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Category: quantum physics – Page 873

Quantum future discussed at London’s Royal Society Conference.

By Tushna Commissariat

Not a week goes by here at Physics World that we don’t cover some advance in quantum mechanics – be it another step towards quantum computing or error correction, or a new type of quantum sensor, or another basic principle being verified and tested at new scales. While each advance may not always be a breakthrough, it is fair to say that the field has grown by leaps and bound in the last 20 years or so. Indeed, it has seen at least two “revolutions” since it first began and is now poised on the brink of a third, as scientific groups and companies around the world race to build the first quantum computer.

With this in mind, some of the stalwarts of the field – including Peter Knight, Ian Walmsley, Gerard Milburn, Stephen Till and Jonathan Pritchard – organized a two-day discussion meeting at the Royal Society in London, titled “Quantum technology for the 21st century “, which I decided to attend. The meeting’s main aim was to bring together academic and industry leaders “in quantum physics and engineering to identify the next generation of quantum technologies for translational development”. As Knight said during his opening speech, the time has come to “balance the massive leaps that the science has made with actual practical technology”.

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Interesting method in controlling energy sources and efficiencies via Quantum legos.

The chrome-plated bricks can conduct electricity, integrate active parts such as LED lights, motor blocks, and even sound, light and proximity sensors. The conductive bricks feature flexible side-arms that ensure electrical connection between two adjacent blocks, and the whole assemblies are powered by a Bluetooth-controlled 9V battery block. The built-in Bluetooth controller lets users change the current’s direction and voltage levels via a mobile application.

That means the Brixo bricks can not only be triggered by sound, light and touch, but also controlled by any Bluetooth connected device, taking the good old Lego bricks further into the IoT world (the Danish company has its entries in the cloud via its Mindstorms Lego series and the augmented reality-capable Nexo Knights toys.

The company is promising open 3D building instructions, an online library of models and hacks to its followers, encouraging a community of Brixo enthusiasts to share their models.

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NSA meets with Silicon Valley execs to voice their concerns over legacy systems being hacked by Quantum technology. Glad they’re talking about it because with the recent advancements in Quantum means it will be available in devices, communications, and platforms a lot sooner than originally projected.

The National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) brought together Silicon Valley executives with federal officials at the advisory committee’s annual meeting on Wednesday in Santa Clara, California.

U.S. military and intelligence officials, including Department of Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and Department of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, attended the advisory committee.

“Today’s era relies on technological innovation in our field such as speed and agility,” said Defense Secretary Carter at the meeting. During his presentation, he introduced Raj Shah, CEO/co-founder of Morta Security, Air Force Reservist, and former F-16 pilot, to lead the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUX) initiative. The DoD is restructuring the DIUX program, a Silicon Valley outreach initiative, with Carter calling the revised program “DIUX 2.0.” Shah’s security firm, Morta Security, was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in March 2014.

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I am so happy to see others seeing the value because Quantum is changing everything; not just computing, raw material enrichment, medical technology and treatments, etc. Once more and more folks start seeing the various capabilities around Quantum and just how wide that range is; we will begin to see an explosion of demand for Quantum. We’re still in that mode of discovery, and wait and see state by some. However, the Quantum Revolution will exceed even the industrial revolution with the span of change that it brings across so many areas & industries.

Quantum physics research that could enhance self-driving vehicles and spearheaded by a Dalhousie University team is now a $6-million commercial venture that counts U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin among its partners.

What started as a theoretical research project backed by Lockheed Martin hit paydirt when physics professor Jordan Kyriakidis realized quantum software could be used to perfect the design and operation of self-driving cars and new aircraft.

“A self-driving car is an example of a machine that’s really an infrastructure that is going to be entrusted with our lives and our children’s lives, so it’s absolutely critical that the machine behaves exactly as intended, doesn’t have any flaws, and so our software helps ensure that, before they even build anything, when it’s still at the blueprint stage,” said Kyriakidis, now CEO of Halifax-based Quantum Research Analytics (QRA).

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“ALL ABOARD” the QC train is leaving the station.

If you’ve ever had a train set, you might remember the tiny street lamps that are often part of the model landscape. Today, the bulbs from those toy lamps are helping to shed light on quantum computing.

In fact, there’s been a spate of developments lately in quantum computing, and not just IBM’s announcement of its upcoming cloud service. Here are three recent advances from research institutions around the world.

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Scientists have devised a way to build a “quantum metamaterial” — an engineered material with exotic properties not found in nature — using ultracold atoms trapped in an artificial crystal composed of light. The theoretical work represents a step toward manipulating atoms to transmit information, perform complex simulations or function as powerful sensors.

The research team, led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley, proposes the use of an accordion-like atomic framework, or “lattice” structure, made with laser light to trap atoms in regularly spaced nanoscale pockets. Such a light-based structure, which has patterned features that in some ways resemble those of a crystal, is essentially a “perfect” structure — free of the typical defects found in natural materials.

Researchers believe they can pinpoint the placement of a so-called “probe” atom in this crystal of light, and actively tune its behavior with another type of laser light (near-infrared light) to make the atom cough up some of its energy on demand in the form of a particle of light, or photon.

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Nice list of experts on Quantum; however, I would love to see someone from the Lab from Los Alamos to discuss Quantum Internet and University of Sydney from their Innovation Lab or the lady herself “Michelle Simmons” on the panel. Hope to see registration soon.

The announcement was made at the Global Derivatives Trading & Risk Management conference in Budapest, Hungary.

“Quantum computers enable us to use the laws of physics to solve intractable mathematical problems,” said Marcos de López de Prado, Senior Managing Director at Guggenheim Partners and a Research Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Research Division. “This is the beginning of a new era, and it will change the job of the mathematician and computer scientist in the years to come.”

As de Prado points out on the Quantum for Quants website, “Our smartphones are more powerful than the systems used by NASA to put a man on the moon.”

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A strange new behavior of water molecules has been observed inside crystals of beryl, a type of emerald, caused by bizarre quantum-mechanical effects that let the water molecules face six different directions at the same time.

Under normal conditions, the two hydrogen atoms in each water molecule are arranged around the oxygen atom in an open “V” shape, sometimes compared to a boomerang or Mickey Mouse ears.

But in a new experiment, scientists have found that hydrogen atoms of some water molecules trapped in the crystal structure of the mineral beryl become “smeared out” into a six-sided ring. [T he Surprisingly Strange Physics of Water].

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Layout of IBM’s five superconducting quantum bit device. In 2015, IBM scientists demonstrated critical breakthroughs to detect quantum errors by combining superconducting qubits in latticed arrangements, and whose quantum circuit design is the only physical architecture that can scale to larger dimensions. Now, IBM scientists have achieved a further advance by combining five qubits in the lattice architecture, which demonstrates a key operation known as a parity measurement — the basis of many quantum error correction protocols. (credit: IBM Research)

IBM Research has announced that effective Wednesday May 4, it is making quantum computing available free to members of the public, who can access and run experiments on IBM’s quantum processor, via the IBM Cloud, from any desktop or mobile device.

IBM believes quantum computing is the future of computing and has the potential to solve certain problems that are impossible to solve on today’s supercomputers.

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