In COVID times, gestures that would have been banal and forgettable a year ago now arrive embedded with loaded backstorieseven those (especially those?) that play out on stage.

For the past year and a half, actor Melanie McNulty has been prepping to open Constellations. In September 2019, Theatre Above the Law artistic director Tony Lawry cast her as the astrophysicist heroine in Nick Payne's mind-stretching, multiverse-pondering exploration of love, the cosmos, and the infinite capacity of the human brain to both define and betray the very heart that feeds it.

At first, the two-hander also starring Ross Compton was slated to open in March 2020. It was postponed. Then it was postponed again. And again. About a year after McNulty and Compton were cast, TATL decided to do it as a virtual production, which opens this week.

The commitment made, the cast and two-person crew (Lawry and stage manager Stina Taylor) embarked on weeks of Zoom rehearsals and quarantine, punctuated by COVID tests for all four.

Eventually, the group stepped off Zoom and met for tech week in TATL's Rogers Park space. It was the first time the maximum-45-seat Jarvis Square Theater had been used for live theater in almost a year. With Taylor taking on chauffeur duties so the actors could avoid public transit, the group did two days of masked rehearsals. Then, they all did another COVID test. Then there was an extraordinary moment of wrenching ordinariness.

Compton and McNulty dropped their masks. McNulty recalled experiencing a heady sense of marvel.

"There was a slight moment where I felt like I was naked. The air, suddenly on my face. But that went away, and it was just sheer joy. I'm watching someone smile and laugh and breathe, right in front of me.

"After so many hours of rehearsal where all I could see was my scene partner's eyes, it was liberating."

It was also brief.

"It felt pretty sweet during that part of tech, to have that freedom," McNulty said. "We all have to do what we have to do to stay safeI'm not complaining about having to wear a mask or anything else I have or need to do. But yeah. I was pretty melancholy after, knowing it's going to be a long time before we have that kind of freedom again."

For Lawry, it was a defining moment in a production he'd been committed to for the better part of two years. Lawry said he's always found Payne's elliptical tale of an astrophysicist and the beekeeper who loves her an emotional roller coaster. Smart romantic comedies are his go-to genre, and this one had humans dealing with quantum physics and aphasia and string theory in addition to drunken sex, major trust issues, and witty wordplay.

He did not, however, expect it to be quite the emotional roller coaster it became.

"This was supposed to start our fourth season," he said. We were coming off our first Jeff Recommended season, our first Jeff nominationwe were riding that wave, thinking this would be a great thing to end on, keep the momentum going.

"Nobody wanted to let it go. We kept postponing it and postponing it. We thought about doing it outside somewhere in the summer, but that didn't feel safe. And the city wasn't giving theaters space to do outdoor performances like the restaurants were getting for outdoor dining.

"So by late last fall, I was like, 'We just need to do it, even if its just for us. We've all been prepping for this show for so long, and I'm afraid if we postpone it anymore, we might not all be able to do it together. So let's get it out of our system so we can move on, but we have to figure out a way that we can do that without shortchanging the brilliant material in any way and we have to be safe.'"

Lawry bought a green screen and came up with a production budget that was mostly about editing and filming. (Credit for video goes to Max Zuckert; George Pitsilos and William Schneider created the sound.)

Lawry wanted to replicate, as much as he could, the feeling of an actual play you could see in person in the Jarvis space. There were times over the past year when Lawry wondered whether the Rogers Park space would survive, at least as Theatre Above the Law.

"There were a couple months when it was iffyour landlord has been OK. We got a couple of grants, not what we'd hoped for but some. It's month by month. We just extended our lease for six months. We're good through August. But I wouldn't be truthful if I didn't say my stimulus money goes into the theater's bank account.

"I have an ensemble that's just as passionate as I am. So we've done some Zoom murder mystery fundraisers, and they've put everything behind them," Lawry continued. "And our neighbors have been so supportive. I feel like we're very much a part of our community. Like, even people who didnt attend the online fundraisers bought tickets. The restaurant across the street (R Public House) did this pairing dinner thing, where if you bought a certain dinner, we got part of the proceeds. Life's Sweet is doing a honey tart as a dessert, only on show nights.

"We got 20 new subscribers during a pandemic for a season that's totally up in the air which I think is pretty great for our little storefront. Its a tight-knit neighborhood, and I really love being a part of it," he said.

That season is not entirely up in the air. In March, Lawry hopes to drop a reboot of their 2017 world-premiere adaptation of Cyrano, only this time as a radio play complete with ad jingles. In May or June (or later), there's a world premiere of War of the Worlds on deck, only this time, as Lawry explains, "The heroine is a 13-year-old girl and the aliens are gross men."

Finally, TATL will close out with Comptons Henchpeople, a three-person comedy about which Lawry will say nothing else except for "I really hope we can do it for a live audience by then. But we'll see."

For now, Lawry and his cast and crew remain immersed in Constellations, and the often weirdly apropos existential dilemmas Payne's characters insist you think long and hard about. Take, for example drunk-but-still-an-expert-physicist Marianne's science-based statement that "We're just particles governed by a series of very particular laws being knocked the fuck around all over the place."

McNulty has given it some thought.

"In this play, there are multiple universes we're jumping in and out of, and depending on which one you're in, you see a different version of Marianne. And this version has seen some things that have hardened her. This is the Marianne who says emotions don't compute, so I'm just going to bury my head in my spreadsheets and data."

"What I love about this play," she added, "is that the playwright took something as convoluted as string theory and quantum mechanics and turned them all into a love story between two human beings.

"At the beginning of all this I spent a lot of time questioning what I had to give. What is an actor's role when everything is crumbling around us? What can we offer? This was boggling my mind for a while," she said. "I don't know all the answers. But this play makes me think about how I am spending my time. Am I doing what brings me joy? Am I being loving? Am I being me? The play makes you realize you really have to ask those questions, because we might not have a lot of time."v

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Quantum physics and romance collide in the streaming production of Constellations - Chicago Reader

Italys CAM Film and Fremantles The Apartment have teamed up to acquire rights to bestselling Italian author Carlo Rovellis Helgoland, an origin story about quantum physics, with plans to turn the book into a high-end TV series.

A bestseller in Italy, Helgoland will soon be published in the U.K. and elsewhere around world. Itsthe story of quantum physics, the theory that has given rise to modern technology the computer chip, for one and atomic energy, but also to philosophical considerations and a new understanding of how just about everything works.

Rovellis previous books, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What it Seems and The Order of Time are all international bestsellers, translated into 41 languages. He is a theoretical physicist who has worked in Italy and the U.S.

In June 1925, 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a treeless, wind-battered island in the North Sea called Helgoland, reads the Helgoland blurb on the website for Penguin U.K., which will be releasing the book in March.

It was on this island that Heisenberg came up with the key insight behind quantum mechanics. Helgoland is thus the story of quantum physics and its bright young founders who were to become some of the most famous Nobel winners, according to promotional materials from Fremantle, which also called the tale a celebration of a youthful rebellion and intellectual revolution.

Today more than ever, we are living a life where our most simple and everyday actions are reflections of an unconditional trust in science, The Apartment chief Lorenzo Mieli told Variety. We therefore think its especially urgent and necessary to tackle this project at this particular moment in history.

Mieli, who is the producer of shows such as The New Pope, My Brilliant Friend and Paolo Sorrentinos upcoming The Hand of God, went on to note that through Rovellis solid and passionate book, we want to tell the human adventure of an extraordinary generation of scientists who changed modern thought forever, and not just from a scientific standpoint.

CAM Film is a Rome outfit headed by veteran producer Camilla Nesbitt, whose recent credits include Milan fashion world series Made in Italy, now streaming on Amazon in Italy, and upcoming French comedy Irreductible by Jerome Commandeur.

I am thrilled to start this extraordinary new adventure to bring on the screen all the emotion of scientific thought that only a great scientist and writer such as Carlo Rovelli could convey in a book, she said in a statement.

No screenwriters or other talent are yet attached to the project, which producers are shopping to streamers and broadcasters.

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Quantum Physics Story Helgoland to Be Adapted by Fremantles The Apartment, CAM Film (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

(Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click here to subscribe for free.)

Crunch numbers fast and at scale has been at the centre of computing technology. In the past few decades, a new type of computing has garnered significant interest. Quantum computers have been in development since the 1980s. They use properties of quantum physics to solve complex problems that cant be solved by classical computers.

Companies like IBM and Google have been continuously building and refining their quantum hardware. Simultaneously, several researchers have also been exploring new areas where quantum computers can deliver exponential change.

In the context of advances in quantum technologies, The Hindu caught with IBM Researchs Director Gargi Dasgupta.

Dasgupta noted that quantum computers complement traditional computing machines, and said the notion that quantum computers will take over classical computers is not true.

Quantum computers are not supreme against classical computers because of a laboratory experiment designed to essentially [and almost certainly exclusively] implement one very specific quantum sampling procedure with no practical applications, Dasgupta said.

Also Read: Keeping secrets in a quantum world and going beyond

For quantum computers to be widely used, and more importantly, have a positive impact, it is imperative to build programmable quantum computing systems that can implement a wide range of algorithms and programmes.

Having practical applications will alone help researchers use both quantum and classical systems in concert for discovery in science and to create commercial value in business.

To maximise the potential of quantum computers, the industry must solve challenges from the cryogenics, production and effects materials at very low temperatures. This is one of the reasons why IBM built its super-fridge to house Condor, Dasgupta explained.

Quantum processors require special conditions to operate, and they must be kept at near-absolute zero, like IBMs quantum chips are kept at 15mK. The deep complexity and the need for specialised cryogenics is why at least IBMs quantum computers are accessible via the cloud, and will be for the foreseeable future, Dasgupta, who is also IBMs CTO for South Asia region, noted.

Quantum computing in India

Dasgupta said that interest in quantum computing has spiked in India as IBM saw an many exceptional participants from the country at its global and virtual events. The list included academicians and professors, who all displayed great interest in quantum computing.

In a blog published last year, IBM researchers noted that India gave quantum technology 80 billion rupees as part of its National Mission on Quantum technologies and Applications. They believe its a great time to be doing quantum physics since the government and people are serious as well as excited about it.

Also Read: IBM plans to build a 1121 qubit system. What does this technology mean?

Quantum computing is expanding to multiple industries such as banking, capital markets, insurance, automotive, aerospace, and energy.

In years to come, the breadth and depth of the industries leveraging quantum will continue to grow, Dasgupta noted.

Industries that depend on advances in materials science will start to investigate quantum computing. For instance, Mitsubishi and ExxonMobil are using quantum technology to develop more accurate chemistry simulation techniques in energy technologies.

Additionally, Dasgupta said carmaker Daimler is working with IBM scientists to explore how quantum computing can be used to advance the next generation of EV batteries.

Exponential problems, like those found in molecular simulation in chemistry, and optimisation in finance, as well as machine learning continue to remain intractable for classical computers.

Quantum-safe cryptography

As researchers make advancement into quantum computers, some cryptocurrency enthusiasts fear that quantum computers can break security encryption. To mitigate risks associated with cryptography services, Quantum-safe cryptography was introduced.

For instance, IBM offers Quantum Risk Assessment, which it claims as the worlds first quantum computing safe enterprise class tape. It also uses Lattice-based cryptography to hide data inside complex algebraic structures called lattices. Difficult math problems are useful for cryptographers as they can use the intractability to protect information, surpassing quantum computers cracking techniques.

According to Dasgupta, even the National Institute of Standards and Technologys (NIST) latest list for quantum-safe cryptography standards include several candidates based on lattice cryptography.

Also Read: Google to use quantum computing to develop new medicines

Besides, Lattice-based cryptography is the core for another encryption technology called Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). This could make it possible to perform calculations on data without ever seeing sensitive data or exposing it to hackers.

Enterprises from banks to insurers can safely outsource the task of running predictions to an untrusted environment without the risk of leaking sensitive data, Dasgupta said.

Last year, IBM said it will unveil 1121-qubit quantum computer by 2023. Qubit is the basic unit of a quantum computer. Prior to the launch, IBM will release the 433-qubit Osprey processor. It will also debut 121-qubit Eagle chip to reduce qubits errors and scale the number of qubits needed to reach Quantum Advantage.

The 1,121-qubit Condor chip, is the inflection point for lower-noise qubits. By 2023, its physically smaller qubits, with on-chip isolators and signal amplifiers and multiple nodes, will have scaled to deliver the capability of Quantum Advantage, Dasgupta said.

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IBMs top executive says, quantum computers will never reign supreme over classical ones - The Hindu

If you think the 21st century has brought enough opportunities to women in technology, it is still an uncertain thought that needs verification. The modern era of technology has changed the world upside down. The emerging trends are slowly placing women equally to men at all positions in the tech radar. But what feels off is where women stand in therevolution of quantum computers.

Computers have evolved on a large scale in recent decades. Initially, computers filled a whole building and costed a fortune. But today, they are minimized to a small size and featured with advanced technologies where people carry them every day. Thequantum growthhas given birth to ideas like quantum computer and quantum internet. Unlike many disruptive technologies, quantum computing is something that can change the base of our computing system. Even though a fully established quantum computer is still under process, the industry is remarkably being male dominant at some stance. While countries run the race to reach the quantum success, they often leave women behind. And the worst case is that most of us dont notice the discrimination quantum computing is bringing into the tech sector. In order to know better about quantum computing and womens position in technology, let us go through the history and some of the important global quantum initiatives.

Quantum computeris a device that employs properties described by quantum mechanics to enhance computations. Quantum computers are anticipated to spur the development of breakthrough in science, medications to save lives, machine learning methods to diagnose illnesses sooner, materials to make more efficient devices and structures, financial strategies to live well in retirement, and algorithms to quickly direct resources such as ambulances. In a nutshell, quantum computing could ease critical jobs for good. While classical computers are based on bits, quantum computers are based on quantum bits, called qubits. Qubits are physically derived from small quantum objects such as electron or photon, where a pure quantum mechanical state such as spin indicates the ones and zeros.

Thespark of quantum computingwas struck by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in 1959. He noted that as electronic components begin to reach microscopic scales, effects predicted by quantum mechanics might be exploited in the design of more powerful computers. The simple speculation turned out to be a theory during the 1980s and 90s and advanced beyond Feynmams words. In 1985, David Deutsch of the University of Oxford described the construction of quantum logic gates for a universal quantum computer. Peter Shor of AT&T devised an algorithm to factor numbers with quantum computers that would require fewer qubits. Later in 1998, Isaac Chuang of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Neil Gershenfeld of the Massachusetts Insititute of Technology (MIT) and Mark Kubinec of the University of California at Berkeley created the first quantum computer that could be loaded with data and output a solution. Almost twenty years later, IBM presented the first commercially usable quantum computer in 2017.

Quantum technologieshave been getting exponential investments in the last few years. The global efforts to boost the quantum mechanism have emerged as a main area of funding. By 2025, the global quantum market is expected to reach US$948.82 million. Quantum computing will give a substantial military and economic advantage to whichever countries come out on top in this global competition.

In 2018, under former President Donald J. Trumps administration, a bipartisan law called National Quantum Initiative Act was passed. According to the law, US$1.2 billion will be spent on the development of quantum information processing over the course of a decade. European countries are also taking steps to stabilize their quantum future. In 2016, 3,400 significant people form science, research and corporate world signed the Quantum Manifesto to call upon the European Commission and the Member States to formulate a joint strategy designed to ensure that the continent remains at the forefront of the second quantum revolution. Two years past the initiative, European Commission launched a Quantum Technologies Flagship program to support hundreds of quantum science researchers.

China is being ambitious in becoming a frontrunner in the quantum revolution. Under Chinese President Xi Jinpings rule, the countrys scientists and engineers are enjoying access to nearly unlimited resources in their development of quantum science and technology. In 2016, China has launched the worlds first quantum satellite as a test platform for quantum communications links between space and earth.

Physics, computer science and engineering are thebasement of quantum computing. The problem starts from the very baseline because only 20% of degree recipients are identified as women for the last decade. Even women who survive the lone time at universities face an existential crisis on daily life as a person involved in quantum initiatives. They are often dismissed and walked over by their male peers. A research conducted by a group of five female scientists has concluded thatwomen who receive an A gradein a physics course have the same self-efficacy about their own performance as men who earn a C grade. The research further unravels thatwomen have a lower sense of belongingand they feel less recognized by their physics instructors as people who can excel in physics.

However, the world can still build an inclusive future for women by taking certain initiatives. Primarily, women need to be recognized in the science and engineering disciplines. Insufficient encouragement in the education level is a threat to women willingness. Instructors and research advisors should cheer female students to perform better and give them more opportunities. Organizations should also develop a culture that treats women and their ideas equally to their male counterparts.

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Establishing a Women Inclusive Future in Quantum Computing - Analytics Insight

The Fifth Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics in 1927, Brussels. Photo by Benjamin Couprie. From back row to front, reading left to right: Auguste Piccard, mile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, douard Herzen, Thophile de Donder, Erwin Schrdinger, Jules-mile Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Howard Fowler, Lon Brillouin, Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr, Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Skodowska Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugne Guye, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Owen Willans Richardson. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

How many geniuses can one room hold? In 1927, 29 of the world's most brilliant minds gathered in Brussels for the Fifth Solvay Conference. Convened by Belgian chemist and industrialist Ernest Solvay, the theme of the conference that year was Electrons and Photonstopics of contention in the newly developed theories of quantum mechanics. Among the group were Nobel laureates and professors holding esteemed university chairs, including legendary names such as Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrdinger. Together, the attendees gathered for what has been called the most intelligent photo of all timea simple snapshot taken at one of the most exciting moments in scientific history.

While the fifth Solvay Conference is the most well known, this prestigious intellectual gathering was first held in 1911 with the theme of Radiation and the Quanta. A young Albert Einstein was in attendance, as was Max Planck, who discovered the energy quanta being discussed. Mathematician and physicist Henri Poincar was also presentknown as the last universalist for being a leader across multiple disciplines before academic specialization began to make that impossible.

The only woman in attendance in 1911 was Marie Curie, the legendary researcher of radioactivity. Curie was already exceptionally accomplished, having won her first Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with her husband and a colleague) in 1903the first time the Prize was awarded to a woman. In 1911the year of the first Solvay ConferenceCurie won her second Nobel Prize, this time on her own and in Chemistry. She was the first person to win the prize twice, and she remains the only person to ever receive a prize in two scientific disciplines.

Despite Madame Curies' accomplishments, women were incredibly rare in STEM in the early 20th century. As a result, even in 1927, Curie was once more the only woman at the Fifth Solvay Conference. Einstein and Planck returned. They were joined by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Erwin Schrdingerall of whom were pioneers of the new quantum mechanics which drew upon Planck's quanta and other discoveries of how the universe functions on an atomic level.

Of the 29 scientists at the conference, 17 would win Nobel prizes in their lifetime. Virtually all would hold university chairs teaching the new theories which were changing the world from one Newton could explain to an entirely new realm of energy, wave-particle duality, and uncertainty. Captured on one day in October, the Salvoy Conference photo shows 29 of the greatest minds of the 20th century taking a brief break from the long process of defining the universe.

First Solvay Conference in 1911, Brussels. Photo by Benjamin Couprie. Seated (left to right): Walther Nernst, Marcel Brillouin, Ernest Solvay, Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Warburg, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Wilhelm Wien, Marie Skodowska-Curie, and Henri Poincar.Standing (left to right): Robert Goldschmidt, Max Planck, Heinrich Rubens, Arnold Sommerfeld, Frederick Lindemann, Maurice de Broglie, Martin Knudsen, Friedrich Hasenhrl, Georges Hostelet, Edouard Herzen, James Hopwood Jeans, Ernest Rutherford, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Albert Einstein, and Paul Langevin. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Neils Bohr, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his work on atoms and their radiation. He developed the Bohr model to describe electrons, their charges, and how they move between orbits. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Marie Curie, two-time Nobel Laureate in Physics and Chemistry respectively. Curie was the first female professor at the University of Paris. Photo by Henri manuel circa 1920. (Photo: Wikimedi Commons [Public domain])

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29 Scientists Came Together in the "Most Intelligent Photo" Ever Taken - My Modern Met

For some, the sound of a perfect flow might be the gentle lapping of a forest brook or perhaps the tinkling of water poured from a pitcher. For physicists, a perfect flow is more specific, referring to a fluid that flows with the smallest amount of friction, or viscosity, allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Such perfectly fluid behavior is rare in nature, but it is thought to occur in the cores of neutron stars and in the soupy plasma of the early universe.

Now MIT physicists have created a perfect fluid in the laboratory, and found that it sounds something like this:

This recording is a product of a glissando of sound waves that the team sent through a carefully controlled gas of elementary particles known as fermions. The pitches that can be heard are the particular frequencies at which the gas resonates like a plucked string.

The researchers analyzed thousands of sound waves traveling through this gas, to measure its sound diffusion, or how quickly sound dissipates in the gas, which is related directly to a materials viscosity, or internal friction.

Surprisingly, they found that the fluids sound diffusion was so low as to be described by a quantum amount of friction, given by a constant of nature known as Plancks constant, and the mass of the individual fermions in the fluid.

This fundamental value confirmed that the strongly interacting fermion gas behaves as a perfect fluid, and is universal in nature. The results, published today in the journal Science, demonstrate the first time that scientists have been able to measure sound diffusion in a perfect fluid.

Scientists can now use the fluid as a model of other, more complicated perfect flows, to estimate the viscosity of the plasma in the early universe, as well as the quantum friction within neutron stars properties that would otherwise be impossible to calculate. Scientists might even be able to approximately predict the sounds they make.

Its quite difficult to listen to a neutron star, says Martin Zwierlein, the Thomas A. Frank Professor of Physics at MIT. But now you could mimic it in a lab using atoms, shake that atomic soup and listen to it, and know how a neutron star would sound.

While a neutron star and the teams gas differ widely in terms of their size and the speed at which sound travels through, from some rough calculations Zwierlein estimates that the stars resonant frequencies would be similar to those of the gas, and even audible if you could get your ear close without being ripped apart by gravity, he adds.

Zwierleins co-authors are lead author Parth Patel, Zhenjie Yan, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Richard Fletcher, and Julian Struck of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms.

Tap, listen, learn

To create a perfect fluid in the lab, Zwierleins team generated a gas of strongly interacting fermions elementary particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, that are considered the building blocks of all matter. A fermion is defined by its half-integer spin, a property that prevents one fermion from assuming the same spin as another nearby fermion. This exclusive nature is what enables the diversity of atomic structures found in the periodic table of elements.

If electrons were not fermions, but happy to be in the same state, hydrogen, helium, and all atoms, and we ourselves, would look the same, like some terrible, boring soup, Zwierlein says.

Fermions naturally prefer to keep apart from each other. But when they are made to strongly interact, they can behave as a perfect fluid, with very low viscosity. To create such a perfect fluid, the researchers first used a system of lasers to trap a gas of lithium-6 atoms, which are considered fermions.

The researchers precisely configured the lasers to form an optical box around the fermion gas. The lasers were tuned such that whenever the fermions hit the edges of the box they bounced back into the gas. Also, the interactions between fermions were controlled to be as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics, so that inside the box, fermions had to collide with each other at every encounter. This made the fermions turn into a perfect fluid.

We had to make a fluid with uniform density, and only then could we tap on one side, listen to the other side, and learn from it, Zwierlein says. It was actually quite diffult to get to this place where we could use sound in this seemingly natural way.

Flow in a perfect way

The team then sent sound waves through one side of the optical box by simply varying the brightness of one of the walls, to generate sound-like vibrations through the fluid at particular frequencies. They recorded thousands of snapshots of the fluid as each sound wave rippled through.

All these snapshots together give us a sonogram, and its a bit like whats done when taking an ultrasound at the doctors office, Zwierlein says.

In the end, they were able to watch the fluids density ripple in response to each type of sound wave. They then looked for the sound frequencies that generated a resonance, or an amplified sound in the fluid, similar to singing at a wine glass and finding the frequency at which it shatters.

The quality of the resonances tells me about the fluids viscosity, or sound diffusivity, Zwierlein explains. If a fluid has low viscosity, it can build up a very strong sound wave and be very loud, if hit at just the right frequency. If its a very viscous fluid, then it doesnt have any good resonances.

From their data, the researchers observed clear resonances through the fluid, particularly at low frequencies. From the distribution of these resonances, they calculated the fluids sound diffusion. This value, they found, could also be calculated very simply via Plancks constant and the mass of the average fermion in the gas.

This told the researchers that the gas was a perfect fluid, and fundamental in nature: Its sound diffusion, and therefore its viscosity, was at the lowest possible limit set by quantum mechanics.

Zwierlein says in addition to using the results to estimate quantum friction in more exotic matter, such as neutron stars, the results can be helpful in understanding how certain materials might be made to exhibit perfect, superconducting flow.

This work connects directly to resistance in materials, Zwierlein says. Having figured out whats the lowest resistance you could have from a gas tells us what can happen with electrons in materials, and how one might make materials where electrons could flow in a perfect way. Thats exciting.

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the NSF Center for Ultracold Atoms, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

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Physicists capture the sound of a perfect fluid - MIT News

Scientists have captured the sound of a perfect fluid, which flows with the smallest amount of friction allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT

The results should help scientists study the viscosity in neutron stars, the plasma of the early universe, and other strongly interacting fluids.

For some, the sound of a perfect flow might be the gentle lapping of a forest brook or perhaps the tinkling of water poured from a pitcher. For physicists, a perfect flow is more specific, referring to a fluid that flows with the smallest amount of friction, or viscosity, allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Such perfectly fluid behavior is rare in nature, but it is thought to occur in the cores of neutron stars and in the soupy plasma of the early universe.

Now MIT physicists have created a perfect fluid in the laboratory, and found that it sounds something like this:

This recording is a product of a glissando of sound waves that the team sent through a carefully controlled gas of elementary particles known as fermions. The pitches that can be heard are the particular frequencies at which the gas resonates like a plucked string.

The researchers analyzed thousands of sound waves traveling through this gas, to measure its sound diffusion, or how quickly sound dissipates in the gas, which is related directly to a materials viscosity, or internal friction.

Surprisingly, they found that the fluids sound diffusion was so low as to be described by a quantum amount of friction, given by a constant of nature known as Plancks constant, and the mass of the individual fermions in the fluid.

This fundamental value confirmed that the strongly interacting fermion gas behaves as a perfect fluid, and is universal in nature. The results, published today in the journal Science, demonstrate the first time that scientists have been able to measure sound diffusion in a perfect fluid.

Scientists can now use the fluid as a model of other, more complicated perfect flows, to estimate the viscosity of the plasma in the early universe, as well as the quantum friction within neutron stars properties that would otherwise be impossible to calculate. Scientists might even be able to approximately predict the sounds they make.

Its quite difficult to listen to a neutron star, says Martin Zwierlein, the Thomas A. Frank Professor of Physics at MIT. But now you could mimic it in a lab using atoms, shake that atomic soup and listen to it, and know how a neutron star would sound.

While a neutron star and the teams gas differ widely in terms of their size and the speed at which sound travels through, from some rough calculations Zwierlein estimates that the stars resonant frequencies would be similar to those of the gas, and even audible if you could get your ear close without being ripped apart by gravity, he adds.

Zwierleins co-authors are lead author Parth Patel, Zhenjie Yan, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Richard Fletcher, and Julian Struck of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms.

To create a perfect fluid in the lab, Zwierleins team generated a gas of strongly interacting fermions elementary particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, that are considered the building blocks of all matter. A fermion is defined by its half-integer spin, a property that prevents one fermion from assuming the same spin as another nearby fermion. This exclusive nature is what enables the diversity of atomic structures found in the periodic table of elements.

If electrons were not fermions, but happy to be in the same state, hydrogen, helium, and all atoms, and we ourselves, would look the same, like some terrible, boring soup, Zwierlein says.

Fermions naturally prefer to keep apart from each other. But when they are made to strongly interact, they can behave as a perfect fluid, with very low viscosity. To create such a perfect fluid, the researchers first used a system of lasers to trap a gas of lithium-6 atoms, which are considered fermions.

The researchers precisely configured the lasers to form an optical box around the fermion gas. The lasers were tuned such that whenever the fermions hit the edges of the box they bounced back into the gas. Also, the interactions between fermions were controlled to be as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics, so that inside the box, fermions had to collide with each other at every encounter. This made the fermions turn into a perfect fluid.

We had to make a fluid with uniform density, and only then could we tap on one side, listen to the other side, and learn from it, Zwierlein says. It was actually quite diffult to get to this place where we could use sound in this seemingly natural way.

The team then sent sound waves through one side of the optical box by simply varying the brightness of one of the walls, to generate sound-like vibrations through the fluid at particular frequencies. They recorded thousands of snapshots of the fluid as each sound wave rippled through.

All these snapshots together give us a sonogram, and its a bit like whats done when taking an ultrasound at the doctors office, Zwierlein says.

In the end, they were able to watch the fluids density ripple in response to each type of sound wave. They then looked for the sound frequencies that generated a resonance, or an amplified sound in the fluid, similar to singing at a wine glass and finding the frequency at which it shatters.

The quality of the resonances tells me about the fluids viscosity, or sound diffusivity, Zwierlein explains. If a fluid has low viscosity, it can build up a very strong sound wave and be very loud, if hit at just the right frequency. If its a very viscous fluid, then it doesnt have any good resonances.

From their data, the researchers observed clear resonances through the fluid, particularly at low frequencies. From the distribution of these resonances, they calculated the fluids sound diffusion. This value, they found, could also be calculated very simply via Plancks constant and the mass of the average fermion in the gas.

This told the researchers that the gas was a perfect fluid, and fundamental in nature: Its sound diffusion, and therefore its viscosity, was at the lowest possible limit set by quantum mechanics.

Zwierlein says in addition to using the results to estimate quantum friction in more exotic matter, such as neutron stars, the results can be helpful in understanding how certain materials might be made to exhibit perfect, superconducting flow.

This work connects directly to resistance in materials, Zwierlein says. Having figured out whats the lowest resistance you could have from a gas tells us what can happen with electrons in materials, and how one might make materials where electrons could flow in a perfect way. Thats exciting.

Reference: Universal sound diffusion in a strongly interacting Fermi gas by Parth B. Patel, Zhenjie Yan, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Richard J. Fletcher, Julian Struck and Martin W. Zwierlein, 4 December 2020, Science.DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz5756

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the NSF Center for Ultracold Atoms, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

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MIT Physicists Created a Perfect Fluid and Captured the Sound Listen Here - SciTechDaily

In last weeks podcast, Enrique Blair on quantum computing, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks talks with fellow computer engineer Enrique Blair about why quantum mechanics is so strange. But scientists have learned to work with QM, despite many questions, like how to work with particles that can be in two different places (quantum superposition):

[Starts at approximately 13:16.] The Show Notes and transcript follow.

Excerpts from the transcript:

Robert J. Marks: Whats superposition? Whats going on there?

Enrique Blair: Quantum superposition is really a mathematical description. We use wave functions to describe these particles. Theres a wave function for the photon going through Slit One and a wave function for the photon going through Slit Two. To describe it going through both slits, we have a linear combination of those two wave functions and so you have a more general wave function. Thats the heart of quantum computing because in classical computing, we have bits like zero or one. And in quantum computing, we like to use these superpositions of zero and one. Its not one or the other, its something of both.

Robert J. Marks: Its kind of like Invisible Boy (pictured) in Mystery Men. When you dont look, zero and one are both there.

Note: Invisible Boy is a resident of Champion City who spent most of his adolescent life ignored even by his own father. Eventually he discovered that after years of being overlooked, he had developed the power of invisibility, but it only works as long as no one (including himself) is looking at him. Mystery Men Fan Wiki

Enrique Blair: Thats right. Oddly enough, there is no mathematical definition that rigorously describes measurement. Its one we havent quite figured out yet.

Robert J. Marks: Tell us what a wave function is.

Enrique Blair: A wave function describes the state of a quantum system and it contains everything we can know about that quantum system. But we manipulate these things or we extract meaning from them using quantum mechanical operators. These operators describe things like time evolution or the total energy of the system, or some observable quantity like position or momentum.

The wave function itself is not the probability density. You have to take the magnitude squared. And then you get probabilities.

Note: It amounts to doing mathematics with probabilities rather than exact figures. In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But the atoms or the elementary particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts. ( Werner Heisenberg, a quantum mechanics pioneer, Physics and Philosophy, p. 186)

Enrique Blair (pictured): Okay. The wave functionwhen you take its magnitude squared you get the probabilities of various outcomes for measurement when you also use an operator. But really, the stunning thing is thats all you get.

You get probabilities for outcomes. You cant predict with certainty which outcome is going to result when you make a measurement. Thats the subject of one of the papers we wrote recently, just using quantum mechanics to make something thats a truly random number generator.

You know well that computers cant generate random numbers because theyre deterministic.

Robert J. Marks: Which is really surprising because you see random numbers used a lot in gaming machines, like in casinos.

And theyre not random numbers, theyre pseudo-random numbers. They actually use an algorithm.

Physics and engineering professor Craig Lent has talked about randomness and the ability of quantum mechanics to generate true randomness. In fact, this is the only pure source of randomness there is. He said you can go to amazon.com and buy yourself a random number generator based on quantum mechanics that really spits out 100% random numbers. Thats amazing.

Note: Heres a random number generator (RNG) for sale at Amazon. Why cant we just think up and write down random numbers? That doesnt really work because humans always think in patterns, whether we notice them or not. And if we try to write an algorithm to produce random numbers, that is a pattern too. Quantum mechanics can, however, generate random numbers because there is no specific prior position.

Robert J. Marks: In the quantum world, when you measure something, you kind of mess around with the wave equation when you measure it. And then it collapses in accordance to its probability. Is that kind of the way it is?

Enrique Blair: Yeah, thats true. Like I said, the Schrdinger equation describes the time evolution of the system if you dont measure it or dont look at it or dont interact with it. But then once you measure it, you get one of these probabilities and you radically change the wave function and its in the state that corresponds to the result that you got. Previous to that, its a quantum superposition of many different states.

Note: Is quantum mechanics practical? Quantum computers, as their name implies, operate on the bizarre principles of quantum mechanics to manipulate information, and are poised to revolutionize our computing capabilities. With companies like IBM and Google already building the first prototypes, they are expected to propel technology forward with greater speed, accuracy, and security by completing tasks that would be otherwise impossible for ordinary computers to handle. Advanced Science News More on how that works later.

Next: The final ambiguous truth about Schrdingers cat. Schrdinger came up with the cat illustration to explain quantum mechanics to interested people who were not physicists. We dont see quantum paradoxes outside the lab because everything we see consists of far too many quantum subsystems for any one particle to stand out.

Here are the earlier discussions:

How scientists have learned to work with the quantum world.Its still pretty weird, though. Wave function mathematics can work with particles that may be in different places (quantum superposition). QM can also generate truly random numbers we can use.

Heres why the quantum world is just so strange. It underlies our universe but it follows its own rules, which dont make sense to the rest of us. Computer engineer Enrique Blair explains to Robert J. Marks the simple experiment that shows why so many scientists find the quantum world mind-blowing.

Podcast Transcript Download

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How Scientists Have Learned To Work With the Quantum World - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

The position of the titanium atoms in BaTiS3 seems to occupy two positions simultaneously leading to ultra-low, glass-like thermal conductivity. The image shown is an electron microscopy image of the BaTiS3 crystal with the Titanium atoms (purple spheres; yellow sphere in schematic) and Barium atoms (yellow spheres; blue sphere in schematic). Image/Arashdeep Thind/Rohan Mishra (Washington University at St. Louis)

The crystalline solid BaTiS3 (barium titanium sulfide) is terrible at conducting heat, and it turns out that a wayward titanium atom that exists in two places at the same time is to blame.

The discovery, made by researchers from Caltech, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and the Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), was published on November 27 in the journal Nature Communications. It provides a fundamental atomic-level insight into an unusual thermal property that has been observed in several materials.

The work is of particular interest to researchers who are exploring the potential use of crystalline solids with poor thermal conductivity in thermoelectric applications, in which heat is directly converted into electric energy and vice versa.

We have found that quantum mechanical effects can play a huge role in setting the thermal transport properties of materials even under familiar conditions like room temperature, says Austin Minnich, professor of mechanical engineering and applied physics at Caltech and co-corresponding author of the Nature Communications paper.

Crystals are usually good at conducting heat. By definition, their atomic structure is highly organized, which allows atomic vibrationsheatto flow through them as a wave. Glasses, on the other hand, are terrible at conducting heat. Their internal structure is disordered and random, which means that vibrations instead hop from atom to atom as they pass through.

BaTiS3 belongs to a class of materials called Perovskite-related chalcogenides. Jayakanth Ravichandran, an assistant professor in USC Viterbis Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and his team have been investigating them for their optical properties and recently started studying their thermoelectric applications.

We had a hunch that BaTiS3 will have low thermal conductivity, but the value was unexpectedly low. Our study shows a new mechanism to achieve low thermal conductivity, so the next question is whether the electrons in the system flow seamlessly unlike heat to achieve good thermoelectric properties, says Ravichandran.

The team discovered that BaTiS3, along with several other crystalline solids, possessed glass-like thermal conductivity. Not only is its thermal conductivity comparable to those of disordered glasses, it actually gets worse as temperature goes down, which is the opposite of most materials.In fact, its thermal conductivity at cryogenic temperatures is among the worst ever observed in any fully dense (nonporous) solid.

The team found that the titanium atom in each BaTiS3 crystal exists in what is known as a double-well potentialthat is, there are two spatial locations in the atomic structure where the atom wants to be. The titanium atom existing in two places at the same time gives rise to what is known as a two-level system.

In this case, the titanium atom has two states: a ground state and an excited state. Passing atomic vibrations are absorbed by the titanium atom, which goes from the ground to the excited state, then quickly decays back to ground state. The absorbed energy is emitted in the form of a vibration and in a random direction.

The overall effect of this absorption and emission of vibrations is that energy is scattered rather than cleanly transferred. An analogy would be shining a light through a frosted glass, with the titanium atoms as the frost; incoming waves deflect off of the titanium, and only a portion make their way through the material.

Two-level systems have long been known to exist, but this is the first direct observation of one that was sufficient to disrupt thermal conduction in a single crystal material over an extended temperature range, measured here between 50 and 500 Kelvin.

The researchers observed the effect by bombarding BaTiS3 crystals with neutrons in a process known as inelastic scattering using the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL. When they pass through the crystals, the neutrons gain or lose energy. This indicates that energy is absorbed from a two-level system in some cases and imparted to them in others.

It took real detective work to solve this mystery about the structure and dynamics of the titanium atoms. At first it seemed that the atoms were just positionally disordered, but the shallowness of the potential well meant that they couldnt stay in their positions for very long, says Michael Manley, senior researcher at ORNL and co-corresponding author of the Nature Communications paper.

Thats when Raphael Hermann, researcher at ORNL, suggested doing quantum calculations for the double well. That atoms can tunnel is well known, of course, but we did not expect to see it at such a high frequency with such a large atom in a crystal. But the quantum mechanics is clear: if the barrier between the wells is small enough, then such high-frequency tunneling is indeed possible and should result in strong phonon scattering and thus glass-like thermal conductivity, Manley says.

The conventional approach to creating crystalline solids with low thermal conductivity is to create a lot of defects in those solids, which is detrimental to other properties such as electrical conductivity. So, a method to design low-thermal-conductivity crystalline materials without any detriment to electrical and optical properties is highly desirable for thermoelectric applications. A small handful of crystalline solids exhibit the same poor thermal conductivity, so the team next plans to explore whether this phenomenon is to blame in those materials as well.

The Nature Communications article is titled High frequency atomic tunneling yields ultralow and glass-like thermal conductivity in chalcogenide single crystals. Co-authors include Bo Sun, Jaeyun Moon, and Nina Shulumba of Caltech; Shanyuan Niu, Boyang Zhao, JoAnna Milam-Guerrero, Ralf Haiges, Brent C. Melot, and Matthew Mecklenburg of USC; Raphael P. Hermann, Katharine Page, and Barry Winn of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Arashdeep S. Thind and Rohan Mishra of Washington University in St. Louis; Krishnamurthy Mahalingam and Brandon M. Howe of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; Young-Dahl Jho of Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea; and Ahmet Alatas of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Link Foundation.

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Titanium Atom That Exists in Two Places at Once in Crystal to Blame for Unusual Phenomenon - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Yangyang Cheng is a physicist based in the US. Apart from her scientific research in the field of experimental particle physics, she is also a columnist who discusses social and culture issues in international publications like the New York Times.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Kr: Do you reject the use of success or failure in defining people or things?

YC: Yes. Ill give the example of Pan Jianwei, Chinas preeminent quantum scientist. He has won so many national and international awards. Hes also an alumni of my alma mater, USTC.

He said that when he was an undergraduate, his grades were mediocre. In particular, he almost failed his first quantum physics test. While he did study using the textbook and problem sets, he found himself very much intrigued by the science behind these existing well-solved, well-defined problems. So he spent a lot of time thinking, overthinking and did badly on the test day itself. He almost failed the test. However, because he possessed that wrong curiosity and drive, which was problematic for passing a test, he became an accomplished scientist later on through these very same qualities. I think its critical to understand, original research thrives on curiosity and drive.

To continue reading, clickhereto hop on to Oasis, the brainchild ofKrASIA.

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[Tuning in] Physicist Yangyang Cheng on not to define things with 'success' and 'failure' - KrASIA

Alexey Grinin and Dery Taray working on the vacuum system of teh 1S-3S experiment.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have succeeded in testing quantum electrodynamics with unprecedented accuracy to 13 decimal places. The new measurement is almost twice as accurate as all previous hydrogen measurements combined and moves science one step closer to solving the proton size puzzle. This high accuracy was achieved by the Nobel Prize-winning frequency comb technique, which debuted here for the first time to excite atoms in high-resolution spectroscopy.

Physics is said to be an exact science. This means that predictions of physical theories exact numbers can be verified or falsified by experiments. The experiment is the highest judge of any theory. Quantum electrodynamics, the relativistic version of quantum mechanics, is without doubt the most successful theory to date. It allows extremely precise calculations to be performed, for example, the description of the spectrum of atomic hydrogen to 12 decimal places. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and at the same time the simplest with only one electron. And still, it hosts a mystery yet unknown.

The electron in the hydrogen atom "senses" the size of the proton, which is reflected in minimal shifts in energy levels. For many decades, countless measurements on hydrogen have yielded a consistent proton radius. But Spectroscopic investigations of the so-called muonic hydrogen, in which the electron was replaced by its 200 times heavier twin - the muon revealed a mystery. The measurements were performed in 2010 in collaboration with Randolf Pohl, at that time group leader in the Laser Spectroscopy Department of Prof. Hnsch (MPQ) and now professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. The value for the proton radius that can be derived from these experiments is four percent smaller than that of ordinary hydrogen. If all the experiments are thought to be correct, a contradiction to the theory of quantum electrodynamics arises as all measurements in muonic and ordinary hydrogen must report the same proton radius, when all theoretical terms are correct. In consequence, this "proton radius puzzle" motivated new precision measurements all over the world. However, while new measurements from Garching and Toronto confirmed the smaller proton radius, a measurement from Paris again supported the previous larger value.

Science thrives on independent comparisons. That's why the Garching team led by Alexey Grinin, Arthur Matveev and Thomas Udem from Theodor Hnsch's Laser Spectroscopy Department wanted to measure the same transition as in Paris using a completely different and thus complementary method. Using the so-called Doppler-free two-photon frequency comb spectroscopy, they have now succeeded in improving the accuracy by a factor of four. The result for the proton radius was now twice as accurate as all the previous measurements on hydrogen together. It is the first time that quantum mechanics is checked to the thirteenth decimal place. The value for the proton radius determined this way confirms the smaller proton radius and thus excludes the theory as cause. Because for the same transition, the experimental results must agree, regardless of the theory. The following figure (fig. 1) shows the current situation.

In this figure, different results for the proton radius are compared in femtometer [fm], i.e. 10^(-15)m. The new value from the 1S-3S transition in ordinary hydrogen is closer to the value obtained from the 2S-2P transition in muonic hydrogen. Although this exotic atom can only be produced for the short time of two millionths of a second, it is particularly "sensitive" to the proton radius. It therefore bears the smallest measurement errors (horizontal black error bars). Evaluations on the validity of quantum electrodynamics are possible only with several independent measurements being compared. If the theory and its application holds true, and all experiments are conducted correctly, the values for the proton radius must agree with each other within the bounds of the experimental uncertainty. But this isnt the case, as we can see in the picture. The disclosure of this discrepancy the proton puzzle opened up the possibility that quantum electrodynamics, the most precise physical theory, may be carrying a fundamental flaw. The new result however suggests that the problem is of experimental rather than fundamental nature. And quantum electrodynamics would have succeeded once again.

The success of the frequency comb spectroscopy performed in this project also means an important milestone in science for another reason. Precision spectroscopy on hydrogen and other atoms and molecules has so far been performed almost exclusively with continuous wave lasers. In contrast, the frequency comb is generated by a pulsed laser. With such lasers it is possible to penetrate to much shorter wavelengths up to the extreme ultraviolet range. With continuous wave lasers, this seems to be a hopeless endeavor. Highly interesting ions, such as the hydrogen-like helium ion, have their transitions in this spectral range, but even more than 100 years after the development of the first quantum theory, they cannot be studied precisely, which means with laser light. The experiment now presented is an essential step to change this unsatisfactory situation. In addition, it is hoped that these ultraviolet frequency combs will allow biologically and chemically important elements such as hydrogen and carbon to be cooled directly by laser enabling science to study them with even higher precision.

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The next phase of the proton puzzle - Chemie.de

The quantum world is a pretty wild one, where the seemingly impossible happens all the time: Teensy objects separated by miles are tied to one another, and particles can even be in two places at once. But one of the most perplexing quantum superpowers is the movement of particles through seemingly impenetrable barriers.

Now, a team of physicists has devised a simple way to measure the duration of this bizarre phenomenon, called quantum tunneling. And they figured out how long the tunneling takes from start to finish from the moment a particle enters the barrier, tunnels through and comes out the other side, they reported online July 22 in the journal Nature.

Quantum tunneling is a phenomenon where an atom or a subatomic particle can appear on the opposite side of a barrier that should be impossible for the particle to penetrate. It's as if you were walking and encountered a 10-foot-tall (3 meters) wall extending as far as the eye can see. Without a ladder or Spider-man climbing skills, the wall would make it impossible for you to continue.

Related: The 18 biggest unsolved mysteries in physics

However, in the quantum world, it is rare, but possible, for an atom or electron to simply "appear" on the other side, as if a tunnel had been dug through the wall. "Quantum tunneling is one of the most puzzling of quantum phenomena," said study co-author Aephraim Steinberg, co-director of the Quantum Information Science Program at Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. "And it is fantastic that we're now able to actually study it in this way."

Quantum tunneling is not new to physicists. It forms the basis of many modern technologies such as electronic chips, called tunnel diodes, which allow for the movement of electricity through a circuit in one direction but not the other. Scanning tunneling microscopes (STM) also use tunneling to literally show individual atoms on the surface of a solid. Shortly after the first STM was invented, researchers at IBM reported using the device to spell out the letters IBM using 35 xenon atoms on a nickel substrate.

While the laws of quantum mechanics allow for quantum tunneling, researchers still don't know exactly what happens while a subatomic particle is undergoing the tunneling process. Indeed, some researchers thought that the particle appears instantaneously on the other side of the barrier as if it instantaneously teleported there, Sci-News.com reported.

Researchers had previously tried to measure the amount of time it takes for tunneling to occur, with varying results. One of the difficulties in earlier versions of this type of experiment is identifying the moment tunneling starts and stops. To simplify the methodology, the researchers used magnets to create a new kind of "clock" that would tick only while the particle was tunneling.

Subatomic particles all have magnetic properties and when magnets are in an external magnetic field, they rotate like a spinning top. The amount of rotation (also called precession) depends on how long the particle is bathed in that magnetic field. Knowing that, the Toronto group used a magnetic field to form their barrier. When particles are inside the barrier, they precess. Outside it, they don't. So measuring how long the particles precess told the researchers how long those atoms took to tunnel through the barrier.

Related: 18 times quantum particles blew our minds

"The experiment is a breathtaking technical achievement," said Drew Alton, physics professor at Augustana University, in South Dakota.

The researchers prepared approximately 8,000 rubidium atoms, cooled them to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms needed to be this temperature, otherwise they would have moved around randomly at high speeds, rather than staying in a small clump. The scientists used a laser to create the magnetic barrier; they focused the laser so that the barrier was 1.3 micrometers (microns) thick, or the thickness of about 2,500 rubidium atoms. (So if you were a foot thick, front to back, this barrier would be the equivalent of about half a mile thick.) Using another laser, the scientists nudged the rubidium atoms toward the barrier, moving them about 0.15 inches per second (4 millimeters/s).

As expected, most of the rubidium atoms bounced off the barrier. However, due to quantum tunneling, about 3% of the atoms penetrated the barrier and appeared on the other side. Based on the precession of those atoms, it took them about 0.6 milliseconds to traverse the barrier.

Chad Orzel, an associate professor of physics at Union College in New York, who was not part of the study, applauded the experiment, "Their experiment is ingeniously constructed to make it difficult to interpret as anything other than what they say," said Orzel, author of "How to Teach Quantum Mechanics to Your Dog" (Scribner, 2010) It "is one of the best examples you'll see of a thought experiment made real," he added.

Experiments exploring quantum tunneling are difficult and further research is needed to understand the implications of this study. The Toronto group is already considering improvements to their apparatus to not only determine the duration of the tunneling process, but to also see if they can learn anything about velocity of the atoms at different points inside the barrier. "We're working on a new measurement where we make the barrier thicker and then determine the amount of precession at different depths," Steinberg said. "It will be very interesting to see if the atoms' speed is constant or not."

In many interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is impossible even in principle to determine a subatomic particle's trajectory. Such a measurement could lead to insights into the confusing world of quantum theory. The quantum world is very different from the world we're familiar with. Experiments like these will help make it a little less mysterious.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Physicists watch quantum particles tunnel through solid barriers. Here's what they found. - Live Science

KITCHENER, Ontario (PRWEB) August 10, 2020

evolutionQ was awarded a Space Technology Development Program (STDP) contribution by the CSA to develop solutions to advance satellite-based secure quantum communication services and tools to address challenges related to satellite-based Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) networks.

Cryptography underpins the secure communications required for the digital, network-based social and financial interactions that are at the heart of modern society and the economy, including banking, the sharing of confidential healthcare data, and the exchange of sensitive information between governmental institutions. However, rapid advancements in quantum computing threaten current encryption methods because quantum computers, when built, will be able to break commonly used cybersecurity systems. It is important to develop tools, like QKD, that will be resistant to such quantum threats.

QKD technologies leverage the fundamental laws of quantum physics to distribute confidential cryptographic keys between two users, while detecting the attempts of malicious third-parties to intercept such keys. Unfortunately, typical terrestrial methods to establish such direct secure connection between locations are limited to relatively short distances, of the order of at most 200 km. This is clearly a challenge for a country as vast as Canada. Satellite-based QKD will enable secure, reliable, and economical key-sharing across Canada.

A powerful quantum computer has the power to decimate todays cryptography. As key quantum computing milestones are achieved, the need for quantum-safe solutions intensifies, said Dr. Michele Mosca, President and CEO of evolutionQ. Robust cryptography is absolutely necessary for our safety and the proper functioning of our digital economy. We must adopt quantum-safe solutions to secure and safeguard our critical infrastructures, financial services and intellectual property."

Quantum Key Distribution is an important tool in addressing the quantum threat. QKD uses the fundamental laws of physics to protect information shared between two parties. CTO of evolutionQ, Dr. Norbert Ltkenhaus remarked. Satellite-based QKD is essential for a vast country like Canada and will help secure communications from coast to coast. evolutionQ is poised to utilize its expertise and develop solutions to help establish satellite QKD, and to integrate it with existing terrestrial solutions.

evolutionQ will develop tools to address the challenges unique to satellite-based QKD. This will be accomplished by modelling the role and performance of QKD satellites, and by designing optimization algorithms to integrate QKD satellites with terrestrial networks. The software solutions will be designed to be integrated with existing and planned satellite hardware. The project is expected to last 24 months.

The initiative will also help Canada safeguard sovereignty in the quantum age and strengthen Canadian leadership in the space and quantum sectors. The initiative aligns with the new Space Strategy for Canada, the safety and security principle in Canadas Digital Charter and the Government of Canadas Innovations and Skills Plan.

This project is undertaken with the financial support of the Canadian Space Agency.

About evolutionQ:evolutionQ is a leading quantum-safe cybersecurity company led by world-renowned quantum computing experts Dr. Michele Mosca and Dr. Norbert Ltkenhaus. evolutionQ delivers quantum-risk management strategy and advisory services along with robust cybersecurity products designed to be safe against quantum computers.

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Quantum-safe security firm evolutionQ awarded contribution from Canada Space Agency for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Network Research and...

Physics professorsNuh GedikandPablo Jarillo-Herrerohave been named Experimental Investigators in Quantum Materials by theGordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The two are among 20 winners nationwide of the foundation's Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems (EPiQS) Initiative. Each will receive a five-year, $1.6 million unrestricted grant to support their research in quantum materials.

Gediks research centers on using advanced optical techniques for probing and controlling properties of quantum materials. He will use his grant to search for novel, light-induced phases in these systems.

These materials display fascinating but poorly understood properties, such as high-temperature superconductivity or topological protection, says Gedik. We use ultrafast laser pulses to make femtosecond movies of electrons and atoms inside these systems to understand the mechanism behind their exotic behavior. Our ultimate goal isto use light as a controllable tuning parameter (just as magnetic field orpressure) to switch between equilibrium phases and to engineer newlight-induced stateswith no equilibrium counterparts.

Jarillo-Herrero, theCecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics,leads a laboratory that uses quantum electronic transport and optoelectronic techniques to investigate novel 2D materials and heterostructures, with a focus on emergent correlated and topological phenomena/phases resulting from the interplay between unusual electronic structures and electron interaction effects.

This Moore Foundation award will allow my group to focus on a novel experimental platform called twistronics, where a new degree of freedom, namely the twist angle between two stacked 2D crystalline lattices, enables the exploration of a plethora of intriguing quantum mechanical effects, such as superconductivity. This emergent platform may provide important clues about the origin of many of the most fascinating phases of matter present in the universe, as well as the potential engineering of these phases to create new quantum technologies.

The EPiQS Initiative of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation aims to stimulate experimental research in the physics of quantum materials by providing some of the fields most creative scientists with freedom to take risks and flexibility for agile change of research direction. The collective impact of these investigators will produce a more comprehensive understanding of the fundamental organizing principles of complex quantum matter in solids.

The Experimental Investigator awards are the largest grant portfolio within the EPiQS initiative, says Amalia Fernandez-Paella, program officer of the EPiQS Initiative. We expect that such substantial, stable, and flexible support will propel quantum materials research forward and unleash the creativity of the investigators.

The cohorts research will cover a broad spectrum of research questions, types of materials systems, and complementary experimental approaches. The investigators will advance experimental probes of quantum states in materials; elucidate emergent phenomena observed in systems with strong electron interactions; investigate light-induced states of matter; explore the vast space of two-dimensional layered structures; and illuminate the role of quantum entanglement in exotic systems such as quantum spin liquids. In addition, the investigators will participate in EPiQS community-building activities, which include investigator symposia, topical workshops, and theQuantEmX scientist exchange program.

Since 2013, EPiQS has supported an integrated research program that includes materials synthesis, experiment, and theory, and that crosses the boundaries between physics, chemistry, and materials science. Thesecond phaseof the initiative was kicked off earlier this year with the launch of two major grant portfolios:Materials Synthesis Investigators and Theory Centers. The 20 newly inaugurated experimental investigators will join these grantees to form a vibrant, collaborative community that strives to push the entire field toward a new frontier.

The first cohort of EPiQS Experimental Investigators made advances that changed the landscape of quantum materials, and I expect no less from this second cohort. Emergent phenomena appear when a large number of constituents interact strongly, whether these constituents are electrons in materials, or the brilliant scientists trying to crack the mysteries of materials. says Duan Pejakovi, director of the EPiQS Initiative. Gedik and Jarillo-Herrero were also part of the first cohort of EPIQS awardees.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation fosters pathbreaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements, and preservation of the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Nuh Gedik and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero are 2020 Moore Experimental Investigators in Quantum Materials - MIT News

The relationship between artificial intelligence and games can be summed up in two words: cat and mouse. Since 1997 Deep Blue defeated Kasparov at chess, primal mouse, a long list of rodents have been presenting their candidacy to become the definitive game that proves or denies the intellectual superiority of the machine: Jeopardy, Starcraft, Poker Go, another aspiring classic, defeated in 2016, has just returned to the ring determined to make life difficult for the cat with the help of a team of scientists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Those responsible for the new challenge have devised a modality inspired by the quantum physics of this ancient board game. In it, players make their moves with two interlocking tiles instead of one. Quantum physics can give the game the non-deterministic feature typical of games of chance that does not exist in the classical version, they explain in the resulting study. Furthermore, in this revamped Go, it is played under conditions of imperfect information ; that is, players can only know a part of the state of the game, while the rest is kept secret, like the cards in poker.

In classic Go, two players face each other to achieve control of the board and surround their opponent by strategically placing black and white pieces, called stones, on the intersections of a board of 18 by 18 squares. If a player occupies the four intersections that surround an opponents piece, he captures it. At the end of the game, which comes when the two players pass their turn for not seeing more possible moves, the one who has surrounded the most empty intersections with their stones wins. This seemingly simple dynamic allows long successions of plays and generates endless scenarios that, at least until 2016, made Go a challenge with the potential to exceed the capabilities of the machine and remain on the shrinking list of things that Humans still do better.

The quantum version is a twist that exponentially expands the possible states of the game by incorporating interlocking tiles into the game and confronting the algorithm with someone of its size: another machine.

The key to this new and convoluted game mode is that the position of the interlocking stones on the board is not final. As soon as the opponent places a piece on a vertex adjacent to either of the two that are interlocking, one of them will disappear and the other remains on the board. In this way, the player does not know if he has succeeded in his action until he has completed it. In the event that the tile next to which it has been placed disappears when the entanglement collapses, you will have wasted your time. In the same way, the unmasked stone that remains on the board will only be able to surround the enemy from that moment on. Lets say that each player places a pair of interlocking stones separate from their opponents. At that point, the board could have four different configurations depending on which one remains on it.

Who decides stays and who leaves? The permanence or not of the chips is obtained by creating a true quantum entanglement process. The scientists used entangled pairs of photons to extract a random series of measurements of 0 or 1 that were assigned to the paired stones.

Where we come from

Go was considered a worthy successor to the outdated chess for two main reasons. On the one hand, the greatest number of possible positions on your board complicates the tasks of searching for potential movements. On the other hand, the aspect of a victory in chess -capturing the king- is more limited than in Go, where any configuration of the board in which none of the players see more benefits to conquer, gives rise to the final count.

As it is, it is not surprising that, for decades, the machine was incapable of beating a human, whether it was this professional or amateur player. The hunt for Go jumped into the worlds newspapers in 2015, when Fan Hui took on Alpha Go, the algorithm developed by Deep Mind, in a first round from which the machine emerged victorious. In 2016, this artificial intelligence established itself as superior as far as Go is concerned after winning the former world champion, Lee Sedol.

Then Alpha Go Zero would come. And then Alpha Zero. The original learned to play over the course of thousands of games against players of varying levels. The second generation learned by playing against itself. And the third, also self-taught, also taught himself how to play chess and shogi.

Where we go?

It is not unreasonable to ask what humanity wants a quantum Go for. According to the Chinese scientists who have invented it, the aim is basically to raise the bar for the machine. Our results establish a paradigm for inventing new games with quantum features and resources and offer a versatile platform for both classical and quantum machine learning, they explain.

Alpha Zero, for example, brings to Deepmind collateral victories to those that occur on the board. An algorithm capable of assimilating the rules of three different games is a significant advance towards the creation of learning systems of general purpose and adaptable to changing situations. Putting the machines to pursue these new goals can have two results: that the algorithm becomes more sophisticated until it reaches them or that the mouse hunts the cat and we finally find the limit of artificial intelligence.

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Quantum physics: the trick to beat artificial intelligence to Go? | Innovation - Explica

The QuamNESS consortium unites researchers in University of Bristol, Queens University of Belfast and Trinity College Dublin with the support of a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland (EPSRC-SFI) to explore the thermodynamics of quantum machines and technologies.

Thermodynamics is one of the pillars of natural sciences: it studies the way energy is exchanged between bodies at different temperature, predicts the likeliness of certain chemical reactions, and explains why even the most energy-efficient engine will always produce waste.

However, what happens when the processes of interest involve systems as simple as electrons, atoms or simple molecules? For such nanoscale building blocks of matter, the laws of physics experienced in the everyday world are no longer valid, and quantum mechanics come into play. Therefore, to provide an accurate description of energy-exchange processes occurring at microscopic scales, thermodynamics must be blended with the quantum framework.

Such new avenues of investigation promise to deliver minuscule devices able to make use of the counter-intuitive laws of quantum mechanics to outperform their classical counterparts. Miniaturised to only handfuls of atoms, these machines hold the promise of offering highly efficient ways of generating power, managing heat flows and recovering wasted energy in wide-ranging technologies, from microprocessors to chemical reactions.

The UK-Irish consortium QuamNESS, comprising researchers at the University of Bristol, Queens University Belfast, and Trinity College Dublin, will address this challenging perspective. By developing novel mathematical tools and powerful simulation methods the fundamental principles governing the performance of the smallest possible engines will be revealed. Supported by a large EPSRC-SFI grant, totalling more than 1.6 million, the QuamNESS team will work towards a fully-fledged understanding of how to engineer new technologies that benefit from super-efficient (quantum-enhanced) thermal management.

Dr Stephen Clark, Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Bristol and one of the principal investigators of QuamNESS, said: Developing the tools to unravel quantum enhancements is of paramount importance to near-future technologies and is the main objective of our project.

Quantum systems are well known to behave in very unintuitive ways. Under certain conditions, these strange quantum effects can both compete and radically alter the way energy is transformed. Our project will sharpen the view of this interplay by reassessing the fundamental concepts of irreversibility and fluctuations. The long-term aim is then to design schemes to harness quantum effects to make more efficient nanoscale machines.

A crucial feature of QuamNESS is that it brings together a uniquely well-suited team of researchers across world-class institutions in England, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Consequently the EPSRC-SFI partnership scheme was perfectly placed to support a project built on such close cross-border collaboration.

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August: Quantum thermodynamics | News and features - University of Bristol

Tiny quantum fluctuations in the early universe explain two major mysteries about the large-scale structure of the universe, in a cosmic tango of the very small and the very large. A new study by researchers at Penn State used the theory of quantum loop gravity to account for these mysteries, which Einsteins theory of general relativity considers anomalous. Credit: Dani Zemba, Penn State

Theory of loop quantum cosmology describes how tiny primordial features account for anomalies at the largest scales of the universe.

While Einsteins theory of general relativity can explain a large array of fascinating astrophysical and cosmological phenomena, some aspects of the properties of the universe at the largest-scales remain a mystery. A new study using loop quantum cosmologya theory that uses quantum mechanics to extend gravitational physics beyond Einsteins theory of general relativityaccounts for two major mysteries. While the differences in the theories occur at the tiniest of scalesmuch smaller than even a protonthey have consequences at the largest of accessible scales in the universe. The study, which was published online on July 29, 2020, in the journal Physical Review Letters, also provides new predictions about the universe that future satellite missions could test.

While a zoomed-out picture of the universe looks fairly uniform, it does have a large-scale structure, for example because galaxies and dark matter are not uniformly distributed throughout the universe. The origin of this structure has been traced back to the tiny inhomogeneities observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)radiation that was emitted when the universe was 380 thousand years young that we can still see today. But the CMB itself has three puzzling features that are considered anomalies because they are difficult to explain using known physics.

Diagram showing evolution of the Universe according to the paradigm of Loop Quantum Origins, developed by scientists at Penn State. Credit: Alan Stonebraker. P. Singh, Physics 5, 142 (2012); APS/A. Stonebraker

While seeing one of these anomalies may not be that statistically remarkable, seeing two or more together suggests we live in an exceptional universe, said Donghui Jeong, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and an author of the paper. A recent study in the journal Nature Astronomy proposed an explanation for one of these anomalies that raised so many additional concerns, they flagged a possible crisis in cosmology. Using quantum loop cosmology, however, we have resolved two of these anomalies naturally, avoiding that potential crisis.

Research over the last three decades has greatly improved our understanding of the early universe, including how the inhomogeneities in the CMB were produced in the first place. These inhomogeneities are a result of inevitable quantum fluctuations in the early universe. During a highly accelerated phase of expansion at very early timesknown as inflationthese primordial, miniscule fluctuations were stretched under gravitys influence and seeded the observed inhomogeneities in the CMB.

To understand how primordial seeds arose, we need a closer look at the early universe, where Einsteins theory of general relativity breaks down, said Abhay Ashtekar, Evan Pugh Professor of Physics, holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics, and director of the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. The standard inflationary paradigm based on general relativity treats space time as a smooth continuum. Consider a shirt that appears like a two-dimensional surface, but on closer inspection you can see that it is woven by densely packed one-dimensional threads. In this way, the fabric of space time is really woven by quantum threads. In accounting for these threads, loop quantum cosmology allows us to go beyond the continuum described by general relativity where Einsteins physics breaks downfor example beyond the Big Bang.

The researchers previous investigation into the early universe replaced the idea of a Big Bang singularity, where the universe emerged from nothing, with the Big Bounce, where the current expanding universe emerged from a super-compressed mass that was created when the universe contracted in its preceding phase. They found that all of the large-scale structures of the universe accounted for by general relativity are equally explained by inflation after this Big Bounce using equations of loop quantum cosmology.

In the new study, the researchers determined that inflation under loop quantum cosmology also resolves two of the major anomalies that appear under general relativity.

The primordial fluctuations we are talking about occur at the incredibly small Planck scale, said Brajesh Gupt, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State at the time of the research and currently at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. A Planck length is about 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the radius of a proton. But corrections to inflation at this unimaginably small scale simultaneously explain two of the anomalies at the largest scales in the universe, in a cosmic tango of the very small and the very large. The researchers also produced new predictions about a fundamental cosmological parameter and primordial gravitational waves that could be tested during future satellite missions, including LiteBird and Cosmic Origins Explorer, which will continue improve our understanding of the early universe.

Reference: Alleviating the Tension in the Cosmic Microwave Background Using Planck-Scale Physics by Abhay Ashtekar, Brajesh Gupt, Donghui Jeong and V. Sreenath, 29 July 2020, Physical Review Letters.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.051302

In addition to Jeong, Ashtekar, and Gupt, the research team includes V. Sreenath at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka in Surathkal, India. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Penn State Eberly College of Science, and the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India.

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Loop Quantum Cosmology Theory: Cosmic Tango Between the Very Small and the Very Large - SciTechDaily

A video being widely shared on social media has renewed attention on a group that falsely presents itself as a government agency fighting against compulsory mask-wearing.

In the video filmed in a California grocery store a woman says she is from the "Freedom to Breathe Agency."

She tells a store worker that she could be sued for enforcing mask rules. She also handed her papers, which, according to BuzzFeed News, claimed that she could be sent to prison.

The group has no affiliation with any state or federal authority, and has been warned by the Department of Justice to stop mis-using its seal.

It has also been censured as part of a Facebook crackdown on coronavirus misinformation, linked to fake cards marked "FACE MASK EXEMPT" and said to be issued by the agency.

In July the Department of Justice (DoJ) denied any affiliation with the group after imagery emerged of the cards, which feature the department's seal.

"These postings were not issued by the Department and are not endorsed by the Department," said the DoJ in a statement to NPR.

The cards threatened business owners requiring patrons to wear masks with a referral to the DoJ, and potential fines of $150,000.

Pictures of the exemption cards were being linked to widely in a Facebook group called Unmasking America, reported The Verge in July.

The page was subsequently banned from the site for spreading coronavirus misinformation.

One poster in the group reportedly advised others to "print it, laminate it and use it. The number is legit."

The group's Facebook page is currently unavailable, with a message from Facebook suggesting possible reasons, including that it had been deleted.

The group's founder was identified by The New York Times as Lenka Koloma.

The outlet reported that she was selling the cards on a page on the Shopify platform. She describes herself on her webpage as an "entrepreneur, motivational speaker, transformation expert and researcher in the field of biology, nutritional science, science of life, neuroscience and quantum physics."

She is also, according to BuzzFeed News, the woman in the video confronting the grocery store worker.

She claims wearing a mask is part of "subliminal mind conditioning," and her website contains a print-out of grounds for refusing to obey mask-wearing rules.

Koloma did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email covidtips@businessinsider.com and tell us your story.

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Fake 'Freedom to Breathe Agency' was caught in Facebook COVID-19 purge - Insider - INSIDER

Quantum Realm

A team of Chinese scientists put a new twist on the ancient game Go: They shrunk it down to the quantum scale.

In this new version, the classic black and white stones players use as game pieces were taken away and replaced by pairs of entangled photons, according to Phys.org. While the game is an unusual quantum experiment on its own, the researchers say that the work could herald a new era of quantum physics-based games.

In a regular game of Go, players try to claim territory on a board and capture each others stones by surrounding them with their own. Its an extremely complex game governed by extremely simple rules, which has made it a common target for AI researchers.

But in the quantum version, which is described in a paper shared on the preprint server ArXiv last month, the use of entangled photons introduces new layers of complexity and randomness.

The main difference between the two games is that now it matters whether an encircled photon is entangled with another or not. When a player places down two photons, they remain entangled until another photon is placed next to one of them. For as long as theyre entangled, neither photon can be captured.

And thanks to the tricky nature of quantum physics, a player wont know whether a given photon is entangled with another until they try to capture it, adding a new element of chance and trickery that renders classic Go strategies useless.

READ MORE: Using entangled photons to play quantum Go [Phys.org]

More on Go: Human Go Champion Who Lost to AI Says Machines Cannot Be Defeated

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Scientists Played a Game of Go at the Quantum Scale - Futurism

Explains the film's director and producer David Jakubovic, "Over the course of this project, I came to realize that cannabis is far from a gateway drug; for many, it's actually an exit drug from Pharmaceuticals and Narcotics. And in the U.S. - which has 5% of the world's population consuming 75% of the world's pharmaceuticals - we can no longer afford to be in the dark about the facts. Facts can save lives."

Featuring the world's leading experts in cannabis science and medicine - including acclaimed Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam, Ph.D., the 'father of cannabis research' whose 1960s discovery of THC jump started the medical and scientific revolution around cannabis - CBD Nation offers a compelling look at 60 years' worth of published and ongoing research.

"We published our findings thirty-seven years ago: cannabidiol (CBD) blocks epileptic attacks in patients. What happened? Nothing for thirty years," states Raphael Mechoulam, President of The Multidisciplinary Center for Cannabinoid Research at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem."Nothing happened until desperate parents like those in this film did their own research and found out that cannabidiol can help children with epilepsy. But epilepsy is just one of many conditions that we know cannabis medicine can treat. If the world chooses to not look at all of the science, it is not ignorance it's negligence."

Adds longtime cannabis activist, entrepreneur, and restorative justice champion, Steve DeAngelo, who also appears in the film: "CBD Nation brings you the real science that decades of U.S. government sponsored misinformation have hidden from public view. Watch it, and learn why cannabis may just be the most valuable medicine ever discovered by human beings."

Shot in 2018 over the course of six months in the United States, Canada, and Israel, CBD Nation marries a wealth of scientific breakthroughs with first-person narratives, following the emotional stories of patients for whom CBD is a lifesaving medicine.

"CBD Nation tells the authentic origin story of CBD how it took sick kids like Jayden David, Rylie Maedler, and the late Charlotte Figibecoming messengers for this plant in order for mainstream society to acknowledge its potential as medicine," shares Harborside co-founder, cannabis industry consultant and strategic advisor,Andrew DeAngelo. "It is a story about human biology, human rights, and the ultimate victory of truth and science, which could not be more relevant today."

With interviews from more than 30 physicians, clinicians, researchers, and patients, CBD Nation is the first wide release film to dive deep into how the human body has evolved to work with cannabis, providing not only a second chance at life for patients but also a fighting chance for the world's most politicized plant to be accepted for what it is: medicine.

"I hope that U.S. doctors, educators and politicians see this film," says Rylie Maedler, who worked closely with legislators in her home state of Delaware to pass Rylie's Law, granting children with qualifying conditions access to medical cannabis. "Because I'm living proof of the fact that cannabis and CBD have a place in modern medicine."

To learn more about CBD Nation, please visit CBDNationFilm.com.

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ABOUT MAD MACHINE FILMSLaunched in 2013, Mad Machine Films produces documentary films and commercial content on a wide range of subjects and genres, from cannabis science and quantum physics, to the Vietnam War and concert films. The company was founded by director David Jakubovic, whose most recent credits include directing National Geographic's 2-hour World War 2 special, Heroes of the Sky: the Mighty Eighth Air Force PBS's 1-hour concert film for British pop icon Charli XCX, and the upcoming feature documentary, CBD Nation.

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CBD Nation, Available August 25 On Amazon And Video On Demand, Examines The Highest Levels Of Scientific Research And Medical Evidence Surrounding The...