What makes a quantum computer more powerful than a classical computer? It’s a surprisingly subtle question that physicists are still grappling with, decades into the quantum age.
Quantum mechanics is full of weird phenomena, but perhaps none as weird as the role measurement plays in the theory. Since a measurement tends to destroy the “quantumness” of a system, it seems to be the mysterious link between the quantum and classical world. And in a large system of quantum bits of information, known as “qubits,” the effect of measurements can induce dramatically new behavior, even driving the emergence of entirely new phases of quantum information.
This happens when two competing effects come to a head: interactions and measurement. In a quantum system, when the qubits interact with one another, their information becomes shared nonlocally in an “entangled state.” But if you measure the system, the entanglement is destroyed. The battle between measurement and interactions leads to two distinct phases: one where interactions dominate and entanglement is widespread, and one where measurements dominate, and entanglement is suppressed.
As reported in the journal Nature, researchers at Google Quantum AI and Stanford University have observed the crossover between these two regimes—known as a “measurement-induced phase transition”—in a system of up to 70 qubits. This is by far the largest system in which measurement-induced effects have been explored.
Despite its waif-like proportions, scientists have found over the years that graphene is exceptionally strong. And when the material is stacked and twisted in specific contortions, it can take on surprising electronic behavior.
Now, MIT physicists have discovered another surprising property in graphene: When stacked in five layers, in a rhombohedral pattern, graphene takes on a very rare, “multiferroic” state, in which the material exhibits both unconventional magnetism and an exotic type of electronic behavior, which the team has coined ferro-valleytricity.
We know remarkably little about how AI systems work, so how will we know if AI becomes conscious?
Many people in AI will be familiar with the story of the Mechanical Turk. It was a chess-playing machine built in 1,770, and it was so good its opponents were tricked into believing it was supernaturally powerful. In reality, the machine had space for a human to hide in it and control it. The hoax went on for 84 years. That’s three generations!
History is rich with examples of people trying to breathe life into inanimate objects, and of people selling hacks and tricks as “magic.” But this very human desire to believe in consciousness in machines has never matched up with reality.
Two types of technologies could change the privacy afforded in encrypted messages, and changes to this space could impact all of us.
On October 9, I moderated a panel on encryption, privacy policy, and human rights at the United Nations’s annual Internet Governance Forum. I shared the stage with some fabulous panelists including Roger Dingledine, the director of the Tor Project; Sharon Polsky, the president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada; and Rand Hammoud, a campaigner at Access Now, a human rights advocacy organization. All strongly believe in and champion the protection of encryption.
I want to tell you about one thing that came up in our conversation: efforts to, in some way, monitor encrypted messages.
Policy proposals have been popping up around the world (like in Australia, India, and, most recently, the UK) that call for tech companies to build in ways to gain information about encrypted messages, including through back-door access. There have also been efforts to increase moderation and safety on encrypted messaging apps, like Signal and Telegram, to try to prevent the spread of abusive content, like child sexual abuse material, criminal networking, and drug trafficking.
Not surprisingly, advocates for encryption are generally opposed to these sorts of proposals as they weaken the level of user privacy that’s currently guaranteed by end-to-end encryption.
In my prep work before the panel, and then in our conversation, I learned about some new cryptographic technologies that might allow for some content moderation, as well as increased enforcement of platform policies and laws, all *without* breaking encryption. These are sort-of fringe technologies right now, mainly still in the research phase. Though they are being developed in several different flavors, most of these technologies ostensibly enable algorithms to evaluate messages or patterns in their metadata to flag problematic material without having to break encryption or reveal the content of the messages.
Smartphone sales have had their worst quarterly performance in over a decade, a fact that raises two big questions. Have the latest models finally bored the market with mere incremental improvements? And if they have, what will the next form factor (and function) be? Today a deep tech startup called Xpanceo is announcing $40 million in funding from a single investor, Opportunity Ventures in Hong Kong, to pursue its take on one of the possible answers to that question: computing devices in the form of smart contact lenses.
The company wants to make tech more simple, and it believes the way to do that is to make it seamless and more connected to how we operate every day. “All current computers will be obsolete [because] they’re not interchangeable,” said Roman Axelrod, who co-founded the startup with material scientist and physicist Valentyn S. Volkov. “We are enslaved by gadgets.”
With a focus on new materials and moving away from silicon-based processing and towards new approaches to using optoelectronics, Xpanceo’s modest ambition, Axelrod said in an interview, is to “merge all the gadgets into one, to provide humanity with a gadget with an infinite screen. What we aim for is to create the next generation of computing.”
Xpanceo was founded in 2021 and is based out Dubai, and before now it has been bootstrapped. Its team of more 50 scientists and engineers has mainly, up to now, been working on different prototypes of lenses and all of the hard work that goes into that. The move away from silicon and to optoelectronics, for example, has driven a new need for materials that can emit and read light that are ever-smaller, Volkov said. The company has likened developments of 2D materials like graphene to what it is pursuing with new materials for contact lenses.
“We have kind of developed our own niche [in 2D materials] and now we use this knowledge as a backbone for our contact lens prototypes,” Volkov said in an interview.
Adobe will premiere the first-ever TV commercial powered by its Firefly generative AI during high-profile sports broadcasts on Monday night. The commercial for Adobe Photoshop highlights creative capabilities enabled by the company’s AI technology.
Set to air during MLB playoffs and Monday Night Football, two of the most-watched live events on television, the new Adobe spot will showcase Photoshop’s Firefly-powered Generative Fill feature. Generative Fill uses AI to transform images based on text prompts.
With Adobe’s new commercial, generative AI will enter the mainstream spotlight, reaching audiences beyond just tech circles. While early adopters have embraced AI tools, a recent study found 44% of U.S. workers have yet to use generative AI, indicating its capabilities remain unknown to many.
The high-profile ad also lets Adobe showcase its AI leadership against rivals like OpenAI’s DALL-E in the increasingly competitive space of generative design. With AI capabilities now embedded in many tools, the commercial provides a chance for Adobe to demonstrate its edge and differentiate Photoshop for creative professionals.
Since launching Firefly in March, over 3 billion AI-generated images have been created by users, establishing it as the most popular commercial model globally. Adobe is betting that primetime viewers are now ready to embrace the creative potential of its AI.
The molecular synthesizer once thought to be impossible to make is now quite a possibility due to this discovery with electron beams that can heal crystalline structures and also build objects from electron beams this could one day be amplified to create even food with light into matter electron beams. Also this could create even life or even rebirth a universe or planet or sun really eventually anything that is matter. Really it is a molecular assembler with nearly limitless applications.
Electron beams can be used to heal nano-fractures in crystals instead of causing further damage to them, as initially expected by researchers who now report their surprise findings. Used to power microscopes that examine the smallest materials in the universe, electron beams may also be able to be used to create novel microstructures one atom at a time.
A feat once thought impossible, researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMN) behind the discovery said it had been assumed that using electron beams to study nanostructures carried the additional risk of exacerbating microscopic cracks and flaws already in the material.
“For a long time, researchers studying nanostructures were thinking that when we put the crystals under electron beam radiation to study them that they would degrade,” explained Andre Mkhoyan, a UMN chemical engineering and materials science professor and the lead researcher in the study.
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SCIENTISTS were today a step closer to resurrecting the extinct woolly mammoth, after dead animals were brought back to life.
For about 25 years, bird flu viruses typically originated in Asia – but the virus that began spreading in 2021 arose in Europe and Africa.
By Grace Wade