Lifeboat Foundation

The special properties of quantum computers should make them ideal for accurately modelling chemical systems, Philip Ball discovers.

‘If you want to make a simulation of nature,’ the legendary physicist Richard Feynman advised in 1981, ‘you’d better make it quantum-mechanical.’ By ‘nature’, Feynman meant ‘stuff’: the particles and atoms and molecules we’re made from. His comment came in a talk published the following year, and is generally regarded as the founding text of quantum computing. It now looks even more prophetic than ever.

For although we are constantly told that the unique selling point of quantum computers is their enormous speed compared with the classical devices we currently use – a speed-up that exploits the counterintuitive laws of quantum mechanics – it seems that the most immediate benefit will be the one Feynman identified in the first place: we’ll be able to simulate nature better.

Continue reading “Quantum chemistry on quantum computers” »

A radical new innovation helping you to learn and excel in chess quickly with real time learning and progression.

LA JOLLA—(June 6, 2019) Scientists once thought that neurons, or possibly heart cells, were the oldest cells in the body. Now, Salk Institute researchers have discovered that the mouse brain, liver and pancreas contain populations of cells and proteins with extremely long lifespans—some as old as neurons. The findings, demonstrating “age mosaicism,” were published in Cell Metabolism on June 6, 2019. The team’s methods could be applied to nearly any tissue in the body to provide valuable information about lifelong function of non-dividing cells and how cells lose control over the quality and integrity of proteins and important cell structures during aging.

In their book “Era of Exponential Encryption — Beyond Cryptographic Routing” the authors provide a vision that can demonstrate an increasing multiplication of options for encryption and decryption processes: Similar to a grain of rice that doubles exponentially in every field of a chessboard, more and more newer concepts and programming in the area of cryptography increase these manifolds: both, encryption and decryption, require more session-related and multiple keys, so that numerous options even exist for configuring hybrid encryption: with different keys and algorithms, symmetric and asymmetrical methods, or even modern multiple encryption, with that ciphertext is converted again and again to ciphertext. It will be analyzed how a handful of newer applications like e.g. Spot-On and GoldBug E-Mail Client & Crypto Chat Messenger and other open source software programming implement these encryption mechanisms. Renewing a key several times — within the dedicated session with “cryptographic calling” — has forwarded the term of “perfect forward secrecy” to “instant perfect forward secrecy” (IPFS). But even more: if in advance a bunch of keys is sent, a decoding of a message has to consider not only one present session key, but over dozens of keys are sent — prior before the message arrives. The new paradigm of IPFS has already turned into the newer concept of these Fiasco Keys are keys, which provide over a dozen possible ephemeral keys within one session and define Fiasco Forwarding, the approach which complements and follows IPFS. And further: by adding routing- and graph-theory to the encryption process, which is a constant part of the so called Echo Protocol, an encrypted packet might take different graphs and routes within the network. This shifts the current status to a new age: The Era of Exponential Encryption, so the vision and description of the authors. If routing does not require destination information but is replaced by cryptographic in.

The Waze features keep on coming.

O.o.

Use the power of the force to lift pump some iron! Fitness brand Onnit has created a line of Star Wars products of home workout equipment.

Some people simply dream of having superhero powers – but one man made it a reality by inventing a real life Spider-Man web shooter.

I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there who have been envious of Spider-Man’s nifty web-shooting trick; people who eventually had to come to terms with the fact that the closest they were going to get to having those powers was through Spider-Man video games.

But one guy has given the world the opportunity to control webs without a PS4, and instead with a device that really shoots webs. The best part is, they’re willing to share it with the world and have made the invention available for purchase.

Continue reading “Guy Invents Real Life Spider-Man Web Shooter” »

I was hoping to post this earlier, but a heavy dose of writer’s block set in (I met a girl, and no, this blog didn’t help — but she is a physicist!) I also got lost in the rabbit hole that is quantum teleportation. My initial intention with this series of posts was simply to clarify common misconceptions and to introduce basic concepts in quantum information. However, while doing so, I started a whirlwind tour of deep questions in physics which become unavoidable as you think harder and deeper about quantum teleportation. I’ve only just begun this journey, but using quantum teleportation as a springboard has already led me to contemplate crazy things such as time-travel via coupling postselection with quantum teleportation and the subtleties of entanglement. In other words, quantum teleportation may not be the instantaneous Stargate style teleportation you had in mind, but it’s incredibly powerful in its own right. Personally, I think we’ve barely begun to understand the full extent of its ramifications.

In quantum physics, measurements can fundamentally yield discrete and random results. Emblematic of this feature is Bohr’s 1913 proposal of quantum jumps between two discrete energy levels of an atom. Experimentally, quantum jumps were first observed in an atomic ion driven by a weak deterministic force while under strong continuous energy measurement^2,3,4. The times at which the discontinuous jump transitions occur are reputed to be fundamentally unpredictable. Despite the non-deterministic character of quantum physics, is it possible to know if a quantum jump is about to occur? Here we answer this question affirmatively: we experimentally demonstrate that the jump from the ground state to an excited state of a superconducting artificial three-level atom can be tracked as it follows a predictable ‘flight’, by monitoring the population of an auxiliary energy level coupled to the ground state. The experimental results demonstrate that the evolution of each completed jump is continuous, coherent and deterministic. We exploit these features, using real-time monitoring and feedback, to catch and reverse quantum jumps mid-flight—thus deterministically preventing their completion. Our findings, which agree with theoretical predictions essentially without adjustable parameters, support the modern quantum trajectory theory^5,6,7,8,9 and should provide new ground for the exploration of real-time intervention techniques in the control of quantum systems, such as the early detection of error syndromes in quantum error correction.