Lifeboat Foundation

Another reason why we must look at all avenues of progress in Quantum. This particular discovery enriches many areas of material enrichment, QC (communications and information processing), etc. Limiting QC to only alerts from Google or maybe 1 other vendor is truly a mistake.

An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of several previously unknown types of quantum particles in materials. The particles — which belong to the class of particles known as fermions — can be distinguished by several intrinsic properties, such as their responses to applied magnetic and electric fields. In several cases, fermions in the interior of the material show their presence on the surface via the appearance of electron states called Fermi arcs, which link the different types of fermion states in the material’s bulk.

The research, published online this week in the journal Science, was conducted by a team at Princeton University in collaboration with researchers at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) in Spain and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Germany. The investigators propose that many of the materials hosting the new types of fermions are “protected metals,” which are metals that do not allow, in most circumstances, an insulating state to develop. This research represents the newest avenue in the physics of “topological materials,” an area of science that has already fundamentally changed the way researchers see and interpret states of matter.

The team at Princeton included Barry Bradlyn and Jennifer Cano, both associate research scholars at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science; Zhijun Wang, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics, Robert Cava, the Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry; and B. Andrei Bernevig, associate professor of physics. The research team also included Maia Vergniory, a postdoctoral research fellow at DIPC, and Claudia Felser, a professor of physics and chemistry and director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids.

Inspired by the Allegory of the Cave from Plato, till today’s quantum physics and multiverse theories, a visual essay about perception and knowledge as reflection of our reality.

visualsuspect.co

Continue reading “The Allegory of the Cave” »

Nice and a big deal.

[Via Satellite 07-21-2016] Space Systems Loral (SSL) has received $20.7 million from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and build robotic arm flight hardware for the first phase of the agency’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program. SSL is receiving the funds through MDA US Systems, a division of MDA that SSL manages, and is working with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which is the prime contractor managing the program.

The contract calls for two complete robotic arm systems capable of capturing and berthing with satellites that were not previously designed for docking. The robotic arms would each have multiple joints enabling dexterous movement, with the ability to carry and use multiple generic and mission-specific tools. Building on contracts SSL received in both 2012 and 2013 for prior DARPA research into space robotics, the total contract value awarded now stands at more than $40 million. The contract could grow further if all remaining options are exercised.

Continue reading “DARPA Increases SSL Funding for Robotic Satellite Servicing Technology” »

Tech now really moving into the clouds.

Although the world is increasingly connected through the internet, there are still four billion people or 60% of the world’s population who do not have such access. 1.6 billion of those people live in remote locations and do not have access to mobile broadband networks. Facebook Connectivity Lab just announced the first full-scale test flight of Aquila, a solar-powered airplane that can be used to bring affordable internet to isolated areas.

Aquila is a high-altitude, long-endurance, unmanned solar-powered airplane. It has a wingspan bigger than a Boeing 737 airplane but weighs hundreds of times less due to its carbon fiber frame. Many of the team members who contributed to the craft had previous experience at at NASA, Boeing, DARPA, Northrop Grumman, and the British Royal Air Force.

Continue reading “Facebook Heads For The Clouds With Its Internet-Streaming, Solar-Powered Aquila Drone” »

New research funded by Facebook suggests that a new development in laser-receiving technology could bring internet access to more places.

Building bio/ living computers in cells to combat diseases such as cancer, etc. as well as advance our evolution track towards sincularity.

Chemically hacking bacterial DNA allows for a whole new world of biological computation.

Another major leap forward in controlling system noise in QC.

A breakthrough into the full characterisation of quantum states has been published today as a Editors’ Suggestion in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The full characterisation (tomography) of quantum states is a necessity for future quantum computing. However, standard techniques are inadequate for the large quantum bit-strings necessary in full scale quantum computers.

Continue reading “Researchers make leap in measuring quantum states” »

Good for USC.

Following a recent upgrade, the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) based at the USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is now the leader in quantum processing capacity.

With the upgrade — to 1,098 qubits from 512 — the D-Wave 2X™ processor is enabling QCC researchers to continue their efforts to close the gap between academic research in quantum computation and real-world critical problems.

Continue reading “World’s most powerful quantum computer now online at USC” »

Another spin on spin in QC.

Monitoring electron spins for a prolonged time period poses to be a major barrier in quantum computing. Scientists from EPFL have discovered the possibility of carbon nanospheres to overcome such barriers, even at room temperature.