Daily Archives: June 26, 2017

Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program: Santiago …

Posted: June 26, 2017 at 5:54 pm

The night sky over the Cerro Mayu Observatory, Chile. // All images: Astronomy: Alison Klesman

Its been a busy week so far in Chile!

But first, a little more background: Why am I here in the Southern Hemisphere? Im participating in ACEAP: the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program, supported by the National Science Foundation and run via a collaboration of Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), and Gemini Observatory.

This unique program has several interlocking goals. Not only does it highlight the value of investing U.S. dollars in world-class facilities in the country of Chile, it also allows the ambassadors who embark upon this trip and the Chilean communities they visit to build and foster lasting relationships. Through these relationships, people in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres can work together to promote astronomy as a hobby, as a career, and as a fundamental way to answer questions both big and small. The night sky is shared by people across the world, and instilling a sense of wonder and of custodianship over this resource is the goal and the passion of each ambassador who arrived in Santiago earlier this week.

This year, the programs third year, Im very lucky to serve as a media liaison for the program on behalf of Astronomy magazine. Its my very first trip to Chile, though I grew familiar with many of the astronomical facilities during my years in graduate school. Now, Im getting the chance to see firsthand the outstanding astronomy efforts being made in Chile today, from the 8-meter Gemini South Telescope to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

Weve been on the go since day one with a packed schedule, but each experience has been more memorable than the last. Honestly, the only thing theres little time for is sleep which is why I havent had the chance to sit down and blog before this, as Ive jumped on every chance to catch a few spare zs that popped up!

This morning, weve finally got a bit of spare time before we leave the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) after two nights on Cerro Tololo.

Ive already mentioned the busy schedule, but Id like to highlight just a few of my favorite parts of the trip so far:

Astronomers can control the Gemini South telescope from the convenience and comfort of this control room in La Serena if they like.

- Visiting the Observatorio Astronomico Andinoand the Cerro Mayu Observatory, where we spent time discussing astrotourism and astronomy education, as well as imaging the night sky. I saw my very first Southern Hemisphere sky from OAA, and took some amazing shots of it from Cerro Mayu, with some help from the experienced astrophotographers in our group!

- Spending the afternoon at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) headquarters in Chile, where we had the chance to speak with the staff about their education and outreach projects, as well as tour the electronics shop. We were able to see and, in some cases, hold detectors used to image the sky.

- Seeing the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) and the 8-meter Gemini South telescopes on Cerro Pachn; we even got to climb up the scope to see Geminis single-piece mirror and check out the amazing view from near the top of the dome.

- Touring CTIO, including getting an up-close look at the 4-meter Blanco telescope, the 2 Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) telescope, and the SMARTS Consortium telescopes.

The view from inside the Gemini South dome.

Aside from the opportunity to crawl around the domes of these famous telescopes, Ive also had a spectacular time getting to know my fellow ACEAP ambassadors. The group this year includes educators, photographers, planetarium directors, and outreach volunteers and coordinators, all extremely excited and passionate about bringing astronomy into the lives of people in the U.S., Chile, and throughout the world. As we travel, often in close quarters, weve engaged in talk, laughter, and song on our way from one location to the next. While I cant pretend Im not extremely excited about the remaining days of our trip were going to San Pedro next to visit a few schools, then on to tour ALMA on Friday and Saturday! I also have to admit that Im really looking forward to getting home and taking advantage of all the connections Ive made here to promote the projects and work of each and every ambassador Ive met. I will also be turning my experience here into a full feature story for the magazine, which Im ready to get home and write (well, following a couple full nights of sleep, probably).

The view this morning from Cerro Tololo - the clouds look like an ocean!

Since I cant write everything down here, nor should I, Id like to point you to some great resources as we continue our journey. You can find out more about our experiences so far and follow the remainder of our trip on Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress.

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Hubble captures massive dead disc galaxy Astronomy Now – Astronomy Now Online

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This is a wide view of galaxy cluster MACS J2129-0741, located in the constellation Aquarius. The massive galaxy cluster magnifies, brightens, and distorts the images of remote background galaxies, including the far-distant, dead disc galaxy MACS2129-1. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (STScI), and the CLASH team

By combining the power of a natural lens in space with the capability of NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers made a surprising discoverythe first example of a compact yet massive, fast-spinning, disc-shaped galaxy that stopped making stars only a few billion years after the big bang.

Finding such a galaxy early in the history of the universe challenges the current understanding of how massive galaxies form and evolve, say researchers.

When Hubble photographed the galaxy, astronomers expected to see a chaotic ball of stars formed through galaxies merging together. Instead, they saw evidence that the stars were born in a pancake-shaped disc.

This is the first direct observational evidence that at least some of the earliest so-called dead galaxies where star formation stopped somehow evolve from a Milky Way-shaped disc into the giant elliptical galaxies we see today.

This is a surprise because elliptical galaxies contain older stars, while spiral galaxies typically contain younger blue stars. At least some of these early dead disc galaxies must have gone through major makeovers. They not only changed their structure, but also the motions of their stars to make a shape of an elliptical galaxy.

This new insight may force us to rethink the whole cosmological context of how galaxies burn out early on and evolve into local elliptical-shaped galaxies, said study leader Sune Toft of the Dark Cosmology Center at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Perhaps we have been blind to the fact that early dead galaxies could in fact be discs, simply because we havent been able to resolve them.

Previous studies of distant dead galaxies have assumed that their structure is similar to the local elliptical galaxies they will evolve into. Confirming this assumption in principle requires more powerful space telescopes than are currently available. However, through the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, a massive, foreground cluster of galaxies acts as a natural zoom lens in space by magnifying and stretching images of far more distant background galaxies. By joining this natural lens with the resolving power of Hubble, scientists were able to see into the center of the dead galaxy.

The remote galaxy is three times as massive as the Milky Way but only half the size. Rotational velocity measurements made with the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope (VLT) showed that the disc galaxy is spinning more than twice as fast as the Milky Way.

Using archival data from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH), Toft and his team were able to determine the stellar mass, star-formation rate, and the ages of the stars.

Why this galaxy stopped forming stars is still unknown. It may be the result of an active galactic nucleus, where energy is gushing from a supermassive black hole. This energy inhibits star formation by heating the gas or expelling it from the galaxy. Or it may be the result of the cold gas streaming onto the galaxy being rapidly compressed and heated up, preventing it from cooling down into star-forming clouds in the galaxys center.

But how do these young, massive, compact discs evolve into the elliptical galaxies we see in the present-day universe? Probably through mergers, Toft said. If these galaxies grow through merging with minor companions, and these minor companions come in large numbers and from all sorts of different angles onto the galaxy, this would eventually randomize the orbits of stars in the galaxies. You could also imagine major mergers. This would definitely also destroy the ordered motion of the stars.

Thefindingsare published in the June 22 issue of the journalNature. Toft and his team hope to use NASAs upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to look for a larger sample of such galaxies.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

The Very Large Telescope is a telescope facility operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile.

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Take A Bite starts Wednesday with food, music, astronomy – Glens Falls Post-Star

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GLENS FALLS Take A Bite, the annual summer weekly food and entertainment festival, starts this week, with more than 35 participants set up along downtown sidewalks from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday.

I cant believe it whoo! said Candice Frye, chairwoman of the Take A Bite organizing committee of the Glens Falls Collaborative.

Musicians perform, restaurants sell small portions of entrees, appetizers and desserts, and community organizations set up information booths.

The festival has become an informal competition among restaurants to see who can come up with the most uncommon recipe each week, said Frye, executive director of Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council.

Frye said she is excited that two new dessert vendors Sweets by Marissa and Yum, Yum Ice will participate this year.

Take A Bite continues weekly from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Aug. 16.

Restaurants will be set up along Glen Street and Maple Street, and later in the summer along Ridge Street.

There will be a lot happening on Maple Street this year, Frye said.

Most Ridge Street restaurants, with the exception of Morgan & Company, will be set up on Glen Street this Wednesday, and possibly on subsequent Wednesdays, until work on the Ridge Street infrastructure project moves past the block of Ridge Street between the Centennial Circle roundabout and The Queensbury Hotel, Frye said.

Morgan and Company will still have its tent set up in front of the restaurant at the corner of Ridge and Maple streets.

Take A Bite is a great example of the way businesses and arts organizations work together to improve the citys quality of life, said Glens Falls Mayor Jack Diamond.

Its kind of the face of the city in the summertime, he said. Were looking forward to it.

Musical entertainment this Wednesday will be Milayne Jacksons Blue Train Trio at the Centennial Circle roundabout and saxophone soloist Gavin Munoff on Glen Street, in the vicinity of Crandall Public Library.

Coinciding with Take A Bite, Crandall Public Library will kick off its Eyes to the Skies summer free astronomy program series at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the community room in the library basement.

Kevin Manning, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a consultant to NASA, will speak.

The series leads up to the coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in the United States on Aug. 21.

Follow staff writer Maury Thompson at All Politics is Local blog, at PS_Politics on Twitter and at Maury Thompson Post-Star on Facebook.

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NASA is reviewing the WFIRST mission | Astronomy.com – Astronomy Magazine

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After establishing an independent review committee earlier this year, NASA announced on June 22 that the committee is looking into costs and scheduling issues with the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission.

WFIRST was designed with two main instruments, the Wide Field instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument, to study dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The Wide Field Instrument is to study light from galaxies and perform a microlensing survey of the Milky Way while the Coronagraph Instrument will take high contrast images.

The telescope is still being developed and was supposed to go into Phase B in October, but was delayed until an independent review could be done and see any recommendations from the report. Moving forward with the mission will depend on the amount of funding it will receive.

Due to budget cuts, the astrophysics program received a lot less than they had originally asked for about $31 million less, to be exact. The team said NASA sent Congress an operating plan to address the cuts.

Source: SpaceNews

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Morgan Stanley: Cloud computing is at ‘an inflection point’ but how big will it get? – GeekWire

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Over the next few years, we will learn whether cloud computing is a nice little business that will settle into maturity by the end of the decade or a once-in-a-generation business opportunity.

Thats the view of Morgan Stanleys Brian Nowak, who delivered the Wall Street view of Cloud City earlier this month at our Cloud Tech Summit. Theres no question right now that cloud computing is at a point of inflection, he said, with very strong growth expected over the short term as more and more workloads move into the cloud.

Right now, Morgan Stanley estimates that about 20 percent of all workloads run on the cloud. That 20 percent is a very important number because if you look at other adoption cycles, whether its notebooks, smartphone penetration, the x86 server, even digital music and video games, when you get to that 20 percent penetration point, that curve inflects and growth accelerates, Nowak said.

When you get to that 20 percent penetration point, that curve inflects and growth accelerates.That shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone who has noticed the surge in Amazon Web Services revenue over the last few years. The real question is whether or not growth continues to accelerate this pace once public cloud hits the 50 percent penetration mark, which Morgan Stanley expects to happen around 2020.

Historically, when you look at other markets, like in server virtualization, after that, growth in the market slowed considerably, down to the single digits, Nowak said. Just to be safe, Morgan Stanley is making that projection to its clients, given the historical trends.

However, he acknowledged a bullish case for the cloud based around the fact that a lot of cloud workloads are brand-new workloads; instead of lifting and shifting, the industry jargon for taking applications running on homegrown infrastructure and moving them into the cloud, lots of companies are starting new workloads on cloud services.

As those workloads scale, thats a ton of new business for cloud providers that simply didnt exist on on-premises hardware. And, of course, there are still lots of companies moving those older workloads onto the cloud as well, giving cloud companies several sources of growth over the next few years.

Another trend to watch is the growth of hybrid cloud strategies, with workloads spread across the public cloud and internal servers, which might put a damper on the most bullish case for public cloud but still mean companies are increasing what they spend in the cloud.

Watch the full video of Nowaks talk above, and stay tuned for more highlights from the event in the days ahead.

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Lady Eli, Cloud Computing Among Workers for Brown – BloodHorse.com (press release) (registration) (blog)

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Trainer Chad Brown sent out a number of graded stakes winners to work on Belmont Park's main track June 25.

Klaravich Stables and William Lawrence's grade 1 winner Practical Joke breezed four furlongsin :48.09 as he gears up for the $400,000 Dwyer Stakes (G3) July 8.

The Into Mischief colt, who will make his first start in the Dwyer since a fifth-place run in the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1), seeks his first win of his 3-year-old campaignafter runner-up efforts in the Xpressbet Fountain of Youth Stakes and Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (both G2).

"He breezed and continues to train very well ahead of the Dwyer," Brown said.

Preakness Stakes (G1) winner Cloud Computing also put in a maintenance work Sunday, breezingfour furlongs in :49.49. It was his second work since winning the second leg of the Triple Crown May 20. Also owned by Klaravich and Lawrence, Cloud Computing is training toward the $600,000 Jim Dandy Stakes (G2)July 29 at Saratoga Race Course.

Grade 1 winners Lady Eli and Antonoe breezed in company and covered four furlongs in :49.42. Lady Eli, who most recently won the Gamely Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita Park, is slated to make her next start on Saratoga's opening weekend in the $500,000 Diana Stakes (G1T).

Brown said Antonoe, fresh off her win in the Longines Just a Game Stakes (G1T)June 10, is also a possibility for the Diana.

"They went together. They're a good team and we're happy with both of them," Brown said.

Don Alberto Stable'sRubilinda, the first U.S. winner for 10-time group 1 winner Frankel, was scratched from the June 24 Wild Applause Stakes after the race was moved off the turf.

"It puts me in a bad spot. I likely now will have to go on to an allowance race and if she does well, then on to a stakes race," Brown said. "I'd like to run her (at Belmont)if I could."

Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1T) winnerNew Money Honey and grade 3 winnerFifty Fivetwo of the four expected Brown entrants for the $1 million Belmont Oaks Invitational (G1T) July 8are expected to breeze on the turf June 26 at Belmont.

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Cloud computing key to 4th industrial revolution – News VietNamNet – VietNamNet Bridge

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Cloud computing is a crucial technological trend and has become an important technology during the fourth industrial revolution, according to Nguyen Thanh Phuc, Director General of the Authority of Information Technology Application.

Cloud computing is a crucial technological trend and has become an important technology during the fourth industrial revolution

Phuc made the remarks at the recent Vietnam Cloud Computing Conference 2017, sponsored by the Vietnam Software Association (VINASA), in coordination with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore).

Of note, Vietnamese ministries and authorities have boosted information and technology applications, the building of e-government and improved the investment environment to create clear and favourable conditions for enterprises, said he.

Also at the conference, Associate Professor Dr. Vu Minh Khuong from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy delivered a presentation about a survey on cloud computing at 800 enterprises and organisations in Vietnam.

The survey results indicated that the country had the fastest growth in investment for cloud computing in the 2010-16 period among ASEAN countries, increasing 64.4 percent per year, higher than the average in ASEAN (49.5 percent) and the world (42.5 percent).

However, real spending on cloud computing in Vietnam was still rather low last year, which was 107 times lower than in Singapore; 6.5 times lower than Malaysia; 2.4 times lower compared with Thailand and 1.3 times lower compared with the Philippines, he added.

The above numbers revealed that there were many barriers to promoting cloud computing in Vietnam. The largest barrier is the popular use of unlicensed software, the lack of knowledge about the benefits of cloud computing, information security concerns and the quality of cloud services in Vietnam, he said.

According to experts at the conference, in the early stages of digital transformation, priority should be given to developing ICT infrastructure, especially broadband connections and cloud computing applications.

At the same time, there should be priority policies created for cloud computing, in order to trigger digital conversions using big data and Internet of Things applications.

Nguyen Dinh Thang, VINASA Vice Chairman, added that cloud computing offered tremendous benefits, such as product and service standardisation, investment cost reductions, the shortening of the time to develop products and improvements in the quality of services.

Therefore, the agency proposed that the government need to have an orientation policy, while businesses and organisations need to develop strategies on research, investment and early cloud applications to improve production and business efficiency, contributing to the countrys economic development and boosting the countrys progress during the fourth industrial revolution.

VNA

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How the cloud has changed education and training – TNW

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A few years ago, the cloud was a promise to reduce costs of IT and improve flexibility and scaling by providing on-demand computing, storage and services to every organization.

Today, the cloud is a ubiquity we take for granted. We expect every file, every service and digital asset we have to be available across all our devices everywhere we go, at any time of the day.

The omnipresence of the cloud has streamlined and transformed quite a number of domains, including education. Today, thanks to cloud computing, education and training has become more affordable, flexible and accessible to millions of people and thousands of businesses.

Heres a look at how cloud-based education has changed things for the better.

One of the problems schools and training departments in organizations have constantly struggled with is to keep up with hardware, software and IT staff costs and complexities. In contrast, the cloud has been offering low-cost, subscription-based model that can support more companies and organizations.The elegance of the cloud is that the user only requires little more than a browser and an internet connection. This is a welcome shift from the need to manually install and update applications on every single computer in a department.

In the past years, solutions such as Googles suite of educational tools have provided schools with a free access to general classroom tools such as word processors, spreadsheets and presentation software. Cloud applications such as Google Docs allow students to easily collaborate on assignments in an easy-to-use environment.

Microsoft has also made its move to the cloud, providing subscription-based access to the cloud version of its popular Office suite, which it offers for free to students and teachers.

One of the interesting developments in the space has been the advent of virtual classrooms in the cloud. Virtual cloud classrooms provide teachers with a paperless way to set up classes and courses, distribute material and assignments, and track and grade student progress from their desktop browser or smartphone.On-premise virtual classroom software have existed for a while, but their installation and deployment came with heavy technical and financial requirements. In recent years, established companies such as Blackboard have started offering cloud-based services, making it possible for more schools and institutions to enroll.

Bigger tech corporations are also entering the space. Google launched its Classroom app as part of G Suite for Education in 2014 and Microsoft released its own Classroom last year. Both solutions revolve around providing a unified environment to better use office cloud apps in managing classes.

Cloud platforms can be a boon to professional education. For instance, IT training is traditionally associated with large investments in hardware and complex setup costs. However specialized cloud platforms have provided a flexible, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy alternative.

One example is CloudShare, a provider of cloud-based virtual machines, which enables companies to setup virtual training labs for their training sessions. With CloudShare, trainers can create any number of VMs of various operating systems in a virtual class environment, assign them to students, monitor their use and actively assist students when needed.The use of cloud computing and virtual classes in IT training brings huge benefits by cutting back hardware costs and complexity while providing an interactive experience that is not possible in legacy classroom settings. It also benefits companies that need to train staff and employees across the world by sparing them additional traveling and trainer fees.

By 2025, the global demand for higher education will double to approximately 200 million students per year, mostly from emerging economies. Elsewhere, the disruption of the economy and employment landscape by artificial intelligence is increasing demand for professional training in various fields.

But thanks to cloud-based education, more and more people can now attend academic and professional courses. In recent years, weve seen the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) platforms, which provide easy and affordable (sometimes free) access to knowledge and training.

In 2012, Stanford University professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller founded Coursera, a cloud platform that offers online courses, specializations, and degrees in a variety of subjects, including data science, computer science, engineering and medicine. Aside from Stanford, other top universities such as Princeton, University of Michigan and Penn State University are now using the platform to offer their programs to students worldwide.

Applicants can enroll for courses, specialization certificates or full higher education degrees. As of 2017, the platform offers more than 2,000 courses and has more than 24 million registered users worldwide.

edX, a platform similar to Coursera created by Harvard University in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added high school education to its platform in 2014 to help people across the world get access to secondary education.Tech corporations have launched their own education platforms to give access to knowledge and education in specific fields. One example is IBMs Big Data University, a free platform that aims to put more people into data science and machine learning jobs and now has more than 400,000 signed up users.

Cloud-based learning platforms offer anyone with an internet connection classrooms, lectures, course material and a seamless environment where they can learn at their own pace and work on assignments and projects on any device and anywhere they go.

With such huge amounts of data being collected and processed in the cloud, the next step of cloud education is the integration of artificial intelligence in the process. AI algorithms can assist both teachers and students in the learning process, finding pain-points in the teaching process and lending a hand where learners are struggling. Most major vendors have either taken their first steps or are now considering integrating AI-powered tools in their training solutions.

Weve already seen acceleration and enhancements in education and training thanks to the cloud. What will come next can be even more exciting.

Read next: Facebook has a magical Harry Potter easter egg to celebrate the books 20th anniversary

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Google to Achieve "Supremacy" in Quantum Computing by the End of 2017 – Big Think

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In theory, quantum computers could be vastly superior to regular or classical computers in performing certain kinds of tasks, but its been hard to build one. Already a leader in this field, Google is now testing its most powerful quantum chip yet,a 20-qubit processor,which the company looks to more than double in power to 49 qubits by the end of 2017.

Google's qubit devices are built on integrated circuits and can perform calculations using the physics of quantum mechanics.Qubits(or quantum bits) are units of quantum information that can be a mix of 0 and 1at the same time,making them better suited than classical bits for encoding large amounts of data.

Last year, Google actually released a plan on how it will achieve what it called quantum supremacy - getting quantum computers to do something the classical computers cannot, like factoring very large numbers. The paper says that if the processors manage to get to 50 qubits, quantum supremacy would be possible.

One big issue for Google to resolve - figuring out how to simulate what randomly arranged quantum circuits would do. Even a small difference in input into such a system would produce extremely different outputs, requiring a great amount of computing power that doesnt currently exist.

Theyre doing a quantum version of chaos, is how Simon Devitt from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan described Googles challenge. The output is essentially random, so you have to compute everything.

Computational difficulties aside, Google and other companies like IBM are moving along quicker than expected in their development. While they figured out the science necessary to create the qubits, the next challenges lie in scaling down their systems and reducing error rates.

The engineer Alan Ho from Googles quantum AI lab revealed that his teams current 20-qubit system has the error measure also known as two-qubit fidelity of 99.5%. The goal for the 49-qubit system would be to reach 99.7% fidelity.

It might take until 2027 until we get error-free quantum computers, according to Ho, meaning that usable devices are still some time away.

For more on how quantum computing works, check out this video:

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DoE Launches Chicago Quantum Exchange – HPCwire (blog)

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While many of us were preoccupied with ISC 2017 last week, the launch of the Chicago Quantum Exchange went largely unnoticed. So what is such a thing? It is a Department of Energy sponsored collaboration between the University of Chicago, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory to facilitate the exploration of quantum information and the development of new applications with the potential to dramatically improve technology for communication, computing and sensing.

The new hub will be within within the Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME) at UChicago. Quantum mechanics, of course, governs the behavior of matter at the atomic and subatomic levels in exotic and unfamiliar ways compared to the classical physics used to understand the movements of everyday objects. The engineering of quantum phenomena could lead to new classes of devices and computing capabilities, permitting novel approaches to solving problems that cannot be addressed using existing technology.

Lately, it seems work on quantum computing has ratcheted up considerably with IBM, Google, D-Wave, and Microsoft leading the charge. The Chicago Quantum Exchange seems to be a more holistic endeavor to advance the entire quantum research ecosystem and industry.

The combination of the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, working together as the Chicago Quantum Exchange, is unique in the domain of quantum information science, said Matthew Tirrell, dean and Founding Pritzker Director of the Institute for Molecular Engineering and Argonnes deputy laboratory director for science. The CQEs capabilities will span the range of quantum information, from basic solid state experimental and theoretical physics, to device design and fabrication, to algorithm and software development. CQE aims to integrate and exploit these capabilities to create a quantum information technology ecosystem.

According to the official announcement, the CQE collaboration will benefit from UChicagosPolsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which supports the creation of innovative businesses connected to UChicago and Chicagos South Side. The CQE will have a strong connection with a major Hyde Park innovation project that wasannounced recentlyas the second phase of the Harper Court development on the north side of 53rd Street, and will include an expansion of Polsky Center activities. This project will enable the transition from laboratory discoveries to societal applications through industrial collaborations and startup initiatives.

Companies large and small are positioning themselves to make a far-reaching impact with this new quantum technology. Alumni of IMEs quantum engineering PhD program have been recruited to work for many of these companies. The creation of CQE will allow for new linkages and collaborations with industry, governmental agencies and other academic institutions, as well as support from the Polsky Center for new startup ventures.

IMEs quantum engineering program is already training a new workforce of quantum engineers to meet the need of industry, government laboratories, and universities. The program now consists of eight faculty members and more than 100 postdoctoral scientists and doctoral students. Approximately 20 faculty members from UChicagos Physical Sciences Division also pursue quantum research.

Source: University of Chicago

Link to full article: https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2017/06/20/chicago-quantum-exchange-create-technologically-transformative-ecosystem

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