Lifeboat Foundation

The oldest space dust yet found on Earth suggests that the ancient atmosphere of Earth had significantly more oxygen than previously thought, a new study finds.

Although oxygen gas currently makes up about one-fifth of Earth’s air, there was at least 100,000 times less oxygen in the primordial atmosphere, researchers say. Oxygen easily reacts with other molecules, which means it readily gets bound to other elements and pulled from the atmosphere.

Previous research suggests that significant levels of oxygen gas started permanently building up in the atmosphere with the Great Oxidation Event, which occurred about 2.4 billion years ago. This event was most likely caused by cyanobacteria — microbes that, like plants, photosynthesize and release oxygen. [Infographic: Earth’s Atmosphere Top to Bottom].

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So, IBM is giving grant money to A&S to build a Quantum Computer. Hmmm; so IBM announced they had a Quantum Computer and computing services via cloud. Guessing IBM has a pseudo version of QC given this move.

A physicist in the College of Arts and Sciences has been awarded a major grant to help develop quantum computing technology.

Britton Plourde, associate professor of physics, is using a three-year, $900,000 grant from IBM to conduct research for the LogiQ Program. LogiQ is part of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), based in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Continue reading “A&S Physicist Awarded IBM Grant to Develop Quantum Computing” »

I am glad that D. Whyte recognizes “If quantum computers are developed faster than anticipated, certification would mandate insecure modules, given the time to approve and implement new quantum resistant algorithms. Worse, it is conceivable that data encrypted by a certified module is more vulnerable than data encrypted by a non-certified module that has the option of using a quantum-safe encryption algorithm.”

Because many of us who are researching and developing in this space have seen the development pace accelerated this year and what was looking like we’re 10 years away is now looking like we’re less than 7 years.

Dr. William Whyte, Chief Scientist for Security Innovation, a cybersecurity provider and leader in the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Awareness Training, will be presenting at the Fourth International Cryptographic Module Conference in Ottawa, Ontario.

QC will change many industries and even some fortunes as well. So, no wonders Canada & Australia both deem it as a priority.

Mike Lazaridis, founder of Blackberry Limited and the visionary who led the establishment of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo and Quantum Valley Investments, delivered a keynote address highlighting the Quantum Valley model in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada and the emphasis both federal and provincial governments have placed on the development of quantum technologies.

The Quantum Europe conference comes at a time when large scale investments from tech companies and governments around the world, including in Canada, are being made as part of the “Second Quantum Revolution” – a new global industry fueled by the commercialization of new transformative quantum technologies.

Continue reading “QC will change many industries and even some fortunes as well” »

Australian physicists’ team has developed a new research assistant to carry out experiments in quantum mechanics in an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm form, which quickly took control of the experiment, learned the job tasks and even innovated. In a statement, co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Physics and Engineering, said he didn’t expect that the machine would be able to conduct the experiment itself from scratch within an hour.

He added that in case a simple computer program had been used, it would have taken much more time than the age of the universe to go through all the combinations and work on it.

Scientists were looking forward to reconstruct an experiment that was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, which included very cold gas trapped in a laser beam called a Bose-Einstein condensate.

Continue reading “AI Research Tool Runs Experiment that won 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics” »

US Navy paying D-Wave to train them on QC.

A division of the U.S. Navy intends to pay Canadian company D-Wave $11 million to learn how to use its quantum computing infrastructure, according to a federal filing posted online on Monday.

The unit seeking this training is the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, known as SPAWAR or SSC-PAC for short, which is headquartered in San Diego and has previously researched amphibious throwable robots, unmanned aerial vehicles, virtual reality, and many other technologies. The filing does not actually cover the cost of quantum computing hardware. But NASA has been allowing SPAWAR scientists to learn how to use the D-Wave machine that it operates with Google at the NASA Ames Research Center, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported last month.

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New and improve fuel cells.

Fuel cells, which generate electricity from chemical reactions without harmful emissions, have the potential to power everything from cars to portable electronics, and could be cleaner and more efficient than combustion engines. Abstract: Fuel cells, which generate electricity from chemical reactions without harmful emissions, have the potential to power everything from cars to portable electronics, and could be cleaner and more efficient than combustion engines.

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with members from several institutions in the U.S. and one in Germany has proposed the idea of using an extremely small compass needle to build an ultrasensitive magnetometer. In their paper published in Physical Review Letters, the team describes their idea and the possibility of such a device actually being built.

Current magnetometers are very sensitive, able to detect levels of magnetism that are approximately a trillion times less than that of the Earth’s magnetic field. They achieve this feat by taking advantage of the wobble that occurs when an atom is placed in a magnetic field—such magnetometers are made by placing cells of atomic gas in a magnetic field, the wobbles of the atoms are averaged to arrive at a single measurement. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that a new way to measure magnetic fields could be perhaps as much as 1000 times more sensitive.

The idea behind the still theoretically magnetometer comes from the way a compass needle works—instead of wobbling when exposed to a magnetic field, it simply lines up—at least when viewed from a distance. The researchers have shown that such needles do actually wobble like atoms, when they are very small and placed in a very weak magnetic field. They envision a very tiny needle made of cobalt with all of its atoms aligned in a single direction. When the needed is placed in a weak magnetic field, the angular momentum of the rotation of the needle would be a lot smaller than its intrinsic spin angular momentum, which means it would precess, very much like single atoms do. Measuring the precess then would offer a means of measuring the level of magnetism.

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Nice.

NILES, Ill., May 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — MicroLink Devices is proud to announce that Airbus Defence and Space has issued a production contract for MicroLink’s epitaxial liftoff (ELO)-based multijunction solar sheets for use on the new Zephyr S platform.

Photo — http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160517/368562

Continue reading “Airbus Defence and Space Enters Solar Cell Production Contract with MicroLink Devices for Next Generation Zephyr HAPS” »