Lifeboat Foundation

New work provides a good view of where the field currently stands.

Now is the time to banish low-level radioactive energy sources from facilities that house and conduct experiments with superconducting qubits, according to a pair of recently published studies. Significantly improving quantum device coherence times is a key step toward an era of practical quantum computing.

Two complementary articles, published in the journal PRX Quantum and the Journal of Instrumentation, outline which sources of interfering ionizing radiation are most problematic for superconducting quantum computers and how to address them. The findings set the stage for quantitative study of errors caused by radiation effects in shielded underground facilities.

A research team led by physicists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in collaboration with colleagues at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, along with multiple academic partners, published their findings to assist the quantum computing community to prepare for the next generation of qubit development.

MIT physicists have shown that it should be possible to create an exotic form of matter that could be manipulated to form the qubit (quantum bit) building blocks of future quantum computers that are even more powerful than the quantum computers in development today.

The work builds on a discovery last year of materials that host electrons that can split into fractions of themselves but, importantly, can do so without the application of a magnetic field. The general phenomenon of electron fractionalization was first discovered in 1982 and resulted in a Nobel Prize.

That work, however, required the application of a magnetic field. The ability to create the fractionalized electrons without a magnetic field opens new possibilities for basic research and makes the materials hosting them more useful for applications.

Brain-Computer Interfaces fascinate the sci-fi and medical communities in equal measure. Here’s how close the transformative technology is to everyday use.

Quantum computers have the potential to simulate complex materials, allowing researchers to gain deeper insights into the physical properties that emerge from interactions among atoms and electrons. This may one day lead to the discovery or design of better semiconductors, insulators, or superconductors that could be used to make ever faster, more powerful, and more energy-efficient electronics.

But some phenomena that occur in materials can be challenging to mimic using quantum computers, leaving gaps in the problems that scientists have explored with quantum hardware.

To fill one of these gaps, MIT researchers developed a technique to generate synthetic electromagnetic fields on superconducting quantum processors. The team demonstrated the technique on a processor comprising 16 qubits.

Imagine a number made up of a vast string of ones: 1111111…111. Specifically, 136,279,841 ones in a row. If we stacked up that many sheets of paper, the resulting tower would stretch into the stratosphere.

If we write this number in a computer in binary form (using only ones and zeroes), it would fill up only about 16 megabytes, no more than a short video clip.

Continue reading “The Biggest Prime Number Ever Found Is a New Milestone in Science” »

As efficient as electronic data storage systems can be, they’ve got nothing on nature’s own version – DNA. A new technique for writing data to DNA works like a printing press and makes it easy enough that anyone could do it.

Writing data to DNA usually involves synthesizing strands one letter at a time, like threading beads onto a string. That’s obviously a very slow process, especially when there can be billions of those letters, or bases, in a given DNA sequence.

But the new DNA printing press drastically speeds the process up. The team created a set of 700 DNA bricks, each containing 24 bases, that work like movable type pieces. These can be arranged into a desired order and then used to ‘print’ their data onto DNA template strands.

Transparent ceramic infinite speed computer.

Jiang, WX. Highly homogeneous zero-index metamaterials make devices more compact and perform better. Light Sci Appl 13, 104 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01458-6

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Continue reading “Highly homogeneous zero-index metamaterials make devices more compact and perform better” »

Scientists discovered a way to encode more data into light by creating light vortices with quasicrystals. This method could potentially increase data transmission rates through optic fibers by up to 16 times, marking a significant advancement in telecommunications technology.

Modern life relies heavily on efficiently encoding information for transmission. A common method involves encoding data in laser light and sending it through fiber optic cables. As demand for data capacity grows, finding more advanced encoding methods is essential.

Breakthrough in Light Vortex Creation.