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Category: quantum physics – Page 929

Blue Sky Science: Are there wormholes that lead to other galaxies?

In principle, a wormhole-like scenario is possible, but a wormhole tends to close before objects or other matter could pass through it. As far as we know, it’s unlikely we could construct a wormhole that stays open long enough for us to get to a distant part of the universe.

That’s really the issue: Can you keep a wormhole open?

Wormholes can exist even at the quantum level, which is a very small scale, smaller than an atom. Trying to move matter through a wormhole at the classical level, the large-size level, is where it gets trickier.

A second ‘Big Bang’ could end our universe in an instant — and it’s all because of a tiny particle that controls the laws of physics

Our known universe may end the same way it was created: With a big, sudden bang.

That’s according to new research from a group of Harvard physicists, who found that the destabilization of the Higgs Boson — a tiny quantum particle that gives other particles mass — could lead to a huge explosion of energy that would consume everything in the known universe.

The energy released by the event would destabilize the laws of physics and chemistry.

From the quantum level to the car battery

New developments require new materials. Until recently, these have been developed mostly by tedious experiments in the laboratory. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI in Sankt Augustin are now significantly shortening this time-consuming and cost-intensive process with their “Virtual Material Design” approach and the specially developed Tremolo-X software. By combining multi-scale models, data analysis and machine learning, it is possible to develop improved materials much more quickly. At the Hanover Trade Fair from April 23 to 27, 2018, Fraunhofer will be demonstrating how the virtual material design of the future looks.

In almost every industry, new materials are needed for new developments. Let’s take the automotive industry: while an automobile used to consist of just a handful of materials, modern cars are assembled from thousands of different materials – and demand is increasing. Whether it’s making a car lighter, getting better fuel economy or developing electric motor batteries, every new development requires finding or developing the material that has exactly the right properties. The search for the right material has often been like a guessing game, though. The candidates have usually been selected from huge material databases and then tested. Although these databases provide insight into specific performance characteristics, they usually do not go far enough into depth to allow meaningful judgments about whether a material has exactly the desired properties. To find that out, numerous laboratory tests have to be performed.

Are there extra dimensions lurking at the quantum scale?

Some theories suggest there could be many more dimensions that we’re unaware of, mostly because they’re imperceptibly tiny. Now researchers have taken the search for extra dimensions down to the nanoscale, using a neutron beam to study gravitational forces more precisely than ever before.

The future of photonics using quantum dots

Fiber-optic cables package everything from financial data to cat videos into light, but when the signal arrives at your local data center, it runs into a silicon bottleneck. Instead of light, computers run on electrons moving through silicon-based chips, which are less efficient than photonics. To break through, scientists have been developing lasers that work on silicon. Researchers now write that the future of silicon-based lasers may be in quantum dots.

Putting quantum scientists in the driver’s seat

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are conducting fundamental physics research that will lead to more control over mercurial quantum systems and materials. Their studies will enable advancements in quantum computing, sensing, simulation, and materials development.

The researchers’ experimental results were recently published in Physical Review B Rapid Communication and Optics Letters.

Quantum information is considered fragile because it can be lost when the system in which it is encoded interacts with its environment, a process called dissipation. Scientists with ORNL’s Computing and Computational Sciences and Physical Sciences directorates and Vanderbilt University have collaborated to develop methods that will help them control—or drive—the “leaky,” dissipative behavior inherent in .

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