Lifeboat Foundation

Batteries are the key to decarboni z ing both transport and the grid, but today’s technology is still a long way from living up to this promise. IBM seems to have decided its computing chops are the key to solving the problem.

Lithium-ion batteries are still the gold standard technology in this field, and they’ve come a long way; 10 years ago they could just about get your iPod through the day, today they can power high-performance cars over hundreds of miles.

But if we want to reach a point w h ere batteries can outperform gasoline or store huge amounts of solar energy, we need some breakthroughs. So IBM has teamed up with Mercedes-Benz and its parent company Daimler to develop new batteries that could match up to our needs.

New experiments addressed a decades-old theoretical question in physics, demonstrating that two realities can exist at the same time.

A team of physicists has mapped how electron energies vary from region to region in a particular quantum state with unprecedented clarity. This understanding reveals an underlying mechanism by which electrons influence one another, termed quantum “hybridization,” that had been invisible in previous experiments.

The findings, the work of scientists at New York University, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Rutgers University, and MIT, are reported in the journal Nature Physics.

“This sort of relationship is essential to understanding a quantum electron system—and the foundation of all movement—but had often been studied from a theoretical standpoint and not thought of as observable through experiments,” explains Andrew Wray, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Physics and one of the paper’s co-authors. “Remarkably, this work reveals a diversity of energetic environments inside the same material, allowing for comparisons that let us spot how electrons shift between states.”

In the quantum realm, under some circumstances and with the right interference patterns, light can pass through opaque media.

This feature of light is more than a mathematical trick; optical quantum memory, optical storage and other systems that depend on interactions of just a few photons at a time rely on the process, called electromagnetically induced transparency, also known as EIT.

Because of its usefulness in existing and emerging quantum and optical technologies, researchers are interested in the ability to manipulate EIT without the introduction of an outside influence, such as additional photons that could perturb the already delicate system. Now, researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have devised a fully contained optical resonator system that can be used to turn transparency on and off, allowing for a measure of control that has implications across a wide variety of applications.

To detect the quantum friction of empty space, scientists are going for a spin.

A twirling nanoparticle, suspended in a laser beam inside of a vacuum, can measure tiny twisting forces, making it the most sensitive detector of torque yet created. Researchers say the device could one day detect an elusive quantum effect called vacuum friction.

The suspended nanoparticle can spin more than 300 billion times a minute. “This is the fastest human-made rotor in the world,” says physicist Tongcang Li of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

In October 2019, Google made a big announcement. It announced its 53-qubit quantum computer named Sycamore had achieved ‘quantum supremacy.’ That’s when quantum computers can complete tasks exponentially more quickly than their classical counterparts. In this case, Google said its quantum machine completed a task in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s most powerful computer 10,000 years to complete. IBM, another major player in quantum computing, took issue with the findings. Either way, it was a big milestone in quantum computing, and it’s leading to a lot of hype in the field. Here’s how quantum computing works, and how it could change everything from Wall Street to Big Pharma and beyond.

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Continue reading “The Hype Over Quantum Computers, Explained” »

The mystery of why quantum matter jumps from a wave-like state to a well-defined particle when it is observed has puzzled scientists for nearly a 100 years.

Known as ‘the measurement problem’ it is widely seen as the major complication in quantum theory and has led even well-respected scientists to suggest that the human mind may be having some kind of telepathic influence on the fabric of the universe — our thoughts actually shaping reality around us.

But physicist Jonathan Kerr, who has studied quantum mechanics for 35 years from his cottage in Surrey, believes he has solved the riddle, and the answer is more prosaic than some might have hoped.

Interesting research paper on a new nanobot technology. I’m watching for ways in which suitable substrates for mind uploading can be constructed, and DNA self-guided assembly has potential.

Here are some excerpts and a weblink to the paper:

“…Chemical approaches have opened synthetic routes to build dynamic materials from scratch using chemical reactions, ultimately allowing flexibility in design…”

Continue reading “Dynamic DNA material with emergent locomotion behavior powered by artificial metabolism” »

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in France and one in the U.S. has found that objects of different mass dropped in space fall at a rate within two-trillionths of a percent of each other. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes their satellite-based physics study and what they learned from it.

Most everyone has heard the story of Galileo dropping two different sized cannon balls from the Tower of Pisa in the 17^th century to demonstrate his theory that in the absence of air resistance, two objects will fall at the same rate. Einstein later refined the theory and added it to his Theory of General Relativity. Since that time, many people have tested the theory, and it has always been confirmed. Still, some physicists believe that there are bound to be exceptions to the theory because of the disconnect between general relativity and quantum mechanics. In this new effort, the team in France devised an experiment to measure two objects dropping together for two years—specifically, two chunks of metal in a satellite—to see if they could spot an exception.

The two chunks of a platinum-rhodium alloy and a mass of titanium-aluminum-vanadium alloy were installed in a device the team called the Twin-Space Accelerometer for Gravity Experiment (T-SAGE), which was on board a satellite with the acronym MICROSCOPE. The satellite was launched into space aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Centre ELS.