infleqtion has made some interesting announcements in the past few months. In 2023 alone, the Quantum Computing Report by GQI ran 17 different stories that included Infleqtion. This week they hosted a webinar to discuss their product roadmaps for sensors, software, and computing. The highlight of the webinar was the announcement of their quantum computing roadmap. In this article, we will cover their plans for quantum computing, but first we will start with the progress they talked about in quantum sensors and quantum software and then discuss quantum computing afterwards.
Infleqtion’s discussion of sensor products included ones named Tiqker, Sqywire, and eXaqt. Tiqker is a small form factor ultra-accurate clock intended for use in navigation, data centers, and communication networks. The company asserts that this clock is 100X more accurate than cesium beam atomic clocks and 100,000X more accurate than a crystal oscillator. In navigation applications it can be used in GPS-denied environments and in communication networks it can help increase bandwidth and reduce latencies due to the more precise clocking of the data signals. The company mentioned that they are partnering with a large company for use of Tiqker in data center applications and that Tiqker is now available for pre-order. Sqywire is an ultra-sensitive radio frequency (RF) receiver that senses RF signals with Rydberg state atom-based sensing. It can be used installed of a classical antenna and provides high sensitivity, lower power, and ultra-wide bandwidth in a form factor.
Neutron stars in the universe, ultracold atomic gases in the laboratory, and the quark–gluon plasma created in collisions of atomic nuclei at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): they may seem totally unrelated but, surprisingly enough, they have something in common. They are all a fluid-like state of matter made up of strongly interacting particles. Insights into the properties and behavior of any of these almost-perfect liquids may be key to understanding nature across scales that are orders of magnitude apart.
In a new paper, the CMS collaboration reports the most precise measurement to date of the speed at which sound travels in the quark–gluon plasma, offering new insights into this extremely hot state of matter.
Sound is a longitudinal wave that travels through a medium, producing compressions and rarefactions of matter in the same direction as its movement. The speed of sound depends on the medium’s properties, such as its density and viscosity. It can, therefore, be used as a probe of the medium.
The color centers of diamond are the focus of an increasing number of research studies, due to their potential for developing quantum technologies. Some works have particularly explored the use of negatively-charged group-IV diamond defects, which exhibit an efficient spin-photon interface, as the nodes of quantum networks.
Researchers at Ulm University in Germany recently leveraged a Germanium vacancy (GeV) center in diamond to realize a quantum memory. The resulting quantum memory, presented in a Physical Review Letters paper, was found to exhibit a promising coherence time of more than 20 ms.
“Our research group’s primary focus is the exploration of diamond color centers for quantum applications,” Katharina Senkalla, co-author of the paper, told Phys.org. “The most popular defect of diamond so far has been the nitrogen-vacancy center, but, recently, other color centers have also become a focus of research. These consist of an element from the IV column of the periodic table—Si, Ge, Sn or Pb, and a lattice vacancy (i.e., missing next-neighbor carbon atom).”
