Lifeboat Foundation

Crystals are defined by their repeating, symmetrical patterns and long-range order. Unlike amorphous materials, in which atoms are randomly packed together, the atoms in a crystal are arranged in a predictable way. Quasicrystals are an exotic exception to this rule. First discovered in 1982, their atoms pack together in an orderly fashion, but in a mosaic-like pattern that doesn’t repeat and can’t be predicted from a small sample.

Being able to map out the position of individual atoms within a quasicrystal is a prerequisite for achieving a complete understanding of their structure and aids in designing them for specific applications, but conventional microscopy techniques don’t have the resolution to accomplish such a task.

In an effort to address this challenge, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan have engineered a quasicrystal that is formed by self-assembling nanoparticles, which are an order of magnitude larger than the atoms that comprise traditional quasicrystals. Their larger size enabled the team to use a suite of microscopy and simulation techniques to deduce, for the first time, the full three-dimensional configuration of a spontaneously formed quasicrystal.

For the first time, an experiment has directly imaged electron orbits in a high-magnetic field, illuminating an unusual collective behavior in electrons and suggesting new ways of manipulating the charged particles.

The study, conducted by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Texas-Austin was published Oct. 21, in the journal Science. The study demonstrates that the electrons, when kept at very low temperatures where their quantum behaviors emerge, can spontaneously begin to travel in identical elliptical paths on the surface of a crystal of bismuth, forming a quantum fluid state. This behavior was anticipated theoretically during the past two decades by researchers from Princeton and other universities.

“This is the first visualization of a quantum fluid of electrons in which interactions between the electrons make them collectively choose orbits with these unusual shapes,” said Ali Yazdani, the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics at Princeton, who led the research.

Continue reading “Unusual quantum liquid on crystal surface could inspire future electronics” »

Alex Bocharov explains why the company is hoping to build qubits out of particles that some scientists think might not even exist.

Could we see this technology offered via subscription as the a new home screening method to check for cancerous polyps or cells in the stomach, colon, or esophagus?

The human intestine is a nearly 8-m-long cache of bacteria, both good and bad. When disease-carrying microbes colonize different sections of the gut, they can cause problems like inflammation and diarrhea. Researchers have now developed tiny, self-propelling, biocompatible robots that could deliver drugs or imaging agents to a targeted section of the intestine (ACS Nano 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b04795). When swallowed, the devices pass through the stomach, travel a preset distance, and embed themselves in the intestinal lining.

A team led by Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang of the University of California, San Diego, created 15-µm-long, 5-µm-wide hollow cylinders made of gold and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene). They filled the tubes with magnesium particles and a fluorescent dye as cargo and then coated them with a pH-sensitive methacrylate-based polymer. The methacrylate coating protects the tubes from the acidic gastric fluid in the stomach, but starts to dissolve in the neutral pH intestinal fluid. By tuning the coating’s thickness, the researchers can control how far the devices travel via natural gut movement before the coating dissolves completely; thicker coatings last longer.

Continue reading “Self-propelling motors could target cargo to the gut” »

Nice.

Scientists in Australia have developed a quantum bit that’s 10 times more stable than existing technologies, and the new record could vastly expand the kinds of calculations quantum computers can perform.

Continue reading “Australian scientists broke a new record for quantum computing stability” »

Ok; USA where are you nowdays?

Scientists have shown they can teleport photons across a city, a development that has been hailed as “a technological breakthrough”.

However, do not expect to see something akin to the Star Trek crew beaming from the planet’s surface to the Starship Enterprise.

Continue reading “Teleportation of light particles across cities in China and Canada a ‘technological breakthrough’” »

Another huge leap forward in mass production of Quantum devices found.

Harnessing solid-state quantum bits, or qubits, is a key step toward the mass production of electronic devices based on quantum information science and technology. However, realizing a robust qubit with a long lifetime is challenging, particularly in semiconductors comprising multiple types of atoms.

The close collaboration between experiments in Prof. David Awschalom’s group and theory and simulations in Prof. Giulia Galli’s group, both in the Institute for Molecular Engineering, has enabled a crucial step toward solid-state qubits in industrially important semiconductors. In a paper, published Sept. 29 in Nature Communications, the two groups showed that electron qubits bound to atom-like defects in a commercial silicon carbide wafer can exhibit the longest electronic coherence times ever measured in a natural crystal.

Continue reading “Exceptionally robust quantum states found in industrially important semiconductor” »

BERLIN — Scientists in Germany have flipped the switch on a 60 million euro ($66 million) machine designed to help determine the mass of the universe’s lightest particle.

The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment, or KATRIN, began tests Friday and is expected to begin making actual measurements next year.

Physicists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology hope the 200-metric-ton (220-ton) device will narrow down or even pinpoint the actual mass of neutrinos.

Continue reading “Experiment to weigh ‘ghost particles’ starts in Germany” »

China’s latest work on QC.

If early mechanical computers were never introduced to expand people’s computing ability, the invention of the atomic bomb would have gone out the window, and human history would have been rewritten.

This highlights the significance of computer simulation in scientists’ exploration of the physical world, which also explains their strong motivation in continuously pursuing higher computing power.

Continue reading “Chinese scientists achieve high-power quantum computing” »