Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers have calculated the likelihood that a quantum state will decay when its evolution is inhibited by a dearth of final states.

Quantum systems are fragile, meaning a specific quantum state generally decays into other states over time. This decay process is formalized by Fermi’s golden rule (FGR), which in its traditional formalization applies when there exists an infinite continuum of states for the quantum system state to decay to—for example, when an excited atom emits a photon into a vacuum. Now Tobias Micklitz at the Brazilian Center for Research in Physics and colleagues have developed and solved a model showing how a quantum system evolves when its initial state is instead coupled to a finite set of states spread across discrete energy levels [1]. Micklitz says that their model could be the foundation for models of more complex, many-body quantum systems.

FGR-obeying systems occupy one end of a scale, where the coupling strength between the systems’ initial and final states is large relative to the energy gap between the various final states (zero for a continuum of states). At the other end of the scale, the coupling strength is much lower relative to this gap. A system that sits in this second regime remains in its initial state, as there are too few available final states for it to decay into.

Microprocessors in smartphones, computers, and data centers process information by manipulating electrons through solid semiconductors, but our brains have a different system. They rely on the manipulation of ions in liquid to process information.

Inspired by the brain, researchers have long been seeking to develop “ionics” in an aqueous solution. While ions in water move slower than electrons in semiconductors, scientists think the diversity of ionic species with different physical and chemical properties could be harnessed for richer and more diverse information processing.

Ionic computing, however, is still in its early days. To date, labs have only developed individual ionic devices such as ionic diodes and transistors, but no one has put many such devices together into a more complex circuit for computing until now.

A community blog devoted to refining the art of rationality.

Today, Meta announced Make-A-Video, an AI-powered video generator that can create novel video content from text or image prompts, similar to existing image synthesis tools like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. It can also make variations of existing videos, though it’s not yet available for public use.

The key technology behind Make-A-Video—and why it has arrived sooner than some experts anticipated—is that it builds off existing work with text-to-image synthesis used with image generators like OpenAI’s DALL-E. In July, Meta announced its own text-to-image AI model called Make-A-Scene.

A new cancer therapy that uses a modified herpes virus to attack tumor cells showed promise in early clinical trials abroad.

The drug, called RP2, completely obliterated one patient’s oral cancer. The 39-year-old told the BBC that he had cancer of the salivary glands, which continued to grow despite attempts at treatment.

He was preparing for the end of his life when he learned about the experimental drug, which was available through a phase one safety trial at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK.

The researchers are one step closer to making the technology viable.

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have taken a critical step forward toward achieving nuclear fusion.

The scientists traced back the collapse to the 3D disordering of strong magnetic fields.

Continue reading “Princeton scientists overcome key setback in achieving nuclear fusion” »

The universe’s first stars, known as population III, could have had masses up to 250 times greater than that of the Sun. We may now have proof of them.

Astronomers now believe they have discovered ancient chemical remnants of the universe’s first stars, according to new research published in The Astrophysical Journal.

For decades scientists have been diligently looking for direct evidence of these ‘first generation’ stars believed to have formed when the Earth was a modest 100 million years old. The discovery could improve our understanding of how matter in the universe evolved into what it is today, including us. Commons.

Dogs are amazing, and we all know it.

Dogs do a lot for us. They sniff out diseases, lead those who are blind or visually impaired, and search for humans in disaster areas. And it would come as no surprise if we told you that they could detect stress through humans’ sweat and breath, as well.

Researchers from Queen’s University, Belfast, collected sweat and breath samples of 36 participants before and after they handled a tense mental arithmetic task.

Continue reading “It’s official: Dogs can sniff out stress on humans’ breath and sweat” »

An analysis of over 20 million stars shed new light on our galaxy’s cannibalistic past.

A nearby mini-galaxy, the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, slowly crashed through the Milky Way and ripped stars out of their regular orbits on more than one occasion, according to a new paper in the Royal Astronomical Society.

Their analysis shed new light on the galaxy’s violent past — one in which galaxies tear into each other, shifting their structures for eons to come.

Continue reading “Our galaxy is rippling thanks to a mysterious force — we might finally know what it is” »