Lifeboat Foundation

Physicists at the University of California, Irvine and elsewhere have fabricated new two-dimensional quantum materials with breakthrough electrical and magnetic attributes that could make them building blocks of future quantum computers and other advanced electronics.

In three separate studies appearing this month in Nature, Science Advances and Nature Materials, UCI researchers and colleagues from UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Princeton University, Fudan University and the University of Maryland explored the physics behind the 2-D states of novel materials and determined they could push computers to new heights of speed and power.

The common threads running through the papers are that the research is conducted at extremely cold temperatures and that the signal carriers in all three studies are not electrons — as with traditional silicon-based technologies — but Dirac or Majorana fermions, particles without mass that move at nearly the speed of light.

Physicists have been testing the properties of new 2D quantum materials that could usurp graphene as the ‘wonder materials’ of the future.

These materials, which can conduct electricity at nearly the speed of light, could replace silicon in the next generation of hyper-speed computers. One could even form the basis of a new “exotic superconductor” that could actually break time-reversal symmetry — or reverse the flow of time.

“Finally, we can take exotic, high-end theories in physics and make something useful,” says one of the researchers, Jing Xia, from the University of California, Irvine.

Continue reading “These New Quantum Materials Can Conduct Electricity at Nearly the Speed of Light” »

We can become cyborgs, computers, or Martians.

This tiny wireless cube has 2TB of storage.

What you do on the Internet is nobody’s business but yours. At ProxySite.com, we stand between your web use and anyone who tries to sneak a peek at it. Instead of connecting directly to a website, let us connect to the website and send it back to you, and no one will know where you’ve been. Big Brother (or other, less ominous snoops) won’t be able to look over your shoulder and spy on you to see what you’re reading, watching or saying.

Researchers have built a primitive microprocessor out of a two-dimensional material similar to graphene, the flexible conductive wonder material that some believe will revolutionize the design and manufacture of batteries, sensors and chips.

With only 115 transistors, their processor isn’t going to top any benchmark rankings, but it’s “a first step towards the development of microprocessors based on 2D semiconductors,” the researchers at Vienna University of Technology said in a paper published in the journal Nature this month.

Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with computers by creating micron-sized devices.

Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke and cancer lesion in about four years, Musk said in an interview with the website Wait But Why on Thursday.

“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview. Neuralink will be Musk’s third company along with Tesla and SpaceX.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s new company wants to link human brains with computers in 4 years” »

The search giant plans to reach a milestone in computing history before the year is out.