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Category: quantum physics – Page 939

“We will find new things everywhere we look.” –Hunter S. Thompson

At the rate of 21st century technological innovation, each year brings new breakthroughs across industries. Advances in quantum computers, human genome sequencing for under $1,000, lab-grown meat, harnessing our body’s microbes as drugs, and bionic eye implants that give vision to the blind —the list is long.

As new technologies push the boundaries of their respective industries, fields are now maturing, growing, and colliding with one another. This cross-pollination of ideas across industries and countries has changed the world—and will continue to—and it’s one of the reasons Singularity University exists.

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If Russia, China, etc. upgrades their infrastructure to Quantum before US and it’s does; today’s breaches will not even compare to this scenario.

The push to bring more technology-related businesses to the state has officials hoping for long-term growth over places like Fairfax County, Va., where the federal government has already made substantial technological investment.

After the ceremony, an expert panel discussed some of the opportunities and challenges facing information infrastructure, the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors, and how to increase consumers’ cybersecurity confidence.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said during the panel that the current standing of federal cybersecurity has vastly improved since she was appointed to the post in 2013 — but there is still a ways to go.

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Researchers at the school of physics and astronomy at Tel Aviv University have created a track around which a superconductor (a material that is extremely efficient at transmitting electricity) can float, thanks to the phenomenon of “quantum levitation “.

This levitation effect is explained by the Meissner effect, which describes how, when a material makes the transition from its normal to its superconducting state, it actively excludes magnetic fields from its interior, leaving only a thin layer on its surface.

When a material is in its superconducting state — which involves very low temperatures — it is strongly diamagnetic. This means that when a magnetic field is externally applied, it will create an equally opposing magnetic field, locking it in place.

A material called yttrium barium copper oxide can be turned into a superconductor by exposure to liquid nitrogen — which makes it one of the highest-temperature superconductors.

Levitation isn’t just for Houdini anymore. Could this cool new tech lead to floating alternatives to traditional gas powered vehicles? Interesting times ahead!

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Another step forward for Quantum — The Quantum Current. US Dept. of Energy has a new method to generate very low-resistance electric (Quantum) current which will improve our methods for energy, quantum computing, and medical imaging, and possibly even a new mechanism for inducing superconductivity—the ability of some materials (zirconium pentatelluride) to carry current with no energy loss.

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Me and one of my friends on LinkedIn both knew it was only a matter of time that AI & Quantum together would be announced. And, Google with D-Wave indeed would be leading this charge. BTW — once this pairing of technologies is done; get ready for some amazing AI technology including robotics to come out.

But there may not be any competitors for a while if Google’s “Ace of Spades” newbie performs as they predict. According to Hartmut Neven, head of its Quantum Al Lab, this baby can run:

“We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1,000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 10 to the power of 8 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core.”

D Wave PCIn layperson’s lingo: this sucker will run 100 million times faster than the clunker on your desk. Problem is, it may not be on the production line for a while.

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We all have “Quantum Spark”.

For centuries philosophers have grappled with the question of what makes life, and thanks to the science of quantum mechanics we might just have the answer, writes Johnjoe McFadden.

What is life? Why is the stuff of life — flesh — so different from inanimate material? Does life obey the same laws as the inanimate world? And what happens when we die?

These questions have been pondered by philosophers, scientists and the rest of us for centuries. For most of human history the answer was that life was special. It was animated by some kind of spirit, soul or qui, a vital spark that was absent from the non-living. But, by the end of the 19th century, this theory, known as vitalism, was pretty much discredited by the discovery that living organisms are made from the same chemicals as the inanimate world — atoms and molecules of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and so on.

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We develop a quantum information protocol that models the biological behaviours of individuals living in a natural selection scenario. The artificially engineered evolution of the quantum living units shows the fundamental features of life in a common environment, such as self-replication, mutation, interaction of individuals, and death. We propose how to mimic these bio-inspired features in a quantum-mechanical formalism, which allows for an experimental implementation achievable with current quantum platforms. This study paves the way for the realization of artificial life and embodied evolution with quantum technologies.

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A non-destructive Quantum State.

The interaction of thermal energy from the environment with motional degrees of freedom is well known and often referred to as Brownian motion (also thermal motion). But in the case of polar molecules, the internal degrees of freedom — in particular the rotational quantum state — are also influenced by the thermal radiation. So far, the detection of the rotational state was only possible by destroying the molecule. However, a German research group has now demonstrated the first implementation of a non-destructive state detection technique for molecular ions.

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As I said this morning; there is something definitely going with Quantum today. Maybe it’s the planet alignment (I saw there was something going on with the alignment with Aquaris today) — this is awesome news.

Rigetti Computing is working on designs for quantum-powered chips to perform previously impossible feats that advance chemistry and machine learning.

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