What if you could control a device, not with your hand, but with your mind? Physician and entrepreneur Tom Oxley talks about the implantable brain-computer interface that can change the way we think.
Madhumita Murgia Hi, my name is Madhumita Murgia, and I’m one of the presenters of Tech Tonic. We’re looking for some feedback from our listeners about the show. So if you have a second, please fill out our brief listener survey, which you can find at ft.com/techtonicsurvey.
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In this season of Tech Tonic, we’ve been talking about quantum computers and why some people think they’re so revolutionary. But so far we’ve mainly talked about the things quantum computers can do, or at least what they might be able to do in the future that makes them so groundbreaking: performing calculations that should take centuries in minutes, cracking the unbreakable codes of the internet, dramatically speeding up the development of new drugs and materials. But what we haven’t done yet is look at why they’re able to do these things. What’s going on inside a quantum computer that makes them so extraordinary, so completely different to any computer that’s come before.
Physicists at Delft University of Technology have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision—for example, underwater or for medical imaging.
Because the technology uses sound vibrations instead of light, it is useful for high-precision position measurements in opaque materials. The instrument could lead to new techniques to monitor the Earth’s climate and human health. The work is now published in Nature Communications.
The microchip mainly consists of a thin ceramic sheet that is shaped like a trampoline. This trampoline is patterned with holes to enhance its interaction with lasers and has a thickness about 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a hair. As a former Ph.D. candidate in Richard Norte’s lab, Matthijs de Jong studied the small trampolines to figure out what would happen if they pointed a simple laser beam at them.
This appears to be the year that IBM’s Quantum Computing program reaches the tipping point. IBM and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation just announced the first deployment of an onsite, private sector, IBM-managed quantum computer in the United States. However, beyond the placement of a 127-qubit IBM Eagle quantum processor in a cafeteria at Cleveland Clinic’s main campus, this announcement signals a major leap forward for quantum computing applications.
Of course, the most immediate question is, why install a quantum computer in a cafeteria? Although this may seem like a frivolous question, it gets to a major point of this article. The IBM Eagle class quantum processor has been installed in a highly visible location in the Cleveland Clinic so that biomedical researchers and physicians can start thinking about the most productive ways to use this resource. These are very early days for the development of quantum computing applications, so installing the IBM Eagle quantum processor in the cafeteria, visited daily by nearly everyone working at the Cleveland Clinic, seems like an extremely creative way of keeping the machine ever present in the minds of people working at the facility.
Dr Lara Jehi, who became Cleveland Clinic’s first Chief Research Information Officer in 2020, said that there are many areas of interest in medical research with computational ceilings that block further advances. Quantum processing may help break through those ceilings. Researchers at Cleveland Clinic, working with IBM data scientists, combed through the possible avenues for research, discipline by discipline, to identify the projects most likely to bear fruit when matched to quantum processing’s current capabilities. “Quantum is still a nascent technology,” said Jehi.
“We have taken a vital first step towards harnessing quantum light for practical use.”
Scientists have for the first time shown that they can control and distinguish tiny quantities of interacting photons — or packets of light energy — with high correlation, according to a study published in Nature.
Harnessing quantum light for practical use.
Continue reading “Scientists ‘control’ quantum light for the first time, achieving landmark” »
Dark matter does not emit or reflect light, nor does it interact with electromagnetic forces, making it exceptionally difficult to detect. Nevertheless, a research team from The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) has proven that there is a substantial amount of dark matter surrounding black holes. The study results are published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The team selected two nearby black holes (A0620-00 and XTE J1118+480) as research subjects, with both considered as binary systems. That is, each of the black holes has a companion star orbiting it. Based on the orbits of the companion stars, observations indicate that their rates of orbital decay are approximately one millisecond (1ms) per year, which is about 50 times greater than the theoretical estimation of about 0.02ms annually.
To examine whether dark matter exists around black holes, the EdUHK team applied the “dark matter dynamical friction model”—a theory widely held in academia—to the two chosen binary systems, through computer simulations. The team found that the fast orbital decay of the companion stars precisely matches the data observed.
Quantum ‘turnout’ device has a switching speed four to five orders of magnitude faster than that of current solid-state transistors.
Year 2016 This is a simple set up for running an electric engine without wires with a tesla coil.
This is a small demonstration showing how Tesla’s wireless technology can run motors and other various devices. Although the setup is only using about 500–600 ma, the results are dependable up to about three feet from the transmitter.
John.
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Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman want to live forever, here’s how they’re planning on doing it and what it could mean for society.
First ‘long form’ video I have made in awhile. Very excited to get back into it and play around with different ways of styles and editing. Excited to hear what you guys think!
