Lifeboat Foundation

Watch the full documentary on TUBI (free w/ads):
https://tubitv.com/movies/613341/consciousness-evolution-of-the-mind.

IMDb-accredited film, rated TV-PG
Director: Alex Vikoulov.
Narrator: Forrest Hansen.
Copyright © 2021 Ecstadelic Media Group, Burlingame, California, USA

Continue reading “Towards The Cybernetic Theory of Mind | Part V of Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind Documentary” »

Quantum computers, machines that leverage quantum states to perform computations and store data, could soon revolutionize the computing industry, achieving significantly greater speeds and performance than existing computers. While countless companies worldwide, including Google and IBM as well as smaller start-ups, have started working on quantum technologies, the exact architecture that will lead to their mass production remains unclear.

Researchers at Leibniz University Hannover have recently conducted a theoretical study investigating the possibility of realizing flying-qubit gates for quantum computers that are insensitive to the wave shapes of photons, and also fully preserve these shapes during processing. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, could serve as the basis for the development of new gates that can process entangled photonic wave packets more effectively than unentangled ones.

“There are several candidate architectures for the development of quantum technology, including superconductors, ion traps, solid state, optical, and so on,” Ihar Babushkin, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “Regardless of what architecture we consider, photons, the quanta of light, will play an important role, since in almost all architectures the mediators between quantum information bits (qubits) are photons.”

Miniaturization lies at the heart of countless technological advances. It is undeniable that as devices and their building blocks get smaller, we manage to unlock new functionalities and come up with unprecedented applications. However, with more and more scientists delving into materials with structures on the atomic scale, the gaps in our current understanding of nanomaterial physics are becoming more prominent.

For instance, the nanomaterial’s surface represents one such knowledge gap. This is because the influence of surface quantum effects becomes much more apparent when the surface-to-volume ratio of a material is high. In nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), a current hot topic in research, the physical properties of the nanomaterials greatly differ from their bulk counterparts when their size is reduced to a few atoms. A solid understanding of the mechanical properties of nanowires and nanocontacts—integral components of NEMS—is essential for advancing this technology. But, measuring them has proven a challenging task.

Against this backdrop, a research team from Japan recently achieved an unprecedented feat when they managed to precisely measure the elastic modulus of gold nanocontacts stretched down to a few atoms. The study, published in Physical Review Letters, was led by Prof. Yoshifumi Oshima of Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST). The rest of the team included post-doctoral research fellow Jiaqi Zhang and Professor Masahiko Tomitori from JAIST, and Professor Toyoko Arai of Kanazawa University.

Despite being widely used in numerous catalytic applications, our understanding of reactive surface sites of high-surface-area γ-Al2O3 remains limited to date. Recent contributions have pointed toward the potential role of highly reactive edge sites contained in the high-field signal (−0.5 to 0 ppm) of the 1H NMR spectrum of γ-Al2O3 materials. This work combines the development of well-defined, needle-shaped γ-Al2O3 nanocrystals having a high relative fraction of edge sites with the use of state-of-the-art solid-state NMR to significantly deepen our understanding of this specific signal. We are able to resolve two hydroxyl sites with distinct isotropic chemical shifts of −0.2 and −0.4 ppm and different positions within the dipole–dipole network from 1H–1H single-quantum double-quantum NMR.

Chemical biology professor, Suyang Xu, works to crack the secrets of new states of matter.

Throughout human history, most of our efforts to store information, from knots and oracle bones to bamboo markings and the written word, boil down to two techniques: using characters or shapes to represent information. Today, huge amounts of information are stored on silicon wafers with zeros and ones, but a new material at the border of quantum chemistry and quantum physics could enable vast improvements in storage.

Continue reading “This scientist is unlocking the potential of quantum technologies. Here’s how” »

If the W’s excess heft relative to the standard theoretical prediction can be independently confirmed, the finding would imply the existence of undiscovered particles or forces and would bring about the first major rewriting of the laws of quantum physics in half a century.

“This would be a complete change in how we see the world,” potentially even rivaling the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson in significance, said Sven Heinemeyer, a physicist at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid who is not part of CDF. “The Higgs fit well into the previously known picture. This one would be a completely new area to be entered.”

The finding comes at a time when the physics community hungers for flaws in the Standard Model of particle physics, the long-reigning set of equations capturing all known particles and forces. The Standard Model is known to be incomplete, leaving various grand mysteries unsolved, such as the nature of dark matter. The CDF collaboration’s strong track record makes their new result a credible threat to the Standard Model.

Physicists are using quantum math to understand what happens when black holes collide. In a surprise, they’ve shown that a single particle can describe a collision’s entire gravitational wave.

Today at the Quark Matter 2022 conference, the ATLAS Collaboration announced the observation of tau-lepton pairs created when particles of light – or photons – interact during lead-ion collisions. The result opens a new avenue for measuring how magnetic the tau lepton is – a property sensitive to new particles beyond the Standard Model.

In everyday life, two crossing beams of light follow the rules of classical electrodynamics and do not deflect, absorb or disrupt one another. But, in quantum electrodynamics, things are different. Lead ions accelerated to high energy by the LHC are surrounded by an enormous flux of photons. For a short moment, these photons can interact and transform into a particle–antiparticle pair, such as a pair of tau leptons. These interactions are called ultra-peripheral collisions, which ATLAS physicists used to observe light-by-light scattering in 2019.

Rather than colliding head-on at the centre of the ATLAS detector, the accelerated lead ions pass by each other unscathed. This provides a uniquely clean environment for physicists to study collisions of photons into a pair of tau leptons. Further, the rate of tau-lepton creation scales to the fourth power of the number of protons in the ion, which is 82 for lead.

The 2021 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap has identified priorities for future investment in Australia’s national research infrastructure.