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Category: quantum physics – Page 239

Prof. Donald Hoffman talks to Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra about his theory of conscious agents, according to which space and time are cognitive constructs in consciousness, not an objective scaffolding of the world outside. The interview also touches on Prof. Hoffman’s personal history and life, bringing the warmth of his humanity to the academic rigor of his theories.

00:00 Intro: Beyond the spacetime headset.
03:32 About Donalds personal background.
07:35 On the importance of mathematics.
13:22 Quantum theory and spacetime.
19:24 Why exactly is spacetime ‘doomed’?
24:34 Did physics ‘encounter’ consciousness in quantum theory?
32:49 On heavy vs light metaphysical claims.
37:36 How is your theory affecting your personal life?
42:17 Is The Matrix a good metaphor?
46:38 How can the space time interface affect consciousness?
53:09 What makes you say that if spacetime is not fundamental, consciousness must be fundamental?
55:44 Physicalism fails to give an accurate model of consciousness… 1:00:24 How can we put the spacetime headset off? 05:39 Beyond the spacetime fantasies of Christopher Nolan and the Matrix… 1:09:27 The ontology of conscious agents 1:15:05 Are meditation and psychedelics ‘hacks’ in the interface? 1:21:41 Should we revalue religious and mystic literature? 1:29:54 Could idealism as a worldview help us better solve the challenges humanity faces? 1:34:23 The role of mathematics in bringing together science and spirituality Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved. https://www.essentiafoundation.org.
1:00:24 How can we put the spacetime headset off?
05:39 Beyond the spacetime fantasies of Christopher Nolan and the Matrix…
1:09:27 The ontology of conscious agents.
1:15:05 Are meditation and psychedelics ‘hacks’ in the interface?
1:21:41 Should we revalue religious and mystic literature?
1:29:54 Could idealism as a worldview help us better solve the challenges humanity faces?
1:34:23 The role of mathematics in bringing together science and spirituality.

Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.

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Researchers who have been working for years to understand electron arrangement and magnetism in certain semimetals have been frustrated by the fact that the materials only display magnetic properties if they are cooled to just a few degrees above absolute zero.

A new MIT study led by Mingda Li, associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, and co-authored by Nathan Drucker, a graduate research assistant in MIT’s Quantum Measurement Group and Ph.D. student in applied physics at Harvard University, along with Thanh Nguyen and Phum Siriviboon, MIT graduate students working in the Quantum Measurement Group, is challenging that conventional wisdom.

The open-access research, published in Nature Communications, for the first time shows evidence that topology can stabilize , even well above the magnetic transition temperature—the point at which normally breaks down.

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Quantum communications have rapidly progressed toward practical, large-scale networks based on quantum key distributions that spearhead the process. Quantum key distribution systems typically include a sender “Alice,” a receiver “Bob,” who generate a shared secret from quantum measurements for secure communication. Although fiber-based systems are well-suited for metropolitan scale, a suitable fiber infrastructure might not always be in place.

In a new report in npj Quantum Information, Andrej Kržič and a team of scientists developed an entanglement-based, free-space quantum . The platform offered a practical and efficient alternative for metropolitan applications. The team introduced a free-space quantum key distribution system to demonstrate its use in realistic applications in anticipation of the work to establish free-space networks as a viable solution for metropolitan applications in the future global quantum internet.

Quantum communication typically aims to distribute quantum information between two or more parties. A series of revolutionary applications of quantum networks have provided a roadmap towards engineering a full-blown quantum internet. The proposed invention provides a heterogeneous network of special purpose sub-networks with diverse links and interconnects. The concept of quantum key distribution networks have driven this development to pave the way for other distributed processing methods to benchmark the technological maturity of quantum networks in general.

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A research team led by Prof. Yossi Paltiel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with groups from HUJI, Weizmann, and IST Austria recently conducted a study unveiling the significant influence of nuclear spin on biological activities. This discovery challenges long-held assumptions and opens up exciting possibilities for advancements in biotechnology and quantum biology.

Scientists have long believed that nuclear spin had no impact on biological processes. However, recent research has shown that certain isotopes behave differently due to their nuclear spin. The team focused on stable oxygen isotopes (16O, 17O, 18O) and found that nuclear spin significantly affects oxygen dynamics in chiral environments, particularly in its transport.

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Researcher show that n-bit integers can be factorized by independently running a quantum circuit with orders of magnitude fewer qubits many times. It then use polynomial-time classical post-processing. The correctness of the algorithm relies on a number-theoretic heuristic assumption reminiscent of those used in subexponential classical factorization algorithms. It is currently not clear if the algorithm can lead to improved physical implementations in practice.

Shor’s celebrated algorithm allows to factorize n-bit integers using a quantum circuit of size O(n^2). For factoring to be feasible in practice, however, it is desirable to reduce this number further. Indeed, all else being equal, the fewer quantum gates there are in a circuit, the likelier it is that it can be implemented without noise and decoherence destroying the quantum effects.

The new algorithm can be thought of as a multidimensional analogue of Shor’s algorithm. At the core of the algorithm is a quantum procedure.

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A team of researchers has found a way to speed up the creation of quantum entanglement, a mystifying property of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once described as “spooky action at a distance.”

The researchers behind the discovery include Kater Murch, the Charles M. Hohenberg Professor of Physics; Weijian Chen, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics; and Maryam Abbasi, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Chemistry. Their paper was featured on the cover of Physical Review Letters.

Entanglement has baffled researchers—and nearly everyone who has ever read about —since Einstein and colleagues first proposed it in the 1930s.

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“Using the new quantum ruler to study how the circular orbits vary with magnetic field, we hope to reveal the subtle magnetic properties of these moiré quantum materials”

Graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon, is renowned for its exceptional electrical conductivity and mechanical strength.

However, when two or more layers of graphene are stacked with a slight misalignment, they become moiré quantum matter, opening the door to a world of exotic possibilities. Depending on the angle of twist, these materials can generate magnetic fields, become superconductors with zero electrical resistance, or transform into perfect insulators.

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To listen to more of John Wheeler’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzVlqiUh95Q881umWUPjQbB

American physicist, John Wheeler (1911−2008), made seminal contributions to the theories of quantum gravity and nuclear fission, but is best known for coining the term ‘black holes’. A keen teacher and mentor, he was also a key figure in the Manhattan Project. [Listener: Ken Ford]

TRANSCRIPT: I knew the stories about Gödel being concerned always about his health. I knew from his friend Oscar Morgenstern how Gödel would never take a pills prescription from his doctor without getting out a big medical book and studying up on that pill himself to make sure that it was okay. But I didn’t realize how far his dreams went, because I had failed to resonate to a talk he gave in 1945 at the symposium held in honor of Einstein’s birthday. In that talk Gödel had described what he called a Rotating Universe, a universe where all the galaxies turn the same way, and where the geometry is such that you keep on going living your life and you come round and come back and can live it over again; ‘Closed Time-like Line’ was the magic phrase to describe it. So you didn’t have to worry about the pill because you come back and live your life all over again. Well, after I’d introduced the two I said “Professor Gödel, we’d like to know what the relation is between the great Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty or Indeterminism; and your famous proof that every significant mathematical system contains theorems which cannot be proven, your theorem of Unprovable Propositions.” Well, he didn’t want to talk about that. It turned out that later that he had walked and talked enough with Einstein to dismiss quantum theory. He didn’t believe quantum[theory]. All he wanted to know is what we were going to say in our book about the rotating universe that he had described. Well actually, we weren’t saying anything. Well, this bothered him and he wanted to know what the evidence is today, at that moment, about whether galaxies do rotate in the same way. We said we hadn’t studied it. Well it turned out that he himself had taken out the great Hubble atlas of the galaxies and page after page had opened it up and looked at each galaxy, determined the direction of its axis. He made a statistics of these numbers and found there was no preferred direction of rotation, so they couldn’t all be rotating in the same way.

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