Lifeboat Foundation

Honeywell Quantum Solutions has demonstrated record-breaking high fidelity quantum operations on their trapped-ion qubits. It is a major step towards producing the world’s most powerful quantum computer. Honeywell targets an operational trapped ion quantum computer by the end of 2019.

Currently the leading trapped ion quantum computer is by the startup IonQ. There are commercial quantum annealing systems from D-Wave Systems with 2000 qubits. There are superconducting quantum computers with 16–72 qubits from Google, IBM, Intel and Rigetti Systems.

Beryllium, a hard, silvery metal long used in X-ray machines and spacecraft, is finding a new role in the quest to bring the power that drives the sun and stars to Earth. Beryllium is one of the two main materials used for the wall in ITER, a multinational fusion facility under construction in France to demonstrate the practicality of fusion power. Now, physicists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and General Atomics have concluded that injecting tiny beryllium pellets into ITER could help stabilize the plasma that fuels fusion reactions.

Experiments and computer simulations found that the injected granules help create conditions in the plasma that could trigger small eruptions called edge-localized modes (ELMs). If triggered frequently enough, the tiny ELMs prevent giant eruptions that could halt fusion reactions and damage the ITER facility.

Scientists around the world are seeking to replicate fusion on Earth for a virtually inexhaustible supply of power to generate electricity. The process involves plasma, a very hot soup of free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions. The merging of the nuclei releases a tremendous amount of energy.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hyx6tBTk1p0

We know that the rule “nothing lasts forever” holds true for everything. But the world of quantum particles doesn’t always seem to follow the rules.

In the latest findings, scientists have observed that quasiparticles in quantum systems could be virtually immortal. These particles can regenerate themselves after they have decayed — and this can have a significant impact on the future of quantum computing and humanity itself.

Continue reading “Quantum Particles Found Exhibiting Immortality Through ‘Infinite Decay And Rebirth’” »

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Black holes are engines of destruction on a cosmic scale, but they may also be the bringers of life. New research on supermassive black holes suggests that the radiation they emit during feeding frenzies can create biomolecular building blocks and even power photosynthesis.

The upshot? Far more worlds roaming the Milky Way and beyond could be suitable to life, the researchers speculated.

Continue reading “Voracious Black Holes Could Feed Alien Life on Rogue Worlds” »

Jigang Wang and his collaborators have demonstrated light-induced acceleration of supercurrents, which could enable practical applications of quantum mechanics such as computing, sensing and communicating. Larger image. Image courtesy of Jigang Wang.

AMES, Iowa – Jigang Wang patiently explained his latest discovery in quantum control that could lead to superfast computing based on quantum mechanics: He mentioned light-induced superconductivity without energy gap. He brought up forbidden supercurrent quantum beats. And he mentioned terahertz-speed symmetry breaking.

Quantum physics will bring us even faster computers and tap-proof communication. However, there are still a number of problems to solve before the breakthrough. The prototype of a quantum interface, which was developed at the Institute for Science and Technology (IST) Austria, brings us one step closer to quantum internet. The transfer of information from one quantum computer to another becomes possible.

One problem with quantum computers is that the electronics only function at extremely low temperatures of a few thousands of a degree above absolute zero (−273.15 °C). If the temperature in the computer rises, all information is destroyed. The reason for this is superconductivity – a macroscopic quantum state of materials whose electrical resistance drops abruptly to zero when the temperature drops below the transition temperature. In the case of the quantum computer, these are microwave photons that are extremely sensitive to noise and losses.

This temperature sensitivity currently makes it almost impossible to transfer information from one quantum computer to another. The information would have to pass through an environment with high temperatures it could not survive in.

Where reality is still lagging considerably is in recreating the physical experience of VR. In the movie, the haptic gloves OASIS players wear make them virtual objects almost indistinguishable from real ones. Other characters have even more advanced set-ups, like full-body haptic suits that simulate both pleasure and pain, complicated harnesses and treadmills that allow users to run around and move their bodies just like they would in real life, and even “smell towers.”

But a report released by analysts IDTechX to coincide with the movie’s release suggests the first step towards most of these technologies has already been taken. VR handsets already feature the same kind of rumble packs found in computer game controllers that provide simple haptic feedback in the form of vibrations.

Continue reading “How Big Is the Gap Between ‘Ready Player One’ and Current VR Tech?” »

Oxidation numbers have so far eluded any rigorous quantum mechanical definition. A new SISSA study, published in Nature Physics, provides such a definition based on the theory of topological quantum numbers, which was honored with the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to Thouless, Haldane and Kosterlitz. This result, combined with recent advances in the theory of transport achieved at SISSA, paves the way to an accurate, yet tractable, numerical simulation of a broad class of materials that are important in energy-related technologies and planetary sciences.

Every undergraduate student in the natural sciences learns how to associate an integer oxidation number to a chemical species participating in a reaction. Unfortunately, the very concept of oxidation state has thus far eluded a rigorous quantum mechanical definition, so that no method was known until now to compute oxidation numbers from the fundamental laws of nature, let alone demonstrate that their use in the simulation of charge transport does not spoil the quality of numerical simulations. At the same time, the evaluation of electric currents in ionic conductors, which is required to model their transport properties, is presently based on a cumbersome quantum-mechanical approach that severely limits the feasibility of large-scale computer simulations. Scientists have lately noticed that a simplified model where each atom carries a charge equal to its oxidation number may give results in surprising good agreement with rigorous but much more expensive approaches.

Condensation might ruin a wood coffee table or fog up glasses when entering a warm building on a winter day, but it’s not all inconveniences; the condensation and evaporation cycle has important applications.

Water can be harvested from “thin air,” or separated from salt in desalination plants by way of condensation. Due to the fact condensing droplets take heat with them when they evaporate, it’s also part of the cooling process in the industrial and high-powered computing arenas. Yet when researchers took a look at the newest method of condensation, they saw something strange: When a special type of surface is covered in a thin layer of oil, condensed water droplets seemed to be randomly flying across the surface at high velocities, merging with larger droplets, in patterns not caused by gravity.

“They’re so far apart, in terms of their own, relative dimensions”—the droplets have a diameter smaller than 50 micrometers—” and yet they’re getting pulled, and moving at really high velocities,” said Patricia Weisensee, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.