Toggle light / dark theme

A superfluid vortex controlled in a lab is helping physicists learn more about the behavior of black holes.

A whirlpool generated in helium cooled to just a fraction above absolute zero mimics the gravitational environment of these objects to such high precision that it’s giving unprecedented insight into how they drag and warp the space-time around them.

“Using superfluid helium has allowed us to study tiny surface waves in greater detail and accuracy than with our previous experiments in water,” explains physicist Patrik Švančara of the University of Nottingham in the UK, who led the research.

Quantum computers promise to tackle some of the most challenging problems facing humanity today. While much attention has been directed towards the computation of quantum information, the transduction of information within quantum networks is equally crucial in materializing the potential of this new technology.

Quantum information theorists have turned Wigner’s friend into a powerful set of thought experiments for testing the plausibility of physical assumptions we make when we share information. These elaborated thought experiments involve multiple participants in multiple labs, entangled quantum states between friends and real-life entangled photon experiments to smoke out what our classical assumptions are.

Is there a fork in the road, classical or quantum? To stick with the classical interpretation that says Wigner’s friend involves two inconsistent descriptions of one state of affairs produces paradoxes. The quantum perspective implies there are descriptions of two different states of affairs. The first is intuitive but ends up in a contradiction, the other is less intuitive, but consistent. Quantum friendship means never having to say you’re sorry for your use of the formalism.

Robert P Crease is a professor (click link below for full bio), Jennifer Carter is a lecturer and Gino Elia is a PhD student, all in the Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, US.

Simulations of an elusive carbon molecule that leaves diamonds in the dust for hardness may pave the way to creating it in a lab.

Known as the eight-atom body-centered cubic (BC8) phase, the configuration is expected to be up to 30 percent more resistant to compression than diamond – the hardest known stable material on Earth.

Physicists from the US and Sweden ran quantum-accurate molecular-dynamics simulations on a supercomputer to see how diamond behaved under high pressure when temperatures rose to levels that ought to make it unstable, revealing new clues on the conditions that could push the carbon atoms in diamond into the unusual structure.

Scientists around the world work hard to rinse quantum systems for noise, which may disturb the function of tomorrow’s powerful quantum computers. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) have found a way to use noise to process quantum information. This raises the performance of the quantum computing unit, the qubit.

An international collaboration led by scientists at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), University of Copenhagen, has demonstrated an alternative approach. Their method allows to use noise to process quantum information. As a result, the performance of the fundamental quantum computing unit of information, the qubit, is increased by 700 percent.

The results were published recently in the journal Nature Communications.

The owner of Novo Nordisk, the drugmaker that gave the world Ozempic and Wegovy, is funding a new supercomputer powered by Nvidia’s artificial intelligence technology with a key aim of discovering new medicines and treatments.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded France’s Eviden a contract to build what the computing company says will be one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, able to process vast amounts of data using AI.

It should provide “unprecedented potential to accelerate groundbreaking scientific discoveries in areas such as drug discovery, disease diagnosis and treatment,” Cédric Bourrasset, Eviden’s head of quantum computing, said in a statement.