Ryan F. Mandelbaum
Singularity Hub
The quantum internet is coming sooner than you think—even sooner than
quantum computing itself. When things change over, you might not even
notice. But when they do, new rules will protect your data against
attacks from computers that don’t even exist yet.
Despite the fancy name, the “quantum internet”
won’t be some futuristic new way to navigate online. It won’t produce
any mind-blowing new content, at least not for decades. The quantum
internet will look more or less the same as the internet you’re using
now, but scientists and cryptographers hope it could provide protection
against not only theoretical threats but also those we haven’t dreamed
up yet.
“The main contribution of a quantum internet is to allow
encrypted communication in a perfectly secure fashion that can’t be
broken in principle, even if in the future we develop a more fundamental
theory of physics,” Ciarán Lee, a researcher at University College,
London, explained to Gizmodo. In short, the quantum internet would
hopefully protect us from planned new computers, along with every
theoretical computer for the foreseeable future.
So what’s the
quantum internet? It’s what happens when you apply the weird rules of
quantum mechanics to the way computers communicate with one another.
Quantum mechanics says that the smallest things, like subatomic
particles, are restricted to a list of distinct values for certain
properties (their energy, for example). When you’re not looking at them,
they might enter a superposition of states, meaning taking on several
values simultaneously—both the lowest and the second-lowest energy
states, for example. But once they are measured, they assume only one of
the values. The value you see is determined based on some innate
probability. But you can also entangle these particles’ states, meaning
when you repeat the measurements many times, they seem more related than
you’d expect from two independent things following the usual rules of
probability.
Read more
futurism.com
A team of scientists say they’ve built a quantum computer that
generates a superposition of all possible futures the computer could
experience.
The research, published Tuesday in Nature Communications,
describes how this quantum system could help futuristic artificial
intelligence learn much faster than it can today — and it could mean
quantum computers are finally becoming practical tools.
First Step
For
now, the quantum computer built by Griffith University and Nanyang
Technological University scientists can hold two superpositions of 16
different possibilities, according to the research. It also uses less
memory than a classical computer would, suggesting it could outperform classical systems at certain tasks.
“It is very much reminiscent of classical computers in the 1960s,” Griffith University scientist Geoff Pryde said in a press release.
“Just as few could imagine the many uses of classical computers in the
1960s, we are still very much in the dark about what quantum computers
can do.”
Multitasking AI
Right now, artificial
intelligence learns by analyzing example after example and looking for
patterns. The scientists behind this research argue that their quantum
superpositions could vastly improve the process.
“By interfering
these superpositions with each other, we can completely avoid looking at
each possible future individually,” Griffith researcher Farzad Ghafari
said in the press release.
Read more
Daily Grail
Is controversial research into telepathy and other seeming ‘super-powers’ of the mind starting to be more accepted by orthodox science? In its latest issue, American Psychologist – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Psychological Association – has published a paper that reviews the research so far into parapsychological (‘psi’) abilities, and concludes that the “evidence provides cumulative support for the reality of psi, which cannot be readily explained away by the quality of the studies, fraud, selective reporting, experimental or analytical incompetence, or other frequent criticisms.”
The new paper – “The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: a review“, by Etzel Cardeña of Lund University – also discusses recent theories from physics and psychology “that present psi phenomena as at least plausible”, and concludes with recommendations for further progress in the field.
The paper begins by noting the reason for presenting an overview and discussion of the topic: “Most psychologists could reasonably be described as uninformed skeptics — a minority could reasonably be described as prejudiced bigots — where the paranormal is concerned”. Indeed, it quotes one cognitive scientist as stating that the acceptance of psi phenomena would “send all of science as we know it crashing to the ground”.
To address this, the paper quickly outlines some current theories in physics and psychology that might help to explain psi effects without smashing the pillars supporting the scientific establishment: quantum physics, ideas on the nature of consciousness, theories of time, and psychological and evolutionary theories of psi.
Read more
space.com
Ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space.
"This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to
another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible," said
study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. "From a magnetic point of
view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was
transferred through an extra special dimension."
The idea of a wormhole comes from Albert Einstein's theories. In 1935,
Einstein and colleague Nathan Rosen realized that the general theory of
relativity allowed for the existence of bridges that could link two
different points in space-time. Theoretically these Einstein-Rosen
bridges, or wormholes,
could allow something to tunnel instantly between great distances
(though the tunnels in this theory are extremely tiny, so ordinarily
wouldn't fit a space traveler). So far, no one has found evidence that
space-time wormholes actually exist. [Science Fact or Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts]
Read more
Phys.org
(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a
new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement
Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The model may also account for
dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.
The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity,
is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is
thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a “Big Bang” did the universe officially begin.
Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and
unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists
see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened
immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.
“The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of
general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down
there,” Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of
Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.
Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.
Read more
The Independent
Engineers from the space agency managed to produce
tiny amounts of thrust using a microwave engine design that could turn
space travel on its head
In a quiet announcement that has sent shockwaves through the
scientific world, Nasa has cautiously given its seal of approval to a
new type of “impossible” engine that could revolutionize space travel.
In a paper
published by the agency’s experimental Eagleworks Laboratories, Nasa
engineers confirmed that they had produced tiny amounts of thrust from
an engine without propellant – an apparent violation of the
conservation of momentum; the law of physics that states that every
action must have an equal and opposite reaction.
Traditional
spacecraft carry vast amounts of fuel with them into orbit in order to
move about, using the thrust created by this fuel to move in zero
gravity like a swimmer in a pool pushing off against a wall. This method
works fine but it's costly - both in terms of obtaining the fuel and
then launching all that extra weight into space.
Read more
Scientific American
“Once you have eliminated the impossible,” the fictional detective
Sherlock Holmes famously opined, “whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth.” That adage forms the foundational principle of
“constructor theory”—a candidate “theory of everything” first sketched
out by David Deutsch, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford,
in 2012. His aim was to find a framework that could encompass all
physical theories by determining a set of overarching “meta-laws” that
describe what can happen in the universe and what is forbidden. In a May
23 paper posted to the
physics preprint server, arXiv, constructor theory claims its first
success toward that goal by unifying the two separate theories that are
currently used to describe information processing in macroscopic,
classical systems as well as in subatomic, quantum objects.
Computer scientists currently use a theory developed by the American
mathematician and cryptographer Claude Shannon in the 1940s to describe
how classical information can be encoded and transmitted across noisy
channels efficiently—what, for instance, is the most data that can be
streamed, in theory, down a fiber-optic cable without becoming
irretrievably corrupted. At the same time, physicists are striving to
build quantum computers that could, in principle, exploit peculiar
aspects of the subatomic realm to perform certain tasks at a far faster
rate than today’s classical machines.
But the principles defined by Shannon’s theory cannot be applied to
information processing by quantum computers. In fact, Deutsch notes,
physicists have no clear definition for what “quantum information” even
is or how it relates to classical information. “If we want to make
progress in finding new algorithms for quantum computers, we need to
understand what quantum information actually is!” he says. “So far, the
algorithms that have been discovered for quantum computers have been
surprises that were discovered by blundering about because we have no
underlying theory to guide us.”
In 2012 Deutsch outlined constructor theory, which, he believes, could
provide the underlying foundation for a grand unification of all
theories in both the classical and quantum domains. This latest paper is
a first step toward that larger goal—a demonstration of how classical
and quantum information can be used to unify two physical theories.
According to constructor theory, the most fundamental components of
reality are entities—“constructors”—that perform particular tasks,
accompanied by a set of laws that define which tasks are actually
possible for a constructor to carry out.
Read more
At a black hole, Albert Einstein's theory of gravity apparently clashes
with quantum physics, but that conflict could be solved if the Universe
were a holographic projection.
| MARK GARLICK via Getty Images nature.com
Latest calculations chime with 1997 theory that
reality is only perceived as 3D and is actually a 2D projection on the
boundary of the universe
A team of physicists have provided what has been described by the
journal Nature as the “clearest evidence yet” that our universe is a
hologram.
The new research could help reconcile one of modern physics' most
enduring problems : the apparent inconsistencies between the different
models of the universe as explained by quantum physics and Einstein’s
theory of gravity.
The two new scientific papers are the
culmination of years’ work led by Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki
University in Japan, and deal with hypothetical calculations of the
energies of black holes in different universes.
The idea of the
universe existing as a ‘hologram’ doesn’t refer to a Matrix-like
illusion, but the theory that the three dimensions we perceive are
actually just “painted” onto the cosmological horizon - the boundary of
the known universe.
If this sounds paradoxical, try to imagine a
holographic picture that changes as you move it. Although the picture is
two dimensional, observing it from different locations creates the
illusion that it is 3D.
This model of the universe helps explain
some inconsistencies between general relativity (Einstein’s theory) and
quantum physics. Although Einstein’s work underpins much of modern
physics, at certain extremes (such as in the middle of a black hole) the
principles he outlined break down and the laws of quantum physics take
over.
The traditional method of reconciling these two models has
come from the 1997 work of theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena, whose
ideas built upon string theory. This is one of the most well respected
‘theories of everything’ (Stephen Hawking is a fan) and it posits that
one-dimensional vibrating objects known as 'strings' are the elementary
particles of the universe.
Maldacena has welcomed the new research
by Hyakutake and his team, telling the journal Nature that the findings
are “an interesting way to test many ideas in quantum gravity and
string theory.
Leonard Susskind, a theoretical physicist regarded
as one of the fathers of string theory, added that the work by the
Japanese team “numerically confirmed, perhaps for the first time,
something we were fairly sure had to be true, but was still a
conjecture.”
For more information on this research, click here to read the original release.
