Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists have shown how three vortices can be linked in a way that prevents them from being dismantled. The structure of the links resembles a pattern used by Vikings and other ancient cultures, although this study focused on vortices in a special form of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The findings have implications for quantum computing, particle physics and other fields.

The study is published in the journal Communications Physics.

Postdoctoral researcher Toni Annala uses strings and water vortices to explain the phenomenon: “If you make a link structure out of, say, three unbroken strings in a circle, you can’t unravel it because the string can’t go through another string. If, on the other hand, the same circular structure is made in water, the water vortices can collide and merge if they are not protected.”

By using light waves that essentially spiral through space like corkscrews, optical logic gates can run one million times faster than their electronic counterparts, advancing the cause for ultra-fast, light-based computing, a new study finds.

Synchron, a neurovascular bioelectronics medicine company, today announced publication of a first-in-human study demonstrating successful use of the Stentrode™ brain-computer interface (BCI), or neuroprosthesis. Specifically, the study shows the Stentrode’s ability to enable patients with severe paralysis to resume daily tasks, including texting, emailing, shopping and banking online, through direct thought, and without the need for open brain surgery. The study is the first to demonstrate that a BCI implanted via the patient’s blood vessels is able to restore the transmission of brain impulses out of the body, and did so wirelessly. The patients were able to use their impulses to control digital devices without the need for a touchscreen, mouse, keyboard or voice activation technology. This feasibility study was published in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery (JNIS), the leading international peer-review journal for the clinical field of neurointerventional surgery, and official journal of the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS).

Switch-Science has just announced a trio of quantum computing products that the company claims are the world’s first portable quantum computers. Sourced from SpinQ Technology, a Chinese quantum computing company based in Shenzen, the new quantum computing products have been designed for educational purposes. The aim is to democratize access to physical quantum computing solutions that can be deployed (and redeployed) at will. But considering the actual quantum machinery on offer, none of these (which we’re internally calling “quantops”) are likely to be a part of the future of quantum.

The new products being developed with education in mind shows in their qubit counts, which top out at three (compare that to Google’s Sycamore or IBM’s 433-qubit Osprey Quantum Processing Unit [QPU], both based on superconducting qubits). That’s not enough a number for any viable, problem-solving quantum computing to take place within these machines, but it’s enough that users can program and run quantum circuits — either the integrated, educational ones, or a single custom algorithm.

Computers that can use quantum mechanics’ “spooky” properties to solve problems quicker than existing technology may seem appealing, but they must first overcome a major obstacle. Scientists from Japan may have discovered the solution by demonstrating how a superconducting material, niobium nitride, can be added as a flat, crystalline layer to a nitride-semiconductor substrate. This technique could make it simple to manufacture quantum qubits that can be used with conventional computer devices.

Conventional silicon microprocessor manufacturing techniques have grown over decades and are continually being refined and enhanced. On the other hand, the majority of quantum computing.

Performing computation using quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement.

Scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois at Chicago used scanning tunneling microscopy to form a charged rare earth molecule on a metal surface and rotate it clockwise and counterclockwise without affecting its charge.

Their findings open up new avenues for research into the atomic-scale manipulation of materials important to the future, ranging from quantum computing.

Continue reading “For the First Time: Scientists Have Formed a Charged Rare Earth Molecule on a Metal Surface and Rotated It” »

Researchers from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Fujitsu have developed a new way of searching through ‘chemical space’ for materials with desirable properties.

The technique has resulted in a promising new catalyst material that could help lower the cost of producing clean hydrogen.

The discovery represents an important step toward more sustainable ways of storing energy, including from renewable but intermittent sources, such as solar and wind power.

The most common particles are electrons and photons, which are understood to be examples from the great families of fermions and bosons, to which all other particles in nature belong. But there is another possible category of particles, the so-called anyons. Anyons are predicted to arise inside materials small enough to confine the electronic state wave function, as they emerge from the collective dance of many interacting electrons.

One of these is named Majorana zero mode, anyonic cousins to the Majorana fermions proposed by Ettore Majorana in 1937. Majoranas, as these hypothetical anyons are affectionally called, are predicted to exhibit numerous exotic properties, such as simultaneously behaving like a particle and antiparticle, allowing mutual annihilation, and the capability to hide quantum information by encoding it nonlocally in space. The latter property specifically holds the promise of resilient quantum computing.

Since 2010, many research groups have raced to find Majoranas. Unlike fundamental particles, such as the electron or the photon, which naturally exist in a vacuum, Majorana anyons need to be created inside hybrid materials. One of the most promising platforms for realizing them is based on hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanodevices. Over the past decade, these devices have been studied with excruciating detail, with the hope of unambiguously proving the existence of Majoranas. However, Majoranas are tricky entities, easily overlooked or mistaken with other quantum states.

Many investors are jumping to inject money into the startup.

Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos-backed foundations (Gates Frontier and Bezos Expeditions) have joined other companies in investing $75 million in Synchron, the endovascular brain-computer interface (BCI) company, according to a press release by the organization published on Thursday. This is a Series C financing round led by ARCH Venture Partners that brings the total amount raised since inception to $145 million.

Many investors on board.

Continue reading “Gates and Bezos back Neuralink-competitor Synchron in a new funding” »