Had a great time with my regenerative biology Q&A session with Ayersville (Ohio, USA) Schools 2nd graders and high school advanced anatomy class — so happy to see kids out there that are interested in these topics at such a young age — creating the future, one mind at a time — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_uu9f7nafc
Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, ETH Zurich, and Argonne National Laboratory, U.S, have described an extended quantum Maxwell’s demon, a device locally violating the second law of thermodynamics in a system located 1–5 meters away from the demon. The device could find applications in quantum computers and microscopic refrigerators cooling down tiny objects with pinpoint accuracy. The research was published Dec. 4 in Physical Review B.
The second law says that the entropy — that is, the degree of disorder or randomness — of an isolated system never decreases.
“Our demon causes a device called a qubit to transition into a more orderly state,” explained the study’s lead author Andrey Lebedev of MIPT and ETH Zurich. “Importantly, the demon does not alter the qubit’s energy and acts over a distance that is huge for quantum mechanics.”
More information: Mireia Montes et al, Intracluster light: a luminous tracer for dark matter in clusters of galaxies, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2858, dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2858
Provided by: ESA/Hubble Information Centre.
We’re returning to the Moon, to stay, and nine American companies will work on developing technologies to get there. Watch the latest episode of Watch this Space with NASA’s Administrator Jim Bridenstine to learn how we’re going forward to the lunar surface.
‘’If we are indeed “subjects of unconscious authoring” then continuing to characterise psychological states in terms of being conscious and non-conscious is unhelpful. It constrains the theoretical understanding of psychological processes. ‘’
If consciousness is a by-product of our brains’ nonconscious processes, where does that leave us?
19, marking the first time a science instrument has ever been placed onto the surface of another planet. The lander is set to study the interior of Mars and listen for marsquakes. Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2EDHdXt
Scientists say the underground ecosystems are a “subterranean Galapagos” just waiting to be studied.
This unidentified nematode from the Kopanang gold mine in South Africa lives 1.4 kilometers below the surface. Gaetan Borgonie / Extreme Life Isyensya, Belgium.
https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/
A team of researchers from Austria, Italy and Sweden has successfully demonstrated teleportation using on-demand photons from quantum dots. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group explains how they accomplished this feat and how it applies to future quantum communications networks.
Scientists and many others are very interested in developing truly quantum communications networks—it is believed that such networks will be safe from hacking or eavesdropping due to their very nature. But, as the researchers with this new effort point out, there are still some problems standing in the way. One of these is the difficulty in amplifying quantum signals. One way to get around this problem, they note, is to generate photons on-demand as part of a quantum repeater—this helps to effectively handle the high clock rates. In this new effort, they have done just that, using semiconductor quantum dots.
Prior work surrounding the possibility of using semiconductor quantum dots has shown that it is a feasible way to demonstrate teleportation, but only under certain conditions, none of which allowed for on-demand applications. Because of that, they have not been considered a push-button technology. In this new effort, the researchers overcame this problem by creating quantum dots that were highly symmetrical using an etching method to create the hole pairs in which the quantum dots develop. The process they used was called a XX (biexciton)–X (exciton) cascade. They then employed a dual-pulsed excitation scheme to populate the desired XX state (after two pairs shed photons, they retained their entanglement). Doing so allowed for the production of on-demand single photons suitable for use in teleportation. The dual pulsed excitation scheme was critical to the process, the team notes, because it minimized re-excitation.
