Lifeboat Foundation

As best we can guess, life started on planet Earth about 3.5 billion years ago. Unfortunately, so did death. And the reaper remains undefeated.

About 99 percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct. There’s almost no scientific reason to believe humans won’t join them in a relatively insignificant amount of time. I say almost because, if we try really hard, we can conceive of a theoretical, science-based intervention for death. Let’s call it a “quantum respawn.”

We’re not the first generation to imagine immortality. But we are the first one to have access to this really cool research paper from physicists working at the University of Rochester in New York, and Purdue University in Indiana.

Controlling temperature is crucial for the functioning of electronic devices. It’s even more so for highly complex quantum computers that rely on the ability to control quantum bits (also called qubits) in order to achieve processing capabilities far above the most powerful classical computer.

For a quantum computer to maintain its prowess, it must be cooled to a temperature close to absolute zero (−273.15^oC) to keep the qubits in a state of coherence. However, keeping a quantum computer’s core temperature near absolute zero is not a simple feat and poses a major roadblock to the advancement of quantum computing. Often quantum computer producers keep the machines cool by using liquid helium as a refrigerant delivered in multiple stages. Nonetheless, this system is cumbersome and elaborate, and is not user-friendly.

Researchers have fashioned ultrathin silicon nanoantennas that trap and redirect light, for applications in quantum computing, LIDAR and even the detection of viruses.

Light is notoriously fast. Its speed is crucial for rapid information exchange, but as light zips through materials, its chances of interacting and exciting atoms and molecules can become very small. If scientists can put the brakes on light particles, or photons, it would open the door to a host of new technology applications.

Now, in a paper published on August 17, 2020, in Nature Nanotechnology, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will. Researchers in the lab of Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, structured ultrathin silicon chips into nanoscale bars to resonantly trap light and then release or redirect it later. These “high-quality-factor” or “high-Q” resonators could lead to novel ways of manipulating and using light, including new applications for quantum computing, virtual reality and augmented reality; light-based WiFi; and even the detection of viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

Molecular engineers at the University of Chicago have found a way to extend the quantum state of a qubit to 22 milliseconds, representing a huge improvement and a window some say will make quantum computers far more feasible. The secret is an alternating magnetic field, which they say is scientifically “intricate” but easy to apply.

🤯 You like quantum. So do we. Let’s nerd out over it together.

“Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions,” says astrophysicist John Webb at the University of New South Wales about the universal constant which appears inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction…” That standard model itself is built upon Einstein’s theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.”

Those looking forward to a day when science’s Grand Unifying Theory of Everything could be worn on a t-shirt may have to wait a little longer as astrophysicists continue to find hints that one of the cosmological constants is not so constant after all.

Continue reading “‘The Inconstant Universe’ --Weird Findings Point to a New Physics” »

Quantum physics just keeps getting weirder, even as it gets more fascinating.

An international leader in quantum computing, architect of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative, and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Chris Monroe will join longtime long-distance collaborators at Duke to build practical quantum computers for use in fields from finance to pharmaceuticals.

Researchers at Oxford University, in collaboration with DeepMind, University of Basel and Lancaster University, have created a machine learning algorithm that interfaces with a quantum device and ‘tunes’ it faster than human experts, without any human input. They are dubbing it “Minecraft explorer for quantum devices.”

Classical computers are composed of billions of transistors, which together can perform complex calculations. Small imperfections in these transistors arise during manufacturing, but do not usually affect the operation of the computer. However, in a quantum computer similar imperfections can strongly affect its behavior.

In prototype semiconductor quantum computers, the standard way to correct these imperfections is by adjusting input voltages to cancel them out. This process is known as tuning. However, identifying the right combination of voltage adjustments needs a lot of time even for a single quantum device. This makes it virtually impossible for the billions of devices required to build a useful general-purpose quantum computer.

What if I were to tell you that passwords could be replaced by 1,000 trillion atoms to create an unclonable ID tag? Yeah, that.