Physicists connect the dots on quantum computing Researchers at Harvard and Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics make progress on scalable designs for potentially super powerful computers that harness the weird laws of quantum mechanics.
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Physicists connect the dots on quantum computing


Researchers at Harvard and Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics make progress on scalable designs for potentially super powerful computers that harness the weird laws of quantum mechanics.

The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.
Michael Talbot, author of “Holographic Universe”  (via lovedrugsetc)

Source: lovedrugsetc

$100K offered for proof that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible

MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. His original reason for doing so was, as he describes in his blog, due to adding his two cents to an argument between skeptic Gil Kalai and researcher Aram Harrow about assumptions regarding the Quantum Fault-Tolerance Theorem, on another blog, where he argued that refuting the idea of scalable quantum computing would amount to more than just taking apart the QFT Theorem; it would he suggested, mean coming up with a new version of physical reality. Then, because of the response he got from the blog owner, he felt compelled to defend his assertions in a rather bold and some might say, foolhardy way. Thus was born the $100,000 bet, or prize.

tl;dr Quantum Computing is going to happen, and if you think otherwise and can prove it, you’ll get $100,000 from an MIT professor. 

A collection of quantum physics infographics!

Quantum Cryptography Comes to Smart Phones

A smart phone can do pretty much anything a PC can. But, aside from password protection, phones have very littlesecurity—a real problem with more and more people using phones for online banking and shopping.

But researchers at Los Alamos National Lab hopequantum encryption can help. Quantum encryption typically requires a lot of processing power and covers only short distances. But Los Alamos says it’s developed a minitransmitter that encodes the encryption key on a single photon. They call it the QKarD transmitter, short for Quantum Smart Card. Any change in the photon’s quantum information reveals an attempted hack and cancels the transaction.

Good luck, hackers.

Quantum Entanglement for dummies - Dr.Quantum

How to See Quantum Entanglement Human eyes can detect the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement (What the hell is that?) — but only sometimes, a new study on the physics preprint website arXiv.org claims. While eyes can help determine if two individual photons were recently entangled, they can’t tell if the brighter bunch of photons that actually hit the retina are in this bizarre quantum state. “In general you think these quantum phenomena that involve only a few particles, they’re really far removed from us. That is actually not so true anymore,” said physicist Nicolas Brunner of the University of Bristol. “You could really go to an experiment by just having people look at these photons, and from there really actually see entanglement.” In an earlier paper, Brunner and colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland sketched out an experiment in which a human observer could replace a standard quantum detector. This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, they say, because the eye’s most important job is to be a sensitive photon detector. The researchers would first prepare two entangled photons — photons whose quantum properties are so intimately linked that one always knows what the other is doing. When an aspect of one photon’s quantum state is measured, the other photon changes in response, even when the two photons are separated by large distances. The researchers would send one photon to a standard detector and the other to a human observer in a dark room. The human would see a dim point of light in either the right or left field of view, depending on the photon’s quantum state. If those flashes of light correlate strongly enough with the output of the ordinary photon detector, then the scientists can conclude that the photons are entangled.
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How to See Quantum Entanglement

Human eyes can detect the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement (What the hell is that?) — but only sometimes, a new study on the physics preprint website arXiv.org claims. While eyes can help determine if two individual photons were recently entangled, they can’t tell if the brighter bunch of photons that actually hit the retina are in this bizarre quantum state.

“In general you think these quantum phenomena that involve only a few particles, they’re really far removed from us. That is actually not so true anymore,” said physicist Nicolas Brunner of the University of Bristol. “You could really go to an experiment by just having people look at these photons, and from there really actually see entanglement.”

In an earlier paper, Brunner and colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland sketched out an experiment in which a human observer could replace a standard quantum detector. This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, they say, because the eye’s most important job is to be a sensitive photon detector.

The researchers would first prepare two entangled photons — photons whose quantum properties are so intimately linked that one always knows what the other is doing. When an aspect of one photon’s quantum state is measured, the other photon changes in response, even when the two photons are separated by large distances.

The researchers would send one photon to a standard detector and the other to a human observer in a dark room. The human would see a dim point of light in either the right or left field of view, depending on the photon’s quantum state. If those flashes of light correlate strongly enough with the output of the ordinary photon detector, then the scientists can conclude that the photons are entangled.

Antigravity? What the hell is that? The question of whether normal matter’s shadowy counterpart anti-matter exerts a kind of “anti-gravity” is set to be answered, according to a new report. Normal matter attracts all other matter in the Universe, but it remains unclear if anti-matter attracts or repels it. A team reporting in Physics Review Letters says it has prepared stable pairs of electrons and their anti-matter particles, positrons. A beam of these pairs can be used to finally solve the anti-gravity puzzle. Let’s see how this turns out.
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Antigravity? What the hell is that?

The question of whether normal matter’s shadowy counterpart anti-matter exerts a kind of “anti-gravity” is set to be answered, according to a new report.

Normal matter attracts all other matter in the Universe, but it remains unclear if anti-matter attracts or repels it.

A team reporting in Physics Review Letters says it has prepared stable pairs of electrons and their anti-matter particles, positrons.

A beam of these pairs can be used to finally solve the anti-gravity puzzle.

Let’s see how this turns out.

Replica of Trojan asteroids fits in single atom In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the Rice University team showed they could cause an electron in an atom to orbit the nucleus in precisely the same way that Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids orbit the sun. The findings uphold a prediction made in 1920 by famed Danish physicist Niels Bohr about the relationship between the then-new science of quantum mechanics and Isaac Newton’s tried-and-true laws of motion. Using atoms to model the solar system. Badass.
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Replica of Trojan asteroids fits in single atom

In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the Rice University team showed they could cause an electron in an atom to orbit the nucleus in precisely the same way that Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids orbit the sun.

The findings uphold a prediction made in 1920 by famed Danish physicist Niels Bohr about the relationship between the then-new science of quantum mechanics and Isaac Newton’s tried-and-true laws of motion.

Using atoms to model the solar system.

Badass.

Physicists Discover Quantum Speed Limit The speed of light is the cosmic speed limit, according to physicists’ best understanding: No information can be carried at a greater rate, no matter what method is used. But an analogous speed limit seems to exist within materials, where the interactions between particles are typically very short-range and motion is far slower than light-speed. A new set of experiments and simulations by Marc Cheneau and colleagues have identified this maximum velocity, which has implications for quantum entanglement and quantum computations. In non-relativistic systems, where particle speeds are much less than the speed of light, interactions still occur very quickly, and they often involve lots of particles. As a result, measuring the speed of interactions within materials has been difficult. The theoretical speed limit is set by the Lieb-Robinson bound, which describes how a change in one part of a system propagates through the rest of the material. In this new study, the Lieb-Robinson bound was quantified experimentally for the first time, using a real quantum gas. Read more
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Physicists Discover Quantum Speed Limit

The speed of light is the cosmic speed limit, according to physicists’ best understanding: No information can be carried at a greater rate, no matter what method is used. But an analogous speed limit seems to exist within materials, where the interactions between particles are typically very short-range and motion is far slower than light-speed. A new set of experiments and simulations by Marc Cheneau and colleagues have identified this maximum velocity, which has implications for quantum entanglement and quantum computations.

In non-relativistic systems, where particle speeds are much less than the speed of light, interactions still occur very quickly, and they often involve lots of particles. As a result, measuring the speed of interactions within materials has been difficult. The theoretical speed limit is set by the Lieb-Robinson bound, which describes how a change in one part of a system propagates through the rest of the material. In this new study, the Lieb-Robinson bound was quantified experimentally for the first time, using a real quantum gas.

Read more