Lifeboat Foundation

In this episode, we’re tackling the question that’s on everyone’s minds: what will it take to have quantum internet in our home?
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A quantum internet is in the works.

Continue reading “What Would a Quantum Internet Look Like?” »

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have significantly boosted the output from a system that can extract drinkable water directly from the air even in dry regions, using heat from the sun or another source.

The system, which builds on a design initially developed three years ago at MIT by members of the same team, brings the process closer to something that could become a practical water source for remote regions with limited access to water and electricity. The findings are described today in the journal Joule, in a paper by Professor Evelyn Wang, who is head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering; graduate student Alina LaPotin; and six others at MIT and in Korea and Utah.

The earlier device demonstrated by Wang and her co-workers provided a proof of concept for the system, which harnesses a temperature difference within the device to allow an adsorbent material — which collects liquid on its surface — to draw in moisture from the air at night and release it the next day. When the material is heated by sunlight, the difference in temperature between the heated top and the shaded underside makes the water release back out of the adsorbent material. The water then gets condensed on a collection plate.

Freeze laser.

We demonstrate ground-state cooling of a trapped ion using radio-frequency (rf) radiation. This is a powerful tool for the implementation of quantum operations, where rf or microwave radiation instead of lasers is used for motional quantum state engineering. We measure a mean phonon number of $\overline{n}=0.13$ after sideband cooling, corresponding to a ground-state occupation probability of 88%. After preparing in the vibrational ground state, we demonstrate motional state engineering by driving Rabi oscillations between the $|n=0⟩$ and $|n=1⟩$ Fock states. We also use the ability to ground-state cool to accurately measure the motional heating rate and report a reduction by almost 2 orders of magnitude compared with our previously measured result, which we attribute to carefully eliminating sources of electrical noise in the system.

Compressing simple molecular solids with hydrogen at extremely high pressures, University of Rochester engineers and physicists have, for the first time, created material that is superconducting at room temperature.

Featured as the cover story in the journal Nature, the work was conducted by the lab of Ranga Dias, an assistant professor of physics and mechanical engineering.

Continue reading “Researchers synthesize room temperature superconducting material” »

Today, the Department of Defense announced $600 million in awards for 5G experimentation and testing at five U.S. military test sites, representing the largest full-scale 5G tests for dual-use applications in the world. Each installation will partner military Services, industry leaders, and academic experts to advance the Department’s 5G capabilities. Projects will include piloting 5G-enabled augmented/virtual reality for mission planning and training, testing 5G-enabled Smart Warehouses, and evaluating 5G technologies to enhance distributed command and control.

“The Department of Defense is at the forefront of cutting edge 5G testing and experimentation, which will strengthen our Nation’s warfighting capabilities as well as U.S. economic competitiveness in this critical field. Through these test sites, the Department is leveraging its unique authorities to pursue bold innovation at a scale and scope unmatched anywhere else in the world. Importantly, today’s announcement demonstrates the Department’s commitment to exploring the vast potential applications and dual-use opportunities that can be built upon next-generation networks,” said Michael Kratsios, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

The test sites include: Hill Air Force Base, Utah; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia; Naval Base San Diego, California; and Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada.

A team of researchers led by Osaka University discovers “microtube implosion,” a novel mechanism that demonstrates the generation of megatesla-order magnetic fields.

Magnetic fields are used in various areas of modern physics and engineering, with practical applications ranging from doorbells to maglev trains. Since Nikola Tesla’s discoveries in the 19th century, researchers have strived to realize strong magnetic fields in laboratories for fundamental studies and diverse applications, but the magnetic strength of familiar examples are relatively weak. Geomagnetism is 0.3−0.5 gauss (G) and magnetic tomography (MRI) used in hospitals is about 1 tesla (T = 10⁴ G). By contrast, future magnetic fusion and maglev trains will require magnetic fields on the kilotesla (kT = 10⁷ G) order. To date, the highest magnetic fields experimentally observed are on the kT order.

Recently, scientists at Osaka University discovered a novel mechanism called a “microtube implosion,” and demonstrated the generation of megatesla (MT = 10¹⁰ G) order magnetic fields via particle simulations using a supercomputer. Astonishingly, this is three orders of magnitude higher than what has ever been achieved in a laboratory. Such high magnetic fields are expected only in celestial bodies like neutron stars and black holes.

This eye-catching ebike offers 750 watts of power, about 500 watt-hours of battery, a long list of neat gadgetry and an impossible-looking pair of hubless wheels you can poke your arm right through. We’d urge caution when it comes to buying one, though.

The team’s findings have been published in Nature: Scientific Reports: “Transition delay using biomimetic fish scale arrays,” and in the Journal of Experimental Biology: “Streak formation in flow over biomimetic fish scale arrays.”

Reducing drag means faster aircraft speeds and less fuel consumption—an important area of study for aerodynamicists such as Professor Bruecker, City’s Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Nature-Inspired Sensing and Flow Control for Sustainable Transport, and City’s Sir Richard Oliver BAE Systems Chair for Aeronautical Engineering.

Through their biomimetic study, Professor Bruecker’s team has discovered that the fish-scale array produces a zig-zag motion of fluid in overlapping regions of the surface of the fish, which in turn causes periodic velocity modulation and a streaky flow that can eliminate Tollmien-Schlichting wave induced transition to reduce skin friction drag by more than 25 percent.

O,.o.

As superconducting qubit circuits become more complex, addressing a large array of qubits becomes a challenging engineering problem. Dense arrays of qubits benefit from, and may require, access via the third dimension to alleviate interconnect crowding. Through-silicon vias (TSVs) represent a promising approach to three-dimensional (3D) integration in superconducting qubit arrays—provided they are compact enough to support densely-packed qubit systems without compromising qubit performance or low-loss signal and control routing. In this work, we demonstrate the integration of superconducting, high-aspect ratio TSVs—10 μm wide by 20 μm long by 200 μm deep—with superconducting qubits. We utilize TSVs for baseband control and high-fidelity microwave readout of qubits using a two-chip, bump-bonded architecture. We also validate the fabrication of qubits directly upon the surface of a TSV-integrated chip. These key 3D-integration milestones pave the way for the control and readout of high-density superconducting qubit arrays using superconducting TSVs.