Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 4,464

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Physicists Observe Particles Switch Between Matter and Antimatter

A team led by physicists from Oxford University analyzed data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and discovered that a subatomic particle can switch between matter and antimatter, a report by New Atlas explained.

Antimatter, which is differentiated by having the opposite charge to normal matter, is composed of the antiparticles of normal matter. Some particles oscillate between being matter and antimatter via superposition, as illustrated by the thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat.

In a world-first discovery, it was found that the charm meson, a subatomic particle made out of a charm quark and an antiquark, can travel as a mixture of their particle and antiparticle states, all the while spontaneously switching between the two. The finding is detailed on the preprint server arXiv.

Tesla Robot: News, Rumors, and Estimated Price, Release Date, and Specs

When used at home, it might take care of your yard, and even your grandparents, as Musk suggests in his piece, Believing in technology for a better future, in the Cyberspace Administration of China’s publication:

Tesla Bots are initially positioned to replace people in repetitive, boring, and dangerous tasks. But the vision is for them to serve millions of households, such as cooking, mowing lawns, and caring for the elderly.

The Tesla Bot is supposed to free up labor that you don’t want to do yourself. Since we already have machines that help us do all kinds of tasks (think: vehicles, dishwashers, forklifts), where it’d really succeed is when AI is used. That way, it can learn and recognize what needs to be done, and then do it for you by completing those last-step actions (driving to the store to get something, loading the dishwasher, etc.).

Embracing variations: Physicists first to analyze noise in Lambda-type quantum memory

In the future, communications networks and computers will use information stored in objects governed by the microscopic laws of quantum mechanics. This capability can potentially underpin communication with greatly enhanced security and computers with unprecedented power. A vital component of these technologies will be memory devices capable of storing quantum information to be retrieved at will.

Virginia Lorenz, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, studies Lambda-type optical quantum , a promising technology that relies on light interacting with a large group of atoms. She is developing a device based on hot metallic vapor with graduate student Kai Shinbrough.

As the researchers work towards a practical device, they are also providing some of the first theoretical analyses of Lambda-type devices. Most recently, they reported the first variance-based sensitivity analysis describing the effects of experimental noise and imperfections in Physical Review A.

A light switch for neurons

Ed Boyden shows how, by inserting genes for light-sensitive proteins into brain cells, he can selectively activate or de-activate specific neurons with fiber-optic implants. With this unprecedented level of control, he’s managed to cure mice of analogs of PTSD and certain forms of blindness. On the horizon: neural prosthetics. Session host Juan Enriquez leads a brief post-talk Q&A.

A First-of-Its-Kind Signal Has Been Detected in The Human Brain

Scientists have recently identified a unique form of cell messaging occurring in the human brain that’s not been seen before.

Excitingly, the discovery hints that our brains might be even more powerful units of computation than we realized.

Back in 2020, researchers from institutes in Germany and Greece reported a mechanism in the brain’s outer cortical cells that produces a novel ‘graded’ signal all on its own, one that could provide individual neurons with another way to carry out their logical functions.

Experiments show that edges are not needed to realize an unusual quantum effect

RIKEN physicists have created an exotic quantum state in a device with a disk-like geometry for the first time, showing that edges are not required. This demonstration opens the way for realizing other novel electronic behavior. Their findings are published in Nature Physics.

Physics has long moved on from the three classic states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. A better theoretical understanding of quantum effects in crystals and the development of advanced experimental tools to probe and measure them has revealed a whole host of exotic states of matter.

A prominent example of this is the : a kind of crystalline solid that exhibits wildly different properties on their surfaces than in the rest of the material. The best-known manifestation of this is that conduct electricity on their surfaces but are insulating in their interiors.