Lifeboat Foundation

Quantum computing, though still in its early days, has the potential to dramatically increase processing power by harnessing the strange behavior of particles at the smallest scales. Some research groups have already reported performing calculations that would take a traditional supercomputer thousands of years. In the long term, quantum computers could provide unbreakable encryption and simulations of nature beyond today’s capabilities.

A UCLA-led interdisciplinary research team including collaborators at Harvard University has now developed a fundamentally new strategy for building these computers. While the current state of the art employs circuits, semiconductors and other tools of electrical engineering, the team has produced a game plan based in chemists’ ability to custom-design atomic building blocks that control the properties of larger molecular structures when they’re put together.

The findings, published last week in Nature Chemistry, could ultimately lead to a leap in quantum processing power.

Scientists may have just tracked down the source of some mysterious infrared glows detected emanating from stars and clouds of interstellar dust and gas.

These Unidentified Infrared Emission (UIE) bands have baffled scientists for decades; according to a theoretical new work, at least some of these bands can be produced by highly ionized buckminsterfullerene, more commonly known as buckyballs.

“I am extremely honored to have played a part in the astonishingly complex quantum chemistry investigations undertaken by Dr Sadjadi that have led to these very exciting results,” said astrophysicist Quentin Parker of Hong Kong University’s Laboratory for Space Research.

Basically what this article says that schizophrenia is hard to pin down on the actual source of the symptoms so as of now the dsm 5 has it as a illness type but it is no longer on the dsm 5 essentially. This can relieve the stigma relating to it because it’s actually source of the disease is still not truly know. There are still medications for it but the actual source seems to be kinda unknown as it seems like other diseases aswell.

As human beings and scientists, we can think about phenomena in terms of categories and continuities. The distinction between light “particles” and “waves,” discovered by 20th-century quantum mechanics, is a case in point. Just as the particle-wave duality necessitated revisions in the understanding of the basic concepts and fundamental methods of theoretical physics, the revolution in psychiatric classification seems to bring with it the end of the fixed and fateful category of schizophrenia.

Still, most clinicians agree that some individuals do experience delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech that make them sound irrational. They attest that they have seen individuals who clearly exhibit disorganized or catatonic behavior, flat affect, or the failure to maintain basic self-care. Yet a growing number of psychiatrists maintain that, as a presumed disease entity, as an identifiable state, with clear subtypes, schizophrenia simply does not “exist.” Some consider schizophrenia no more than an “end stage” of other untreated mental disorders (in the same way that heart failure is the terminal stage of various heart diseases); others propose to abolish the diagnosis altogether.

A roadmap for the future direction of quantum simulation has been set out in a paper co-authored at the University of Strathclyde.

Quantum computers are hugely powerful devices with a capacity for speed and calculation which is well beyond the reach of classical, or binary, computing. Instead of a binary system of zeroes and ones, it operates through superpositions, which may be zeroes, ones or both at the same time.

The continuously-evolving development of quantum computing has reached the point of having an advantage over classical computers for an artificial problem. It could have future applications in a wide range of areas. One promising class of problems involves the simulation of quantum systems, with potential applications such as developing materials for batteries, industrial catalysis and nitrogen fixing.

Though the EmDrive might be impossible, engineers are still working on it as the payoff would be enormous if it did work.

Imagine an engine that needs no propellant. It sounds impossible, and it most likely is.

That’s not stopping one NASA engineer from testing theories around the EmDrive — a conceptual “helical” engine that could defy the laws of physics and create forward thrust without fuel.

Continue reading “NASA Engineer Says Physics-defying Engine Could Go 99% the Speed of Light” »

Atoms are notoriously difficult to control. They zigzag like fireflies, tunnel out of the strongest containers and jitter even at temperatures near absolute zero.

Nonetheless, scientists need to trap and manipulate single atoms in order for quantum devices, such as atomic clocks or quantum computers, to operate properly. If individual atoms can be corralled and controlled in large arrays, they can serve as quantum bits, or qubits—tiny discrete units of information whose state or orientation may eventually be used to carry out calculations at speeds far greater than the fastest supercomputer.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), together with collaborators from JILA—a joint institute of the University of Colorado and NIST in Boulder—have for the first time demonstrated that they can trap single atoms using a novel miniaturized version of “optical tweezers”—a system that grabs atoms using a laser beam as chopsticks.

Tech giants including Alphabet and IBM are racing toward building a quantum computer, and financial firms including JPMorgan are exploring possible uses.

Peer long enough into the heavens, and the Universe starts to resemble a city at night. Galaxies take on characteristics of streetlamps cluttering up neighborhoods of dark matter, linked by highways of gas that run along the shores of intergalactic nothingness.

This map of the Universe was preordained, laid out in the tiniest of shivers of quantum physics moments after the Big Bang launched into an expansion of space and time some 13.8 billion years ago.

Yet exactly what those fluctuations were, and how they set in motion the physics that would see atoms pool into the massive cosmic structures we see today is still far from clear.

Quantum entanglement is one of the most fundamental and intriguing phenomena in nature. Recent research on entanglement has proven to be a valuable resource for quantum communication and information processing. Now, scientists from Japan have discovered a stable quantum entangled state of two protons on a silicon surface, opening doors to an organic union of classical and quantum computing platforms and potentially strengthening the future of quantum technology.

One of the most interesting phenomena in quantum mechanics is “quantum entanglement.” This phenomenon describes how certain particles are inextricably linked, such that their states can only be described with reference to each other. This particle interaction also forms the basis of quantum computing. And this is why, in recent years, physicists have looked for techniques to generate entanglement. However, these techniques confront a number of engineering hurdles, including limitations in creating large number of “qubits” (quantum bits, the basic unit of quantum information), the need to maintain extremely low temperatures (1 K), and the use of ultrapure materials. Surfaces or interfaces are crucial in the formation of quantum entanglement. Unfortunately, electrons confined to surfaces are prone to “decoherence,” a condition in which there is no defined phase relationship between the two distinct states.