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By shining a laser pulse sequence inspired by the Fibonacci numbers at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a remarkable, never-before-seen phase of matter. The phase has the benefits of two time dimensions despite there still being only one singular flow of time... This mind-bending property offers a sought-after benefit: Information stored in the phase is far more protected against errors than with alternative setups currently used in quantum computers. As a result, the information can exist without getting garbled for much longer, an important milestone for making quantum computing viable, says study lead author Philipp Dumitrescu. The...

Australian scientists have created the world's first-ever quantum computer circuit – one that contains all the essential components found on a classical computer chip but at the quantum scale.

The mining company that wants to extract a rare heat-resistant element from the ground under southeast Nebraska says a new report shows the deposit it plans to mine holds a significant amount of other rare elements. NioCorp Developments said Thursday that the latest analysis shows the amount of rare earth elements present where it plans to build the mine about 80 miles south of Omaha near the town of Elk Creek is the second-largest deposit in the United States. The Centennial, Colorado-based company estimates that there are 632.9 kilotons of rare earth elements there. Those elements are needed to make...

Geologist Matt Joeckel displays a core sample of carbonatite rock containing niobium and rare-earth elements, which was taken from a deposit near Elk Creek, Neb., in early February. (Associated Press) Elk Creek, Neb. (population 112), may not be so tiny much longer. Reports suggest that the southeastern Nebraska hamlet may be sitting on the world’s largest untapped deposit of “rare earth” minerals, which have proved to be indispensable to a slew of high-tech and military applications such as laser pointers, stadium lighting, electric car batteries and sophisticated missile-guidance systems.Canada-based Quantum Rare Earths Developments Corp. last week received preliminary results...

There’s a reason why Microsoft, Google, IBM, and governments across the globe keep making large investments in quantum computing; they expect it will revolutionize the world by addressing issues that today’s conventional computers can’t solve. Every industry will be affected by quantum computing. They will alter the way business is done and the security systems in place which protect data, how we battle illnesses and create new materials, as well as how we tackle health and climate challenges. As the race to build the first commercially functional quantum computer heats up, here we discuss a handful of the ways quantum...

Experts believe that the world has entered into the quantum decade — an era when enterprises begin to see quantum computing’s business valueQuantum computing has progressed from an experiment to a tool to an apparatus that is now making advances in the venture to tackle complex issues. Experts accept that the world has gone into the ‘Quantum Decade’ — an era when ventures start to see quantum computing’s business esteem. The advances in equipment, software development, and administrations approve the technology’s momentum, which is making it ready for additional breakthroughs in 2022 and helps the market for the inevitable reception...

Quantum computing company Rigetti has announced it is exploring experimental new hardware configurations that could improve the performance of its quantum processors.As explained in a blog post, the firm has introduced a third energy state to its qubits, thus turning them into qutrits. According to Rigetti, doing so allows for significantly more information to be manipulated, while also decreasing readout errors by up to 60%.“Accessing the third state in our processors is useful for researchers exploring the cutting edge of quantum computing, quantum physics and those interested in traditional qubit-based algorithms alike,” the company explained.Rigetti is currently offering access to...

Quantum computers could one day blow boring old classical computers out of the water, but so far their complexity limits their usefulness. Engineers at Stanford have now demonstrated a new relatively simple design for a quantum computer where a single atom is entangled with a series of photons to process and store information.Quantum computers tap into the weird world of quantum physics to perform calculations far faster than traditional computers can handle. Where existing machines store and process information in bits, as either ones and zeroes, quantum computers use qubits, which can exist as one, zero, or a superposition of...

Grinning away: The quantum Cheshire cat effect takes its name from a character in Lewis Carroll's novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (Courtesy: Larissa Kulik/Shutterstock) Since its inception, quantum theory has presented us with many strange and seemingly paradoxical phenomena. One of the oddest examples is the quantum Cheshire cat effect, in which properties of quantum objects become disembodied from the objects themselves. Now, two of the researchers who predicted the effect have shown that it is even weirder than they first thought: not only can quantum properties become detached from their parent objects, these properties can also move of...

An Australian/German company is developing powerful quantum accelerators the size of graphics cards. They work at room temperature, undercutting and outperforming today's huge, cryo-cooled quantum supercomputers, and soon they'll be small enough for mobile devices. Superconducting quantum computers are huge and incredibly finicky machines at this point. They need to be isolated from anything that might knock an electron's spin off and ruin a calculation. That includes mechanical isolation, in extreme vacuum chambers, where only a few molecules might remain in a cubic meter or two of space. It includes electromagnetic forces – IBM, for example, surrounds its precious quantum...

Quantum engineers from UNSW Sydney have removed a major obstacle that has stood in the way of quantum computers becoming a reality. They discovered a new technique they say will be capable of controlling millions of spin qubits—the basic units of information in a silicon quantum processor. Until now, quantum computer engineers and scientists have worked with a proof-of-concept model of quantum processors by demonstrating the control of only a handful of qubits. But with their latest research, published today in Science Advances, the team have found what they consider "the missing jigsaw piece" in the quantum computer architecture that...

Eureka! A research team featuring dozens of scientists working in partnership with Google‘s quantum computing labs may have created the world’s first time crystal inside a quantum computer. This is the kind of news that makes me want to jump up and do a happy dance. These scientists may have produced an entirely new phase of matter. I’m going to do my best to explain what that means and why I personally believe this is the most important scientific breakthrough in our lifetimes. However, for the sake of clarity, there’s two points I need to make first: 1. Time crystals...

Originally built to speed up calculations, a machine-learning system is now making shocking progress at the frontiers of experimental quantum physicsQuantum physicist Mario Krenn remembers sitting in a café in Vienna in early 2016, poring over computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had found. MELVIN was a machine-learning algorithm Krenn had built, a kind of artificial intelligence. Its job was to mix and match the building blocks of standard quantum experiments and find solutions to new problems. And it did find many interesting ones. But there was one that made no sense. “The first thing I thought...

In a major scientific leap, University of Queensland researchers have created a quantum microscope that can reveal biological structures that would otherwise be impossible to see. This paves the way for applications in biotechnology, and could extend far beyond this into areas ranging from navigation to medical imaging. The microscope is powered by the science of quantum entanglement, an effect Einstein described as “spooky interactions at a distance.” Quantum Microscope Up Close UQ’s quantum microscope, ready to zero in on previously impossible-to-see biology. Credit: The University of Queensland Professor Warwick Bowen, from UQ’s Quantum Optics Lab and the ARC Centre...

The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics.Over the past century, quantum field theory has proved to be the single most sweeping and successful physical theory ever invented. It is an umbrella term that encompasses many specific quantum field theories — the way “shape” covers specific examples like the square and the circle. The most prominent of these theories is known as the Standard Model, and it is this framework of physics that has been so successful. “It can explain at a fundamental level literally every single experiment...

Quantum teleportation is a "disembodied" transfer of quantum states from one location to another. The quantum teleportation of a qubit is achieved using quantum entanglement, in which two or more particles are inextricably linked to each other. If an entangled pair of particles is shared between two separate locations, no matter the distance between them, the encoded information is teleported. In a paper published in PRX Quantum, the team presents for the first time a demonstration of a sustained, long-distance teleportation of qubits made of photons (particles of light) with fidelity greater than 90%. The qubits were teleported over a...

A Canadian teenager just took first place in a global science competition for her brilliant explanation of quantum tunneling.Maryam Tsegaye lives in Fort McMurray—a city that hit headlines for devastating reasons in 2016, when 88,000 people were forced from their homes due to wildfire.Now, thanks to her ability to explain tricky quantum physics theory with ease, this 17-year-old has taken top prize at the sixth annual international Breakthrough Junior Challenge.The challenge is a science video competition where young people showcase their knowledge of scientific principles in various fields.In a three-minute explainer, Maryam likened the behavior of electrons to how her...

Chinese scientists claim to have built a quantum computer that is able to perform certain computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most advanced supercomputer, representing the first milestone in the country’s efforts to develop the technology. The researchers have built a quantum computer prototype that is able to detect up to 76 photons through Gaussian boson sampling, a standard simulation algorithm, the state-run Xinhua news agency said, citing research published in Science magazine. That’s exponentially faster than existing supercomputers. The breakthrough represents a quantum computational advantage, also known as quantum supremacy, in which no traditional computer can...

Who believes President Donald J. Trump would care about securing America with 400+ miles of new border fence, but he wouldn’t care about securing America’s terribly corrupt voting system with remarkably safe, quantum computing systems built on highly proven, blockchain technology? Why would President Trump defend us against illegal foreign invasion into our country but, not defend us against illegal foreign invasion into our voting systems? Why did President Trump unveil a brand new www.Quantum.gov Agency a few months ago? Why would President Trump add Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), a remarkable new blockchain technology, to his list of Top 20...

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s 13th Five-Year Plan is going to conclude this year. For the first time, quantum communications was part of the plan, and it was even listed as the second largest strategic emerging industry and a government-sponsored R&D project. But the project is likely to fail and is going to be a big investment failure.On Sept. 29, 2017, the regime’s mouthpiece Xinhua highly praised the official opening of the “Beijing-Shanghai Link”—a quantum secured communication fiber-optic link that connected Beijing and Shanghai. Pan Jianwei, the project’s leader and China’s top quantum physicist, indicated that this quantum link will...