Lifeboat Foundation

A team of physicists, including University of Massachusetts assistant professor Tigran Sedrakyan, recently announced in the journal Nature that they have discovered a new phase of matter. Called the “chiral bose-liquid state,” the discovery opens a new path in the age-old effort to understand the nature of the physical world.

Under everyday conditions, matter can be a solid, liquid, or gas. But once you venture beyond the everyday—into temperatures approaching absolute zero.

Absolute zero is the theoretical lowest temperature on the thermodynamic temperature scale. At this temperature, all atoms of an object are at rest and the object does not emit or absorb energy. The internationally agreed-upon value for this temperature is −273.15 °C (−459.67 °F; 0.00 K).

The compelling feature of this new breed of quasiparticle, says Pedram Roushan of Google Quantum AI, is the combination of their accessibility to quantum logic operations and their relative invulnerability to thermal and environmental noise. This combination, he says, was recognized in the very first proposal of topological quantum computing, in 1997 by the Russian-born physicist Alexei Kitaev.

At the time, Kitaev realized that non-Abelian anyons could run any quantum computer algorithm. And now that two separate groups have created the quasi-particles in the wild, each team is eager to develop their own suite of quantum computational tools around these new quasiparticles.

The concept of a mirror universe has often been studied in theoretical cosmology, and as a new study shows, it might help us solve problems with the cosmological constant.

IBM announced a new breakthrough, published on the cover of the scientific journal Nature, demonstrating for the first time that quantum computers can produce accurate results at a scale of 100+ qubits reaching beyond leading classical approaches.

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A sci fi documentary exploring a timelapse of future space colonization. Travel through 300 years, from 2052 to 2,301 and beyond, and see how modern science fiction becomes reality.

Witness the journey of humans expanding from Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond.

Continue reading “TIMELAPSE OF SPACE COLONIZATION (2052 — 2301+)” »

By using error mitigation, IBM scientists believe they’ve worked around the quantum noise that plagues quantum processors.

A joint research group led by Prof. Sheng Dong and Prof. Lu Zhengtian from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), investigated the coupling effect between neutron spin and gravitational force via employing a high-precision xenon isotope magnetometer. This work was published in Physical Review Letters.

This research aims to uncover the coupling strength between neutron spin and gravity by measuring the weight difference between the neutron’s spin-up and spin-down states. The experimental results revealed that the weight difference between these two states was less than two sextillionths (2×10^-21), setting a new upper limit on the coupling strength of this effect.

An article titled “Testing Gravity’s Effect on Quantum Spins,” reported in Physics, highlights this precise measurement research as a novel exploration of the intersection of quantum theory and gravity.

The 12-qubit device will go out to a few academic research labs.

Intel does a lot of things, but it’s mostly noted for making and shipping a lot of processors, many of which have been named after bodies of water. So, saying that the company is set to start sending out a processor called Tunnel Falls would seem unsurprising if it weren’t for some key details. Among them: The processor’s functional units are qubits, and you shouldn’t expect to be able to pick one up on New Egg. Ever.

Tunnel Falls appears to be named after a waterfall near Intel’s Oregon facility, where the company’s quantum research team does much of its work. It’s a 12-qubit chip, which places it well behind the qubit count of many of Intel’s competitors—all of which are making processors available via cloud services. But Jim Clarke, who heads Intel’s quantum efforts, said these differences were due to the company’s distinct approach to developing quantum computers.

Typical superconducting quantum circuits, such as qubits—basic processing units of a quantum computer, must be operated at very low temperatures, of a few 10s of millikelvin, or hundredths of a degree from absolute zero temperature. These temperatures are today easily accessible in modern refrigerators. However, the intrinsic temperature of devices turns out to be much higher because the materials required to make good qubit circuits are by their nature very poor thermal conductors. This thermalization problem becomes more and more acute as the scale and complexity of circuits grow.

Much like water (or liquid nitrogen) cooling is sometimes used to effectively cool down high-performance digital computers, a quantum computer could benefit from similar liquid cooling. But at the very low temperatures that quantum circuits operate, most liquids will have turned into ice. Only two isotopes of Helium, Helium-3 and Helium-4, remain in the liquid form at millikelvin temperatures.

In recent work published in Nature Communications, researchers from the National Physical Laboratory, Royal Holloway University of London, Chalmers University of Technology and Google developed new technology to cool down a quantum circuit to less than a thousand of a degree above absolute zero, almost 100 times lower temperature than achieved before. This was made possible by immersing the circuit in liquid ³ He, chosen for its superior thermal properties.