It’s once again time for our customary appointment with a monthly recap of the most interesting news from the world of aging and rejuvenation research. Interviews and talks from our July conference, as well as from UA2019, are being published, and new events and initiatives are popping up around the world; slowly but steadily, the field is unquestionably picking up.
LEAF News
A handful of spins in diamond have shone new light on one of the most enduring mysteries in physics – how the objective reality of classical physics emerges from the murky, probabilistic quantum world. Physicists in Germany and the US have used nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in diamond to demonstrate “quantum Darwinism”, whereby the “fittest” states of a system survive and proliferate in the transition between the quantum and classical worlds.
In the past, physicists tended to view the classical and quantum worlds as being divided by an abrupt barrier that makes a fundamental distinction between the familiar macroscopic (classical) and the unfamiliar microscopic (quantum) realms. But in recent decades that view has changed. Many experts now think that the transition is gradual, and that the definite classical states we measure come from probabilistic quantum states progressively (although very quickly) losing their coherence as they become ever more entangled with their environment.
Quantum Darwinism, put forward by Wojciech Zurek of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, argues that the classical states we perceive are robust quantum states that can survive entanglement during decoherence. His theoretical framework posits that the information about these states will be duplicated many times and disseminated throughout the environment. Just as natural selection tells us that the fittest individuals in a species must survive to reproduce in great numbers and so go on to shape evolution, the fittest quantum states will be copied and appear classical. This redundancy means that many individual observers will measure any given state as having the same value, so ensuring objective reality.
The government is setting up high-tech R&D facilities for India Inc to design and test products.
The U.S. Coast Guard stated in a press conference 34 people are missing or unaccounted as search and rescue recovery efforts are currently underway.
There was a total of 39 people on board with 34 people sleeping below deck and 5 crew members. The Coast Guard confirmed the five crew members were awake at the time of the fire and jumped from the boat before being rescued by a Good Samaritan vessel named Grape Escape.
The Coast Guard confirmed the Conception boat was anchored 20 yards off Platt’s Harbor on the northside of Santa Cruz island. The shoreline of the island is being searched for any survivors.
We will soon learn if a much-hyped, rapamycin-like drug can boost the immune response by targeting how the body ages.
A simple treatment to stave off the health problems of old age could be available in five to 12 years. Here’s how it would work.
A group of DARPA-funded scientists associated with Elon Musk say they’ve invented a new way to “rapidly implant” brain electrodes into rats — and their “sewing machine” implantation system could facilitate the creation of a mind-reading brain-computer interface, as first reported by Bloomberg.
“Although more research is needed to refine the overall interface system and better integrate its components, these developments may ultimately open the possibility of bundling next-generation robotics, AI software, and electronics to create alternatives to present-day neurosurgical techniques,” DARPA biotech director Justin Sanchez told Bloomberg.
Time has a fundamentally different character in quantum mechanics and when in general relativity. In quantum theory, events develop in a fixed order while in general relativity temporal order is affected by the distribution of matter.
Now, a team of international scientists has discovered a new kind of quantum time order. Through this study, scientists sought to determine: what happens when an object massive enough to influence the flow of time is placed in a quantum state?
The disclosure emerged from a test the group intended to bring together elements of the two significant physics theories developed in the past century.
Samsung is looking forward to what life might be like in the year 2069. The new report, called Samsung KX50: The Future in Focus, draws on the opinions of six of Britain’s leading academics and futurists to look at a range of new technologies that will affect people’s everyday lives.
Trying to predict the future is a dodgy business that has a notoriously low success rate. If the world of 2019 was anything like past predictions, we should have flying cars, personal jet packs, robot butlers, 100 percent atomic power producing limitless energy, little bottles containing nanobots that can grow cars on the front lawn, colonies on the Moon and Mars – and all in a society that hasn’t changed much since 1960, except it’s a bit nicer.
