Lifeboat Foundation

From afar, it looks like a steampunk chandelier. An intricate collection of tubes and wires that culminate in a small steel cylinder at the bottom. It is, in fact, one of the most sophisticated quantum computers ever built. The processor inside has 50 quantum bits, or qubits, that process tasks in a (potentially) revolutionary way. Normally, information is created and stored as a series of ones and zeroes. Qubits can represent both values at the same time (known as superposition), which means a quantum computer can theoretically test the two simultaneously. Add more qubits and this hard-to-believe computational power increases.

Last November, IBM unveiled the world’s first 50-qubit quantum computer. It lives in a laboratory, inside a giant white case, with pumps to keep it cool and some traditional computers to manage the tasks or algorithms being initiated. At CES this year, the company brought the innards — the wires and tubes required to send signals to the chip and keep the system cool — so reporters and attendees could better understand how it works. The biggest challenge, IBM Research Vice President Jeffrey Welser told me, is isolating the chip from unwanted “noise.” This includes electrical, magnetic and thermal noise — just the temperature of the room renders the whole machine useless.

Researchers at Princeton University have constructed silicon hardware that can control quantum behaviour between two electrons with extremely high precision.

The team constructed a two qubit gate that controls interactions between the electrons in a way that allows them to act as the qubits necessary for quantum computing. The demonstration of the gate is being seen as an early step in building a more complex quantum computing device from silicon.

The gate was constructed by layering aluminium wires onto a highly ordered silicon crystal. The wires deliver voltages that trap two single electrons, separated by an energy barrier, in a double quantum dot.

Continue reading “Two qubit silicon gate has been created” »

What are some of the things you don’t think machines are ever going to be able to do? Computers are still very weak when it comes to understanding. They can’t process a textbook and use the knowledge the way humans do. But that’s being worked on. There’s no real problem- solving limit to what can be done. Understanding what does it mean in terms of consciousness or anything like that, I know that the software won’t be in that realm at all. But it will be an incredible problem solver.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke with TIME’s Nancy Gibbs about looking forward and what makes him optimistic about the future.

Just a prototype for now.

Intelligent Machines

Intel’s new chips are more brain-like than ever.

The troubled chipmaker is looking to the future of computing.

Continue reading “Intel wants to move beyond today’s architecture, with brain-inspired and quantum chips” »

Internet of Things trends for 2018. Our expert Ahmed Banaf reviews how this tech trend will evolve this year: dat analytics, fog computing and blockchain.

The development of ultra-intense lasers delivering the same power as the entire U.S. power grid has enabled the study of cosmic phenomena such as supernovae and black holes in earthbound laboratories. Now, a new method developed by computational astrophysicists at the University of Chicago allows scientists to analyze a key characteristic of these events: their powerful and complex magnetic fields.

In the field of high-energy density physics, or HEDP, scientists study a wide range of astrophysical objects—stars, supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies and galaxy clusters—with laboratory experiments as small as a penny and lasting only a few billionths of a second. By focusing powerful lasers on a carefully designed target, researchers can produce plasmas that reproduce conditions observed by astronomers in our sun and distant galaxies.

Planning these complex and expensive experiments requires large-scale, high-fidelity computer simulation beforehand. Since 2012, the Flash Center for Computational Science of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UChicago has provided the leading open computer code, called FLASH, for these HEDP simulations, enabling researchers to fine-tune experiments and develop analysis methods before execution at sites such as the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the OMEGA Laser Facility in Rochester, N.Y.

Continue reading “Computational astrophysics team uncloaks magnetic fields of cosmic events” »

A team from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics in Australia have demonstrated how to rigorously test if pairs of photons — particles of light — display Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”, even under adverse conditions that mimic those outside the lab.

They demonstrated that the effect, also known as quantum nonlocality, can still be verified even when many of the photons are lost by absorption or scattering as they travel from source to destination through an optical fiber channel. The experimental study and techniques are published in the journal Science Advances.

Quantum nonlocality is important in the development of new global quantum information networks, which will have transmission security guaranteed by the laws of physics. These are the networks where powerful quantum computers can be linked.

The technology underpinning the new bionic hand was developed in 2014, but at the time, the equipment necessary to support it was so big the prosthetic limb could not leave the lab.

For Dennis Aabo Sorensen, who lost his hand in 2004 in a firecracker explosion, regaining the experience of touch was “fantastic.” He told CattolicaNews that “being able to feel different textures, understanding whether objects were hard or soft and how I was holding them was just incredible.”

Researchers found that Dennis was able to distinguish between a hard, soft or medium object in 78 percent of cases. In 88 percent of cases, he could correctly describe the size and shape of specific objects such as a baseball, a glass, and a tangerine. Three years later, Almerina has been given the same ability just by carrying a small computer in a backpack.

Continue reading “Scientists Unveil the First Portable Bionic Hand With a Sense of Touch” »