Lifeboat Foundation

They say that we ultimately lose information once it enters a black hole, but is this really the case? Let’s find out on today’s video. Have you ever wondered what happens to information when it falls into a black hole? Does it get destroyed forever? Does it arrive somewhere else? Does it enter a girl’s bookcase and call it for Murf? Is there a way for it to escape? Today, we’re diving into one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the black hole information paradox. But first, why should we care? Well, in case a black hole suddenly pops up in your bedroom or office table, this paradox sits at the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two pillars of modern physics, and solving it could unlock new understandings of the universe itself. So, let’s get started. Our journey begins with looking at the basics of black holes and the paradox that has puzzled scientists for decades.

Like any good explainer, let’s begin with the basics. What exactly is a black hole? In simple terms, a black hole is a region in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. No Brad, it’s not a challenge; calm down. This happens when a massive star collapses under its own gravity, compressing all its mass into an incredibly small, incredibly dense point known as a singularity. Surrounding the singularity is the event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can return. Think of the event horizon as the ultimate point of no return. Once you cross it, you’re inevitably pulled towards the singularity, and there’s no way back. Feel like you know well about black holes? Great. Now let’s talk about Hawking radiation. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes aren’t completely black; instead, they emit a type of radiation due to quantum effects near the event horizon. This radiation, aptly named Hawking radiation, suggests that black holes can slowly lose mass and energy over time, eventually evaporating completely. But here’s where things get tricky: Hawking radiation is thermal. By that, we don’t mean that it’s smoking or anything, but that it appears to carry no information about any of the stuff that fell into the black hole. And this brings us to the heart of our mystery: the black hole information paradox. How can the information about the material that formed the black hole and fell into it be preserved if it’s seemingly lost in the radiation? With this foundation in place, I feel that we’re now ready to explore the paradox itself and the various theories proposed to resolve it.
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Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theoretical framework for studying the forces within atomic nuclei and their constituent protons and neutrons. A major part of QCD research involves how quarks and gluons are contained within nucleons (protons and neutrons).

Is your mind blown yet? It should be.

We might never reach the stage where we could perform such an experiment, but thinking about it raises several interesting questions. Why is what we believe about how the world works inconsistent with quantum mechanics? Is there an objective reality, even on the macroscopic scale? Or is what you see different than what I see? Do we have a choice in what we do?

At least one thing is for sure: We are not seeing the whole picture. Maybe our understanding of quantum mechanics is incomplete, or maybe something changes when we scale it to the macroscopic world. But perhaps our role as conscious observers of the world around us is, indeed, unique.

Implementing error correction in a quantum computer requires putting together a lot of different things. Of course, you want to start with good physical qubits that have as low a physical error rate that you can achieve. You want to add in an error correction algorithm, like the surface code, color code, q-LDPC, or others that can be implemented in your architecture, and you need a fast real time error decoder that can look at the circuit output and very quickly determine what the error is so it can be corrected. The error decoder portion doesn’t get as much attention in the media as the other things, but it is a very critical portion of the solution. Riverlane is concentrating on providing products for this with a series of solutions they name Deltaflow which consists of both a classical ASIC chip along with software. The Deltaflow solution consists of a powerful error decoding layer for identifying errors and sending back corrective instructions, a universal interface that communicates with the computer;s control system, and a orchestration layer for coordinating activities.

Riverlane has released its Deltaflow Error Correction Stack Roadmap that show yearly updates to the technology to support an increase in the number of QuOps (error free Quantum Operations) by 10X every year. We reported last year on a chip called DD1 that is part of their Deltaflow 1 solution that is capable of supporting 1,000 QuOps using a surface code error correction algorithm. And now, Riverlane is defining solutions that will achieve 10,000 QuOps with Deltaflow 2 later this year, 100,000 QuOps with Deltaflow 3 in 2025, and 1,000,000 QuOps, also called MegaQuops in 2026, with their Deltaflow Mega solution.

One characteristic that Riverlane is emphasizing in these designs is to perform the decoding in real time in order to keep the latencies low. Although it is fine for an academic paper to send the ancilla data off to a classical computer and have it determine the error, it might take milliseconds for the operation to complete. That won’t cut it in a production environment running real jobs. With their Deltaflow chips, these operations can be performed at megahertz rates and Riverlane has implemented techniques such as a streaming, sliding window, and parallized decoding approaches to increase the throughput of the decoder chips as much as possible. In future chips they will be implementing “fast logic” capabilities for Clifford gates using approaches including lattice surgery and transversal CZ gates.

PDF | On Jan 1, 2009, Galen Strawson published Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate.

Image: Custom colormap package by cmastro; Claire Lamman / DESI collaboration On April 4, 2024, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a collaboration of more than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions around the world, announced that they have made the most precise measurement of the expansion of the universe and its acceleration.

Javad Shabani is an Associate Professor of Physics and the Director of the Center of Quantum Information Physics. Shabani seeks to investigate quantum technology, the future of quantum computing, and quantum sensing applications.

Visit the Shabani Lab: http://shabanilab.com/

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Researchers have successfully measured the quantum structure of radium monofluoride (RaF) using ion-trapping and specialized laser techniques, allowing for the detailed characterization of its rotational energy…