Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2017 A magnonic holographic matrix could be used to essentially treat the water in a solid-state way.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have applied quantum techniques to understanding the electrolysis of water, which is the application of an electric current to H₂O to produce the constituent elements hydrogen and oxygen.

They found that electrons can ‘tunnel’ through barriers in aqueous solutions away from the electrodes, neutralising ions of impurities in that water. This can be detected in changes in current, which has applications for biosensing, the detection of biological elements in solution.

Continue reading “Quantum tunnelling in water opens the way to improved biosensing” »

O.o.

A physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has performed calculations showing hollow spherical bubbles filled with a gas of positronium atoms are stable in liquid helium.

The calculations take scientists a step closer to realizing a gamma-ray laser, which may have applications in medical imaging, spacecraft propulsion, and cancer treatment.

Continue reading “Gamma-ray laser moves a step closer to reality” »

Ok… which one of y’all is this?

UPDATE 3: The man reportedly told bomb squad that he sustained “radio frequency burns” while working on a “quantum physics generator” in his garage, according to Battalion Chief Steve Martin, the Columbus Division of Fire spokesman, speaking to the Columbus Dispatch.

“We have no reason to believe that he was trying to make anything that would do anyone any harm,” Martin added.

Continue reading “BREAKING: Bomb Squad Investigating Report of a Possible Small Nuclear Reactor Inside a Garage in Columbus, Ohio” »

Superconducting circuits, which have zero electrical resistance, could enable the development of electronic components that are significantly more energy-efficient than most chips used today. Importantly, superconducting circuits rely on an electronic element known as the Josephson junction, which allows them to manipulate quantum information and mediate photon interactions. While past studies have tried to enhance the performance and coherence of Josephson circuits, so far, the most promising results in terms of photon lifetimes were achieved in microwave cavities.

A team of researchers at Princeton University, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago have directly operated an oscillator using a stimulated Josephson nonlinearity. In their paper, published in Nature Physics, the team achieved quantum control of an oscillator by operating it as an isolated two-level system, tailoring its Hilbert space.

“Our research was motivated by the ongoing effort in the superconducting circuits community to engineer highly coherent qubits for quantum information,” Prof. Andrew Houck, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “There has been enormous progress in designing linear microwave resonators that can outperform the coherence of conventional superconducting qubits.”

Entropy is the physicist’s magic word, invoked to answer to some of the biggest questions in cosmology. Yet a quantum rethink may be needed to tell us what it actually is.

Amazon Web Services is offering access to quantum computers so developers can tinker around.

Physicists find hints that entanglement explains Einstein’s equations for gravity.

What – one vast, ancient and mysterious universe isn’t enough for you? Well, as it happens, there are others. Among physicists, it’s not controversial. Our universe is but one in an unimaginably massive ocean of universes called the multiverse.

If that concept isn’t enough to get your head around, physics describes different kinds of multiverse. The easiest one to comprehend is called the cosmological multiverse. The idea here is that the universe expanded at a mind-boggling speed in the fraction of a second after the big bang. During this period of inflation, there were quantum fluctuations which caused separate bubble universes to pop into existence and themselves start inflating and blowing bubbles. Russian physicist Andrei Linde came up with this concept, which suggests an infinity of universes no longer in any causal connection with one another – so free to develop in different ways.

Cosmic space is big – perhaps infinitely so. Travel far enough and some theories suggest you’d meet your cosmic twin – a copy of you living in a copy of our world, but in a different part of the multiverse. String theory, which is a notoriously theoretical explanation of reality, predicts a frankly meaninglessly large number of universes, maybe 10 to the 500 or more, all with slightly different physical parameters.

An intelligence startup warns that China is exploiting Western quantum scientists for military ends. The evidence is thin, but tensions are rising.