Free Republic

The University of Queensland and the NÉEL Institute has shown that, as far as quantum physics is concerned, the chicken and the egg can both come first. Dr Jacqui Romero from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems said that in quantum physics, cause-and-effect is not always as straightforward as one event causing another. "The weirdness of quantum mechanics means that events can happen without a set order," she said. "Take the example of your daily trip to work, where you travel partly by bus and partly by train. "Normally, you would take the bus then the train,...

“Deep Space of the Cosmos” –There’s a Mysterious Energy Latent In It Which Can Tell Us About Our Fate  Posted on Aug 15, 2018 “Empty space seems to be nothing to us. By analogy, water may seem to be nothing to a fish – it’s what’s left when you take away all the other things floating in the sea. Likewise, empty space is conjectured to be quite complicated,” Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge.Philosophers have debated the nature of “nothing” for thousands of years, but what has modern science got...

Every generation tends to believe that its views on the nature of reality are either true or quite close to the truth. We are no exception to this: although we know that the ideas of earlier generations were each time supplanted by those of a later one, we still believe that this time we got it right. Our ancestors were naïve and superstitious, but we are objective—or so we tell ourselves. We know that matter/energy, outside and independent of mind, is the fundamental stuff of nature, everything else being derived from it—or do we? In fact, studies have shown that...

The Difficult Birth of the "Many Worlds" Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Hugh Everett, creator of this radical idea during a drunken debate more than 60 years ago, died before he could see his theory gain widespread popularity   By Adam Becker on March 21, 2018 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Email Print Share via Google+Stumble Upon Credit: Garik Barseghyan Pixabay Over several rounds of sherry late one night in the fall of 1955, the Danish physicist Aage Petersen debated the mysteries at the heart of quantum physics with two graduate students, Charles Misner and Hugh Everett, at Princeton University. Petersen was defending the...

The quest for "quantum supremacy" – unambiguous proof that a quantum computer does something faster than an ordinary computer – has paradoxically led to a boom in quasi-quantum classical algorithms.For Cristian Calude, doubt began with a puzzle so simple, he said, that “even a child can understand it.” Here it is: Suppose you have a mysterious box that takes one of two possible inputs — you can press a red button or a blue button, say — and gives back one of two possible outputs — a red ball or a blue ball. If the box always returns the same...

[T]ime has often been considered as the fourth dimension of space, with three spatial dimensions where one can go up or down, left or right, or forward or backward. But two new papers published in the journal Nature suggest that there might be a fourth spatial dimension, one that could possibly suggest previously undiscovered directions of motion. As detailed in a report from Gizmodo, two separate teams of researchers created their own two-dimensional setups, with one team using ultra-cold atoms and the other one working with waves of light. While the studies produced varying results, the findings complemented each other,...

Time travel may be possible - for sub atomic particles, at least, a new experiment has found. Physicists have discovered that heat can spontaneously flow from a cold quantum particle to a hotter one under certain conditions - effectively reversing the 'arrow of time'. While the discovery doesn't advance the possibility of building a time machine, it does show the quantum world operates under very different rules, researchers say.

Scientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, recently reengineered their data processing, demonstrating that 16 million atoms were entangled in a one-centimetre crystal. ... Although the concept of entanglement can be hard to grasp, it can be illustrated using two socks! Imagine a physicist who always wears two socks of different colours. When you spot a red sock on his right ankle, you also immediately learn something about the left sock: it is not red. There is a correlation, in other words, between the two socks. This is a reasonably prosaic and quite intuitive occurrence; but when we switch...

Just in case it’s been weighing on your mind, you can relax now. A team of theoretical physicists from Oxford University in the UK has shown that life and reality cannot be merely simulations generated by a massive extraterrestrial computer. The finding – an unexpectedly definite one – arose from the discovery of a novel link between gravitational anomalies and computational complexity.

IN BRIEF Chinese physicists managed to demonstrate long-distance quantum entanglement in space, breaking previous records. This development, made possible by a novel method, could lead to improved information storage and transfer in the future. SPOOKY ACTION GETS TO SPACE When it comes to weird science stuff, quantum entanglement is probably near the top of the list, especially back in the days when Einstein referred to it as that “spooky action at a distance.” Physicists have since demonstrated the “spooky” phenomenon to be possible, but now they want to extend its reach. A new study shows it’s possible for quantum entanglement...

In a massive step forward, researchers have sent the first quantum-secured message through the air above a city containing more than one bit of information. This proof-of-concept success means that high-capacity, free-space quantum communication will one day be both a practical and secure process between satellites and Earth—and a worldwide quantum encryption network will also be feasible. In their demonstration, researchers used 4D quantum encryption to transmit data over a free-space optical network between two buildings. The buildings on the University of Ottawa campus stand 0.3 kilometers apart. The high-dimensional encryption scheme is described as “4D” because it sends more...

Russian Quantum Center developed the first quantum blockchain 2017-05-25 For the first time ever, the researchers of the Russian Quantum Center developed and tested the quantum blockchain technology – a method of distributed storage and verification of financial, commercial, and other data protected by quantum cryptography. Everyone is talking about blockchain today, while 10 years ago it was thought of as some fun for computer geeks. It first appeared as a by-product of crypto-currencies; the creators of digital money needed to exclude the possibility of fraud, for example, to make it impossible to pay with the same virtual coin twice....

I've been wrapped up in writing a new book, so I didn't notice this right when it was published, but a couple of weeks ago there was a paper in Physical Review Letters titled Experimental Evidence for Quantum Tunneling Time that's worth a mention here. This is, as the title suggests, an investigation of one of the signature weird effects of quantum physics, namely the phenomenon of "tunneling" where a particle encountering a barrier can end up on the other side even though it doesn't have enough energy to get there by normal means. This was followed a few days...

As many of you know I have lived in Sandy Hook, CT for about 20 years. Newtown (the Connecticut town that Sandy Hook is part of) has its institutions, including Fairfield Hills, the former mental institution and $30 million albatross, our giant American flag in the center of Main St., and the rooster weathervane atop the Congregational church that Revolutionary War soldiers used for target practice. It later became the town symbol according to legend. We also have the deli and coffee shop owned for decades by my friend of 20 years Agnes (not her real name). Agnes is known...

Physicists have learned how they could breed Schrödinger cats in optics. Scientists tested a method that could potentially amplify superpositions of classical states of light beyond microscopic limits and help determine the boundaries between the quantum and classical worlds. ... Co-author and University of Calgary graduate student Anastasia Pushkina explains: "The idea of the experiment was proposed in 2003 by the group of Professor Timothy Ralph of the University of Queensland, Australia. In essence, we cause interference of two "cats" on a beam splitter. This leads to an entangled state in the two output channels of that beam splitter. In...

IBM Q isn’t vaporware. It’s a project years-in-the-making that could help quantum computation reach its massive potential. The future of quantum computers may arrive sooner than you think. When news arrived of IBM’s move to offer the first commercially available universal quantum computer last week, it was characterized as a “handoff” from IBM Research to IBM Systems. According to the company’s CTO and vice president of quantum computing, technical strategy, and systems, Scott Crowder, that’s not entirely the case. “It’s not quite a ‘handoff,’ it’s really a partnership,” explained Crowder. “This is definitely a transition point from it being pure...

The ytterbium crystal was first synthesized a year ago by scientists in China, where the government in Beijing has invested heavily in hopes of creating synthetic quantum materials with novel properties. It appears they may have now succeeded, said Mourigal, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech's School of Physics. "Imagine a state of matter where this entanglement doesn't involve two electrons but involves, three, five, 10 or 10 billion particles all in the same system," Mourigal said. "You can create a very, very exotic state of matter based on the fact that all these particles are entangled with each other....

Many companies and researchers are investigating quantum computing as one of the next major steps in the evolution of computers. The “spooky” effects of quantum physics, it is hoped, will enable the creation of computers that operate on certain tasks at unprecedented levels of performance. Microsoft is one of those companies, and it has been looking at quantum computing for some time now. Today, however, the company is taking the next step of actively investing in the creation of a real, scaleable quantum computer that can be used to tackle real-world problems, as the company outlines on the official Microsoft...

A Chinese firm has claimed that they have developed radar technology that can detect stealth jets. The quantum radar was reportedly created by Intelligent Perception Technology, a branch of defence and electronics firm CETC. They claim it is capable of detecting a target at a range of 60 miles and according to the Xinhua news agency, it was successfully tested last month.

A seminal moment in the quantum technology field just happened: Google's team of scientists have simulated a hydrogen molecule from its quantum computers, a breakthrough that suggests it could “simulate even larger chemical systems,” writes one of Google Quantum’s engineers, Ryan Rabbush. The search engine’s achievement underscores the technology’s potential as Rabbush posits it can “revolutionize the design of solar cells, industrial catalysts, batteries, flexible electronics, medicines, materials and more.”