Lifeboat Foundation

Novel materials could revolutionize computer technology. Research conducted by scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI using the Swiss Light Source SLS has reached an important milestone along this path.

Microchips are made from silicon and work on the physical principle of a semiconductor. Nothing has changed here since the first transistor was invented in 1947 in the Bell Labs in America. Ever since, researchers have repeatedly foretold the end of the silicon era—but have always been wrong.

Silicon technology is very much alive, and continues to develop at a rapid pace. The IT giant IBM has just announced the first microprocessor whose transistor structures only measure two nanometers, equivalent to 20 adjacent atoms. So what’s next? Even tinier structures? Presumably so—for this decade, at least.

Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research via Chris Adami, Paul Davies, AIP Advances, EurekaAlert and University of Portsmouth

“Information,” wrote Arizona State University astrophysicist Paul Davies in an email to The Daily Galaxy, “is a concept that is both abstract and mathematical. It lies at the foundation of both biology and physics.”

Continue reading “Is Information the Fifth State of Matter in the Universe?” »

Today’s stories include Why a Puzzling New Image Of Jupiter Could Help Us Find Life Beyond Earth to Scientists Test Einstein’s Relativity On A Cosmological Scale…

Terahertz (THz) radiation is electromagnetic radiation ranging from frequencies of 0.1 THz to 10 THz, with wavelengths between 30μm and 3mm. Reliably detecting this radiation could have numerous valuable applications in security, product inspection, and quality control.

For instance, THz detectors could allow law enforcement agents to uncover potential weapons on humans or in luggage more reliably. It could also be used to monitor natural environments without damaging them or to assess the quality of food, cosmetics and other products.

Recent studies introduced several devices and solutions for detecting terahertz radiation. While a few of them achieved promising results, their performance in terms of sensitivity, speed, bandwidth and operating temperature is often limited. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Minnesota, and other institutes in the United States and South Korea recently developed a new camera that can reliably detect THz radiation at room temperature, while also characterizing its so-called polarization states. This camera, introduced in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, is based on widely available complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS), enhanced using quantum dots (i.e., nm-sized semiconductor particles with advantageous optoelectronic properties).

Scientists with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed a method that helps to fine-tune the control of particles using ultrasonic waves according to new research, which they say expands our understanding of the field of acoustic levitation.

The levitation of objects, once a phenomenon seen only in science fiction and fantasy, now represents a field in acoustics with practical applications in multiple research areas, industries, and even among hobbyists. However, the use of high-intensity sound waves to suspend small objects in the air is nothing new. The theoretical basis for overcoming gravity with the help of acoustic radiation pressure goes as far back as the 1930s, when researcher Louis King first studied the suspension of particles in the field of a sound wave, and how this demonstrates acoustic radiation force being exerted against them.

Later calculations beginning in the 1950s helped to further refine our understanding of the acoustic radiation force produced by the scattering of sound waves. However, the modern foundation for acoustic levitation science draws mainly from the work of superconductivity pioneer Lev. P. Gorkov, who was the first to synthesize previous studies and provide a solid mathematical basis for the phenomenon.

Researchers used deep reinforcement learning to steer atoms into a lattice shape, with a view to building new materials or nanodevices.

In a very cold vacuum chamber, single atoms of silver form a star-like lattice. The precise formation is not accidental, and it wasn’t constructed directly by human hands either. Researchers used a kind of artificial intelligence called deep reinforcement learning to steer the atoms, each a fraction of a nanometer in size, into the lattice shape. The process is similar to moving marbles around a Chinese checkers board, but with very tiny tweezers grabbing and dragging each atom into place.

The main application for deep reinforcement learning is in robotics, says postdoctoral researcher I-Ju Chen. “We’re also building robotic arms with deep learning, but for moving atoms,” she explains. “Reinforcement learning is successful in things like playing chess or video games, but we’ve applied it to solve technical problems at the nanoscale.”

This research could potentially lead to a better understanding of the galaxy and its many mysteries.

It’s a cosmic riddle: How can galaxies remain together when all the matter we observe isn’t enough to keep them intact? Scientists believe an invisible force must beat play, something so mysterious they named it “dark matter” because of its lack of visibility.

This mysterious presence accounts for nearly three times more than what we can observe — a startling 27% of all existence! The mysterious dark matter is a profound mystery to scientists, its existence making up nearly one-third of the universe’s energy and mass yet remaining elusive due to its ability to avoid detection.

Continue reading “Researchers plan to use quantum computers in search for dark matter” »

After recombining the superposed photons by sending them through another crystal, the team measured the photon polarization across a number of repeated experiments. They found a quantum interference pattern, a pattern of light and dark stripes that could exist only if the photon had been split and was moving in both time directions.

“The superposition of processes we realized is more akin to an object spinning clockwise and counter-clockwise at the same time,” Strömberg said. The researchers created their time-flipped photon out of intellectual curiosity, but follow-up experiments showed that time flips can be paired with reversible logic gates to enable simultaneous computation in either direction, thus opening the way for quantum processors with greatly enhanced processing power.

Theoretical possibilities also sprout from the work. A future theory of quantum gravity, which would unite general relativity and quantum mechanics, should include particles of mixed time orientations like the one in this experiment, and could enable the researchers to peer into some of the universe’s most mysterious phenomena.

The concept of ‘anti-realism’ is widely seen as a fact of life for many physicists studying the mysterious effects of quantum mechanics. However, it also seems to contradict the assumptions of many other fields of research. In his research, Dr William Sulis at McMaster University in Canada explores the issue from a new perspective, by using a novel mathematical toolset named the ‘process algebra model’. In suggesting that reality itself is generated by interacting processes more fundamental than quantum particles, his theories could improve researchers’ understanding of fundamental processes in a wide variety of fields.

The concept of ‘locality’ states that objects and processes can only be influenced by other objects and processes in their immediate surroundings. It is a fundamental aspect of many fields of research and underpins all of the most complex systems we observe in nature, including living organisms. “Biologists and psychologists have known for centuries that the physical world is dominated by processes which are characterized by factors including transformation, interdependence, and information”, Dr Sulis explains. “Organisms are born, develop, continually exchange physical components and information with their environment, and eventually die.”

Beyond biology, the principle of locality also extends to Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Since the speed of light sets a fundamental speed limit on all processes in the universe, the theory states that no process can occur if it has not been triggered by another event in its past, at a close enough distance for light to travel between them within the time separating them. In general, these theories are unified by a concept which physicists call ‘realism’. Yet despite this seemingly intuitive rule, physicists have increasingly come to accept the idea that it doesn’t present a full description of how all processes unfold.