US AF does need to get onboard quickly or be left in the dust.
Quantum computing could be a competitive advantage for the U.S. military, and the Air Force Research Lab wants to keep pace.
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Why synthetic diamonds are critical to the QC story.
(Phys.org)—By carefully placing a tiny piece of diamond within a few nanometers of a carbon nanotube, and then sending an electric current through the nanotube, researchers have designed a device that could one day form the building blocks of quantum information processing systems. In their recent study, they have shown that the electrified nanotube’s mechanical vibrations couple to the magnetic (or spin) properties of defects in the diamond. This coupling allows for the quantum states of the nanotube and diamond to be transferred to each other as well as to a second diamond positioned several micrometers away.
The researchers, Peng-Bo Li et al., have published a paper on the new hybrid quantum device in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
Diamonds and carbon nanotubes, which are both carbon allotropes, each have their own unique properties that make building such a device possible. Diamond contains defects called nitrogen-vacancy centers that emit highly coherent bright red light. The defects’ optical properties can be well-controlled so that they occupy one of two distinct states, which enables the defects to act as qubits. Carbon nanotubes, for their part, are well-known for their highly advantageous mechanical and electrical properties.
The quantum origin of time
Posted in futurism, quantum physics
Physicists from New Zealand’s University of Otago have used steerable ‘optical tweezers’ to split minute clouds of ultracold atoms and slowly smash them together to directly observe a key theoretical principle of quantum mechanics.
The principle, known as Pauli Exclusion, places fundamental constraints on the behavior of groups of identical particles and underpins the structure and stability of atoms as well as the mechanical, electrical, magnetic and chemical properties of almost all materials.
Otago Physics researcher Associate Professor Niels Kjærgaard led the research, which is newly published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications (“Multiple scattering dynamics of fermions at an isolated p-wave resonance”).
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Citing increasing U.S. launch costs and the “fleeing” of commercial customers to foreign launch service providers, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is continuing to push a bold strategy tied to a new, reusable spaceplane that the Agency envisions flying 10 times in 10 days for a cost of less than $5 million USD per flight.
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When we look at the huge tech and industrial revolution that is just on the verge of happening due to QC and Medical technologies; synthetic diamonds will be a central piece of this story. I hope Intel, Nvidia, HP, Xerox, Apple, etc. all are assessing how they can either produce or partner with producers of synthetic diamonds. Printer companies could be big players in the mass production story of Synthetic Diamonds; and partnerships between Intel and HP or Intel and Xerox could prove to be fruitful.
COULD synthetic diamonds be key to developing the advanced electronics of tomorrow? A company crowd-funding on Cambridge’s SyndicateRoom thinks so.
Evince is looking to raise £650,000 to develop a working prototype of its new semi-conductor, which it says has the potential to perform 100 times better than silicon.
The company’s patented system combines advanced semiconductor and vacuum microelectronics concepts to create its platform technology.
The Allen Brain Observatory is open for business, revealing what’s running through the mind of a mouse as it sees patterns of light and dark, pictures of butterflies and tigers – or even the opening scene of Orson Welles’ 1958 classic film, “Touch of Evil.”
The online repository of 30 trillion bytes’ worth of brain-cell readings represents the latest scientific offering from the Allen Institute for Brain Science, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It follows through on a $300 million pledge that Allen made more than four years ago.
The Allen Institute’s president and chief scientific officer, Christof Koch, has compared the project to a Hubble Space Telescope for the brain.
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Our best theory of reality says things only become real when we look at them. Understanding how the universe came to be requires a better explanation.
By Jon Cartwright
WHERE, when you aren’t looking at it, is a subatomic particle? A quantum physicist would probably answer: sort of all over the place. An unobserved particle is a wisp of reality, a shimmer of existence – there isn’t a good metaphor for it, because it is vague both by definition and by nature. Until you do have a peek. Then it becomes a particle proper, it can be put into words, it is a thing with a place.
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