The Sun is the source of the overwhelming majority of light, heat, and energy on Earth's surface, ... [+] and is powered by nuclear fusion. But without the quantum rules that govern the Universe at a fundamental level, fusion wouldn't be possible at all.

Earth, as we know it, is only teeming with life because of the influence of our Sun. Its light and heat provides every square meter of Earth when its in direct sunlight with a constant ~1500 W of power, enough to keep our planet at a comfortable temperature for liquid water to continuously exist on its surface. Just like the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy amidst the trillions of galaxies in the Universe, our Sun shines continuously, varying only slightly over time.

But without quantum physics, the Sun wouldnt shine at all. Even in the extreme conditions found in the core of a massive star like our Sun, the nuclear reactions that power it could not occur without the bizarre properties that our quantum Universe demands. Thankfully, our Universe is quantum in nature, enabling the Sun and all the other stars to shine as they do. Heres the science of how it works.

A stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. This new, ... [+] nearby system that's rich in star-formation gives us a region with a wide variety of star colors and masses, yet all of them are undergoing nuclear fusion reactions in their core.

Starlight is the single greatest source of energy in the Universe throughout its entire 13.8 billion year history, subsequent to the hot Big Bang. These large, massive concentrations of hydrogen and helium contract under their own gravity when they first form, causing their cores to become denser and denser all while heating up. Eventually, a critical threshold is reached at temperatures of ~4 million kelvin and densities exceeding that of solid lead where nuclear fusion begins in the stars core.

But heres the puzzle: you can determine exactly how much energy the particles in the Sun must have, and calculate how those energies are distributed. You can calculate what types of collisions occur between protons in the Suns core, and compare that with how much energy is required to actually bring two protons into physical contact with one another: overcoming the electric repulsion between them.

And when you do your calculations, you find a shocking conclusion: there are zero collisions happening there with enough energy to lead to nuclear fusion. Zero. None at all.

A solar flare from our Sun, which ejects matter out away from our parent star and into the Solar ... [+] System, is dwarfed in terms of 'mass loss' by nuclear fusion, which has reduced the Sun's mass by a total of 0.03% of its starting value: a loss equivalent to the mass of Saturn. E=mc^2, when you think about it, showcases how energetic this is, as the mass of Saturn multiplied by the speed of light (a large constant) squared leads to a tremendous amount of energy produced.

At first glance, this would appear to make nuclear fusion and hence, the ability of the Sun to shine completely impossible. And yet, based on the energy we observe coming from the Sun, we know that it does, in fact, shine.

Deep inside the Sun, in the innermost regions where the temperature ranges between 4 million all the way up to 15 million kelvin, the nucleus of four initial hydrogen atoms (i.e., individual protons) will fuse together in a chain reaction, with the end result producing a helium nucleus (made of two protons and two neutrons), along with the release of a significant amount of energy.

That energy is carried away in the form of both neutrinos and photons, and while the photons might spend over 100,000 years before they make it to the Suns photosphere and radiate into space, the neutrinos exit the Sun in mere seconds, where weve been detecting them on Earth since the 1960s.

Experiments such as Super-Kamiokande, which contain enormous tanks of (proton-rich) water surrounded ... [+] by arrays of detectors, are the most sensitive tools humanity has to detect neutrinos from the Sun. As of the start of 2020, we only have constraints on potential proton decay, but we are continuously detecting solar neutrinos, day or night.

You might think about this scenario and be a bit puzzled, since it isnt obvious how energy is released from these reactions. Neutrons, you see, are ever so slightly more massive than protons are: by about 0.1%. When you fuse four protons into a nucleus containing two protons and two neutrons, you might think that reaction would require energy instead of emitting it.

If all of those particles were free and unbound, that would be true. But when neutrons and protons are bound together into a nucleus such as helium, they wound up being bound together so tightly that theyre actually significantly less massive than their individual, unbound constituents. While two neutrons have about 2 MeV (where an MeV is one million electron-volts, a measure of energy) more energy than two protons are via Einsteins E = mc a helium nucleus is the equivalent of 28 MeV lighter than four unbound protons.

In other words, the process of nuclear fusion releases energy: about 0.7% of whatever protons fuse together gets converted into energy, carried by both neutrinos and photons.

The most straightforward and lowest-energy version of the proton-proton chain, which produces ... [+] helium-4 from initial hydrogen fuel. Note that only the fusion of deuterium and a proton produces helium from hydrogen; all other reactions either produce hydrogen or make helium from other isotopes of helium.

We observe the Sun emitting, over its entire surface, a continuous power output of 4 1026Watts. That amount of energy translates into an enormous number of protons somewhere upwards of 1038 of them fusing together in this chain reaction every second. This is spread out over an enormous volume of space, of course, since the interior of the Sun is enormous; the average human being metabolizing their daily food produces more energy than an equivalent human-sized volume of the Sun.

But with all of those reactions occurring in the interior of the Sun, you might start to wonder how efficient these reactions are. Do we really get enough of them to generate all the power that the Sun creates? Can this really lead to such an enormous energy output, and explain how the Sun shines?

Its a complex question, and if you start to think about it quantitatively, here are the numbers you arrive at.

The anatomy of the Sun, including the inner core, which is the only place where fusion occurs. Even ... [+] at the incredible temperatures of 15 million K, the maximum achieved in the Sun, the Sun produces less energy-per-unit-volume than a typical human body. The Sun's volume, however, is large enough to contain over 10^28 full-grown humans, which is why even a low rate of energy production can lead to such an astronomical total energy output.

The Sun is far larger and more massive than anything weve experienced in our lives. If you were to take the entire planet Earth and line up a series of them across the Suns diameter, it would take 109 Earths to make it all the way across. If you were to take all the mass contained within planet Earth, youd have to accumulate more than 300,000 of them to equal the mass of our Sun.

All told, there are some 1057 particles making up the Sun, with right around 10% of those particles present in the fusion region that defines the Suns core. Inside the core, heres whats happening:

This cutaway showcases the various regions of the surface and interior of the Sun, including the ... [+] core, which is the only location where nuclear fusion occurs. As time goes on, the helium-containing region in the core expands and the maximum temperature increases, causing the Sun's energy output to increase.

This sounds reasonable, right? Surely, given the enormous number of proton collisions that occur, how fast theyre moving, and the fact that only a tiny, almost imperceptible fraction of them would need to actually fuse, this could be achievable.

So we do the math. We calculate, based on how particles behave and move when you have a whole lot of them under a given set of energies and velocities, how many proton-proton collisions have enough energy to initiate nuclear fusion in those reactions.

To get there, all two protons have to do is get close enough to physically touch, overcoming the fact that they both have positive electric charges, and that like charges repel.

So how many, of the ~1056 protons in the Suns core, colliding billions of times per second, actually have enough energy to cause a fusion reaction to occur?

Exactly zero.

When two protons overlap, it's possible that they can fuse together into a composite state dependent ... [+] on their properties. The most common, stable possibility is to produce a deuteron, made of a proton and a neutron, which requires the emission of a neutrino, a positron, and possibly a photon as well.

And yet, somehow, it happens. Not only does nuclear fusion successfully power the Sun, but stars far less massive and with far lower core temperatures than our own. Hydrogen gets converted to helium; fusion occurs; starlight gets created; planets become potentially habitable.

So whats the secret?

This is the key place where quantum physics comes into play. Down at a subatomic level, atomic nuclei dont actually behave as particles alone, but rather as waves. Sure, you can measure the physical size of a proton, but doing so makes its momentum inherently uncertain. You can also measure the momentum of a proton essentially what we did when we calculated what its velocity is but doing so makes its position more inherently uncertain.

Each proton, instead, is a quantum particle, where its physical location is better described by a probability function than a pinned-down position.

An illustration between the inherent uncertainty between position and momentum at the quantum level. ... [+] The better you know or measure a particle's position, the less well you know its momentum, as well as vice versa. Both position and momentum are better described by a probabilistic wavefunction than by a single value.

Because of the quantum nature of these protons, the wavefunctions of two protons can overlap. Even protons which dont have enough energy to overcome the repulsive electric force between them can see their wavefunctions overlap, and that overlapping means they have a finite probability of experiencing quantum tunneling: where they can end up in a more stable bound state than their initial, free state.

Once you form deuterium from two protons the hard part the rest of the chain reaction can proceed quite quickly, leading to the formation of helium-4 in short order.

But the probability of forming deuterium is very small. In fact, for any particular proton-proton interaction that occurs in the Suns core, practically all of them will have the simplest result imaginable: their wavefunctions temporarily overlap, then they stop overlapping, and all you wind up with is two protons, the same as what you started with. But a very small fraction of the time, about 1 in every 1028 collisions (remember that number from earlier?), two protons wind up fusing together, creating a deuteron, as well as a positron and a neutrino, and possibly also a photon.

When two protons meet each other in the Sun, their wavefunctions overlap, allowing the temporary ... [+] creation of helium-2: a diproton. Almost always, it simply splits back into two protons, but on very rare occasions, a stable deuteron (hydrogen-2) is produced, due to both quantum tunneling and the weak interaction.

When the wavefunction of two protons in the Suns core overlap, theres only a minuscule chance that theyll do anything other than return to being two protons. The odds of them fusing together to make a deuterium nucleus are about the same as winning the Powerball lottery three times in a row: astronomically small. And yet, there are so many protons inside the Sun that this successfully occurs so often that it powers not only our Sun, but practically all of the stars in the Universe.

Over the past 4.5 billion years, this has happened enough time in our Sun that it has lost approximately the mass of Saturn due to nuclear fusion and Einsteins most famous equation: E = mc. If it werent for the quantum nature of the Universe, however, nuclear fusion wouldnt occur in the Sun at all, and Earth would simply be a cold, lifeless rock floating in the abyss of space. Its only because of the uncertainty inherent to position, momentum, energy, and time, that our existence is possible at all. Without quantum physics, the Sun wouldnt be able to shine. In a very real sense, we really did win the cosmic lottery.

See the original post here:

The Sun Only Shines Because Of Quantum Physics - Forbes

By now, youve seen the uproarious time loop comedy Palm Springs on Hulu (or youre OK reading a lot of spoilers) and are wondering to yourself, Wait, how much time actually passed in the movie? The films 90-minute runtime covers a deceptively lengthy period of time in the experiences of Andy Sambergs Nyles and Cristin Miliotis Sarah, two jaded wedding guests who must learn that the hardest part of living the same day infinitely is learning to live with yourself. The boundless repetition recalls the best of Groundhog Day without ever becoming subservient to Harold Ramis classic.

Inspired by a tenacious piece of journalism by Simon Gallagher in 2011 that attempted to pinpoint the precise number of days that Bill Murrays Phil Connor must relive Groundhog Day, I set out to apply a similarly rigorous methodology to determine how long passes within the Palm Springs time loop. Armed with a Google spreadsheet, a search engine and a helpful phone-a-friend to director Max Barbakow and screenwriter Andy Siara, I pored over Palm Springs like it was the Zapruder film to come to my closest approximation of how many times Nyles and Sarah relive November 9.

(By the way, does that date sound familiar? According to the filmmakers, Im the first person to identify the reason they chose this given day on the calendar was because it was the day after the 2016 election. Maybe that just means Im caught in a loop of that days jumble of feelings myself)

The simplest measure of the time in Palm Springs are the days we see unfold as part of the main narrative. We meet up with Nyles when hes already well-situated within the framework of the time loop, idling the day away and numbing his senses with poolside brews. Like the alarm clock hitting 6:00 A.M. and the radio blaring I Got You Babe in Groundhog Day, we have a strong visual cue that a new version of November 9 is starting with an extreme close-up of Nyles and Sarahs eyes.

In a few instances, particularly with montages, I made the logical leap based on the time of day in which two events take place to determine that it would not be possible for them to coincide within the same loop. With the exception of assorted flashbacks, the following days proceed in chronological order:

Day 1: Sarah goes into the cave and gets pulled into the loop.Day 2: Sarahs first repeated day.Day 3: Sarah drives back to Austin.Day 4: Nyles explains the time loop in Sarahs car.Day 5: Nyles and Sarah discuss sex at the bar, Sarah tries to end the loop with good karma.Day 6: Sarah wakes up again in the loop, goes to waste day with Nyles at the safehouse.Days 7-14: Montage of Sarah and Nyles embracing meaningless of life with assorted hijinks culminating in desert campout where Sarah and Nyles have sex for the first time*

(*I originally assumed the campout was a separate day, but thanks to a tip from Cristin Milioti interviewed inVulture, I learned that it actually follows the evening where they plant the bomb in the wedding cake. Per Milioti, Sarahs hook is hidden in her coat but issues with coverage prevented them from showing it more explicitly. This also tracks given that we dont have any shots of them waking up preceding the scene.)

Day 15: Nyles reveals hes slept with Sarah before she entered the loop.Day 16: Sarah wakes up and goes to start studying physics, Nyles unable to find her at resort.

Unlike Groundhog Day, which stays laser-focused on Carl, Palm Springs splits its two characters up here. By my count, we see the same amount of days Nyles and Sarahs sequences apart. (More on how long these sequences actually last in a bit.) But for the purposes of simply enumerating the days we actually see in the film, the section of the film where Sarah educates herself and Nyles realizes his love for her in that absence constitutes Days 17-22. Also during this time, Sarah tests out her quantum physics theory by blowing up a goat in the cave to see if it breaks out of the time loop, and Nyles makes peace with Roy at his home in Irvine.

That makes the day in which Sarah arrives to let Nyles in on her plan to blow herself up in the cave to break the time loop Day 23.

After the detonation, the film has one final scene where they float in the safehouse pool, presumably on November 10 and a mid-credits stinger where J.K. Simmons Roy, an unwitting participant pulled into the loop who mostly channels his rage into torturing Nyles, has apparently received a voice message we see Sarah leaving on Day 23and has come back to the wedding to discuss it. (Nyles, clad in a suit rather than his casual pool gear, appears not to recognize him.)

Well set aside these last two scenes for now and say that, for the sake of setting a preliminary baseline, we irrefutably see 23 days unfold within the time loop of Palm Springs.

Now things start getting a little trickier. Especially as Nyles explains the rules and limitations of the time loop to Sarah, the film cuts away to glimpses of scenes from his life prior to her getting stuck.

The first major flashback sequence comes whenever Sarah fully processes that on the night she gets pulled into the loop, Roy shoots Nyles with a bow-and-arrow. This prompts Nyles to explain how, when the two of them embark on a cocaine-fueled bender, he semi-consciously encourages Roy to enter the cave and enter the loop after an off-handed remark about wanting to live out in the desert forever. We then see five different scenarios that play out of Roy taking revenge: shooting a fleeing naked Nyles with an arrow, electrocuting him, waterboarding him, whipping him and filling Nyles safehouse pool with flammable liquid so he can immolate his enemy. Simply what we see adds 5 days to the total.

(Its possible that the whipping and the electrocution could be the same setup as the setting does look the same. Whether thats due to the indie budget and shooting schedule not allowing another location, or this is just someplace like Roys garage that he would have easy access to, its not a stretch to presume these were different days.)

Nyles mentions that Roy comes around every few daysor weeks? Considering the elaborate nature of the revenge schemes we see, its likely that the gaps between Roys reappearances are due to him planning, procuring the necessary supplies or observing Nyles habits so he can plot when and where to wreak havoc. Lets operate that his attacks happen at a frequency on the longer end of Nyles estimation, and Ill use the smallest definition of few as three. Theres also only so much he can accomplish in a day given that he wakes up in Irvine every morning, at best an hour and twenty minutes away. Well add twenty days of prep time to each of Roys revenge schemes and also account for the lead-up to the incident Sarah witnesses. That adds 125 days.

Then theres Nyles talking about the various sexual escapades hes had while trapped in the loop. We see a dispiriting hand-job from wedding barkeep Daisy, a hookup with barfly Darla, an unsuccessful attempt to woo the bride Tala and experimenting with groomsman Jerry. Simply what we see adds 4 days to the total.

When Sarah asks if Nyles has been having sex in the loop, he answers, I have [had sex with other people], but it takes a lot of work and I try to live my life with as little effort as possible. So, in addition to the day in which he succeeds, we have to take into account the fact that Nyles needs to work his way up to learning how to win over his conquests. Lets start with the baseline that it takes him 14 days to sleep with Sarah when hes not overtly manipulating her with accumulated knowledge (and is generally pretty lackadaisical about life). Ill be generous and say it takes 10 days, with effort, when he turns the charm on to bed each of these people. Im tempted to give him more for trying to get with Tala, the bride, but the jokiness of the attempt we see makes me think he didnt take the quest too seriously. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg, but we can safely assume that the real time frame of what we see in the sex montage is more akin to 40 days.

I also contemplated that what I originally labeled Days 7-14, the montage of Sarah and Nyles nihilistically enjoying their shared fate in the loop, might have some hidden days associated with it. In particular, the scene in Day 10 where the duo bursts into the bar and does an elaborate choreography routine feels like it might have taken some time to learn. But the combination of seeing start practicing it before (on Day 7), Nyles skillful dance prowess seen on Day 1 and Max Barbakow pointing out that Sarah teaching him some moves implies that perhaps she has some pre-existing talent leads me to believe this is not too elaborately planned. For once, I wont overthink this one.

NEW CUMULATIVE TOTAL: 188 days (just over 6 months)

The scene lasts two minutes and spans six days that we see, but Sarah educating herself enough to come up with a quantum physics-based theory to escape the loop clearly lasts much, much longer. According to Andy Siara, one draft of the screenplay originally inserted a title card at the end of the montage to spell out just how long it takes her to accumulate the knowledge and show up ready to share with Nyles. This was ultimately jettisoned so early in the process that Siara was unable to recall how long they had said.

She gets probably multiple PhDs in that time, he speculated. How long does it take with someone with not even a passion or an interest, really, in quantum physics to get a PhD, or to force themselves to get multiple PhDs?

At the very least, Sarah has eclipsed the knowledge of Dr. Clifford V. Johnson, a USC physics professor who she video chats with to discuss her theory about how her plan would allow access to the indeterministic universe on the other side of the Cauchy horizon. Stumped, his reply is that it sounds like Sarah doesnt even need his help. Per Johnsons faculty page at USC, his educational background is only single PhD in addition to his BSc. If Wikipedia is correct, that education likely took him seven years to complete presuming his undergraduate education took four years. (This does not even factor in that Dr. Johnson has nearly three decades of teaching and research experience since completing his PhD in 1992.)

So, at the bare minimum, Sarah needs at least seven years worth of education in quantum physics to go toe-to-toe with Dr. Johnson. We can probably knock off a little bit of time because shes going to be laser-focused on physics and not spending time on general education credits that take up semesters worth a students college tenure. Sarah is also going to be on a bit of an accelerated trajectory since were led to believe this is all she is doing; its almost as if shes doing a degree in compressed summer school-like mode. When she wakes up at 9:40 A.M., per the time on her phone on Day 2, she quickly flees the resort grounds to evade Nyles detection and begins her studies at a restaurant off the premises until at least sundown (which would be roughly 4:46 P.M. on November 9). Lets say shes putting in 6-to-7 hour days of class every day, consecutively, and then doing any coursework

On Day 16, Sarah pulls up edX and surveys a row of four classes: Quantum Mechanics for Everyone, Plasmonics: From Fundamentals to Modern Applications, Applications of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Cryptography. Lets assume she takes all of these and takes the most time possible (which is still generous) as suggested in the course descriptions. That would be 454 hours, which would be at least 65 days of Sarahs time. So, lets extrapolate from there that every undergraduate class will be roughly 16 days of Sarahs life, knowing that some will take more and others will require less. To get a B.S. in Physics with a concentration in Applied Physics at Rice University, from whom she takes PHY 202, Sarah would need to take 15 classes. Therefore, to get her undergraduate degree, I reason it would take 240 days.

As for the PhD, it gets a little trickier given how much that degree is based on research, guided study and the production of a dissertation. But per Rice, it takes 90 credit hours to earn their PhD in Physics, roughly 33% more of a courseload. And since the level of complexity has jumped up, I think it would take her 20 days for each of her 20 classes. For her PhD to at least be somewhere in the ballpark of Dr. Johnson, Sarah spends 400 days earning her PhD in Physics.

Physics isnt the only thing Sarah learns in her extended vacation from Nyles, though. When she shows up to unveil her theory to him, she boasts an increased emotional intelligence as well. Siara suggested, You could factor that in as well, how long it would take to achieve some sense of enlightenment to not be bogged down by the petty shit? Barbakow compared her Zen state to the story of Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree, a Buddhist text in which the Buddha meditates under a tree to achieve a state of enlightenment. This took him 49 days, which Id say would be the bare minimum shed need separate from her academic pursuits to arrive where she is.

That brings the total time between Sarah snapping and Sarah being at peace to 689 days at the very least, just shy of two years.

NEW CUMULATIVE TOTAL: 877 days (almost 2.5 years)

Alright, now comes the toughest part of this task. Unlike Groundhog Day, theres a whole world of events in the time loop that happen well before the audience joins in. Nyles, whether its because of his alcoholism, his fatalism, or some combination of both, has long given up on marking accomplishments or time spent. When I asked the filmmakers if they, or Andy Samberg, approached the pre-Sarah period in the loop with any notions of how much time had passed, they said there was no agreed-upon number. So, what we have to go on are the clues we get from Nyles which are vague at best, fuzzy at worst.

For instance, on Day 1, Nyles cruises through the dance floor to make his way through Sarah with a precise finesse that implies he knows everyones exact positions and moves. I counted eight calibrated maneuvers; given his alcohol consumption and general lackadaisical attitude toward life, I think each of them take a day for him to learn and retain. So add 8 days.

Later on Day 1, Nyles leads Sarah to a window outside the room where his girlfriend Misty is receiving oral sex from the wedding officiant. Nyles professes, Theres not a world where they dont end up together, which would imply he knows from extensive experience that theres no way to stop her from getting with him. While we dont have much of a baseline of where their relationship was prior to the loop, Id say his indifference towards her that we see would suggest he tried for 30 days before realizing that their union was fated. (Ive luckily never faced the inevitability of a cheating partner, so if anyone wants to correct me here, feel free!)

On that same day, Nyles brilliantly times a pun to Sarah, telling her you dont need a leg up right as Misty moans hold my leg up! Its tough to tell in the moment whether its a joke played for her or an irony only perceptible to the audience, but Barbakow confirmed it was very much calculated. Hes the master of that universe, the director explained. He uses it to achieve whatever means that are going to get him off, either literally or figuratively. I dont think this adds another day, though, as he likely has the unimpeded version of their tryst memorized from the period in which he was more actively trying to thwart it.

On Day 2, Nyles knows the exact time of the earthquake that opens up the cave in which they enter the loop. He has no watch, phone or clock that will tell him the time he knows it intuitively. Id say that level of knowledge implies at least a year of pinpointing the quake and adapting to its daily shock.

On Day 3, Nyles mentions to Sarahs parents when she goes missing that she could be scared of melanoma, nanotech, round-the-clock surveillance, sauce. These are highly specific references, which leads me to think its too random to dismiss as a throwaway line. Maybe they are ways that Roy has targeted him? (I dont know about melanoma) Either way, lets add 4 days.

Nyles makes reference on Day 4 to his attempts to get out of the loop by taking his own life, saying Ive done a lot of suicides so many We dont get any concrete sense of how many times hes tried. Nyles knows to put his head in front of the airbag for an immediate death when Sarah attempts a vehicular death, and he makes reference twice to there being nothing worse than slowly dying in the ICU. Lets take those instances as at least three suicides and add on double the Groundhog Day total of nine suicides to add 21 days to the count. Its probably still an undercount, but given that Niles asks Misty to kill him (somewhat in jest) during the opening scene, it leads me to believe the impulse for suicidal ideation has not been entirely squelched.

On Day 5, Nyles makes memorable reference to a failed escape: One time I smoked a lot of crystal and made it all the way to Equatorial Guinea it was a huge waste of time. Given the effort and time this would take, rendering it impossible to combine with any other events, add 1 day.

When Nyles plays darts in the bar on Day 5, hes able to hit two bullseyes in darts flawlessly and only misses the mark on his third throw because Sarah interjects with her recollection of Roy. Its tempting to go the full Malcolm Gladwell/10,000 hours and assume Nyles has become a master of darts, but I think thats too generous. He doesnt need to be a master of an entire craft, just figure out the exact right spot from which to throw the darts and be able to replicate it flawlessly. Id say given Nyles predilection for alcohol, hes probably spent enough time playing darts in a bar that he wouldnt be as knew to the skill as Sarah is to physics. Lets add 60 days to the count, during which time hed become so familiar with the patrons and their positioning that he would know hes able to swipe a hat off the guy sitting near the pool table on his way out.

While Nyles is sick of Abe and Talas wedding by the time we meet him in the loop, its clearly because hes spent a ton of time there. When describing the day he brought Roy into the loop, Nyles mentions that this occurred before Id really acquainted myself with everyone at the wedding. This would imply that, to some extent, he gets to know all the guests to some extent. Based on wide shots of the wedding crowd, there appear to be 64 other people attending: 56 in the crowd, 3 groomsmen and bridesmaids, the couple and the officiant. Subtract Nyles from that count as well as his girlfriend Misty, and that makes 62 opportunities for acquaintance. While he might have known some of them before, Nyles does seem to be craving the socialization at least by the time he gets to know Roy since he bothers to wear a nice suit on that particular day. Lets be generous here and give him five days to know each person, adding 320 days to the count. (This would also explain how he knows all the words to the officiants homily during a cutaway shot on Day 5.)

On Day 6, Nyles is able to cycle through an entire argument with Misty where he can recite what shes going to say as shes saying it including her reaction to his being able to copy her. There are eight different lines, which I think hed have to pick up over the course of 8 days as he learns each consecutive response.

Later that day, he takes Sarah to his safehouse pool for the first time, mentioning that he knows the family who owns the home doesnt come back on November 9. That would mean hes spent a full day there and knows for a fact they wont return, adding 1 day to the count.

On Day 16, Nyles angrily reveals something big hes been hiding from Sarah: prior to her joining in the loop, they had in fact had sex. Oh, please, youve fucked me a thousand times, he mutters under his breath. All I had to do was bail you out with that ridiculous speech at the wedding, he says in reference to the speech we see him give on Day 1 and has likely given many times before. (I would say this is maybe the best version of it hes given, Barbakow said.) Its hard to imagine taking either of those statements too literally given his frustration in the moment. But what if we apply the American Pie 2 rule of three where you assume men exaggerate their sexual conquests by a factor of three? Thats 333 days where they have sex, plus you add 5 days for him figuring out how to crack the seduction element (5 days where he gets to know her like any other guest at the wedding have already been included in the count).

On Day 23, Nyles must crucially lean on a piece of personal information hes learned from shooting range operator Spuds in order to gain access to a mode of transportation that will get him to Sarah before she enters the cave to blow herself up. Its possible Nyles could have gleaned this from Day 6 when he and Sarah aim their fire at the picture posted on the target: the man who stole Spuds wife. But given the level of personal, precise detail hes able to give, Im inclined to believe this stems from a longer relationship where Spuds felt he could open up a little bit more. Lets give it 10 days.

And in the scene following the explosion in the cave, Nyles makes a mention that shocks Sarah: prior to the loop, he had a shaggy dog. I refuse to believe hes the kind of person who didnt try to bring a good boy back, so Im going to add 5 days for some attempts to get the canine companionship.

From these little nuggets, often little more than just a line or a gesture from Nyles, I think we can safely point to at least 1,171 days that he spends in the time loop over three years prior to Sarah entering the loop. None of this takes into account what are likely numerous days in which he contents himself entirely by doing nothing by the pool, but alas, theres nothing in the text of Palm Springs that would provide any basis for estimation. (There are no meaning-altering deleted scenes, either I asked!)

Id be tempted to leave it there, but theres one element that Barbakow and Siara highlighted for me that overrides all these moments

In a crucial scene of emotional rapport between Nyles and Sarah on Day 15, she asks what he did for work before getting stuck in the loop. He pauses, stares blankly for an uncomfortable beat and confesses that hes honestly forgotten. Given his frequent inaccessibility, its tough to tell if hes being sincere in this moment or stonewalling. But according to Siara, Nyles is not lying. He has to have been in there long enough for him not to remember what his life was like prior to this, he told me.

While age and time is likely a big part of this, I think another component that cannot be overlooked is the potential effect that Nyles drinking has. Not to get on a soapbox here, but there is some research showing some links between excessive alcohol consumption and memory loss. A 2017 study by Massachusetts General Hospital found that in general, drinking to excessmore than 21 drinks in a week for four or five yearsis bad for brain health in most individuals, with potential symptoms including memory loss. Forgetting your job is a pretty big one, even though it might not be too much of a stretch if you havent thought about what it was in years, so I wont err as conservatively as I usually do in my estimates. The overarching time encompassing all of Nyles loop life is at least 1,826 days. (I guess I could have just led with this, but wheres the fun in that?)

NEW CUMULATIVE TOTAL: 2,703 days (almost 7.5 years)

You might have noticed that I declined to weigh in on whether the final two scenes in the films chronology add to the total. Here is the part where I punt: I dont know.

In my conversation with Barbakow and Siara, they planted a seed of doubt in my head that maybe we shouldnt take those scenes quite at face value. Its easy to assume that since the family returns to the safehouse, it must be November 10. But do we know if Sarah actually got the goat to break the loop? As they enter the cave, Nyles asks her if she was bluffing about testing on the goat, and her response of too late, youve already committed does not inspire full confidence. There are just enough wrinkles to raise my suspicions that everything might not be as seamless as it appears. (And its also possible, given the innuendo of her final line to Sarah, that June Squibbs Nana might be somehow involved in the loop herself I cannot be dragged down that rabbit hole as well!)

This uncertainty is not meant to imply laziness on the part of the filmmakers, to be clear. Max and I exhausted ourselves talking about it, Siara said when discussing how they built the framework for the films time loop structure. We know the rules of this world like the back of our hands because I really did not want anyone to be able to poke holes in it.

This isnt a post speculating about the science of the ending of Palm Springs because thats a different question and post entirely. I suspect it might have something to do with the concept raised by Sarah, the Cauchy horizon the spot where determinism breaks down, where the past no longer determines the future, per a UC Berkley blog post but dont take it from the guy who couldnt handle a month of high school honors physics. And even if my bearings of interpreting it are off by a bit, whats a day or twos difference after such extensive guesstimation?

It comes to the final question of did the cave work or not, but we always wanted to get to that point where it doesnt matter, Siara said of the ending. Because what matters most is when they [Nyles and Sarah] walk into that cave hand in hand and decide to take that plunge together. MY FINAL COUNT REMAINS AT 2,703 DAYS for the loop, less because I trust the sketchy science and more because I believe in the power of people to change themselves and each other. Without this emotional pull, there would have been no inspiration for me to put such obsessive devotion into cataloguing Palm Springs in the first place.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.

Watch Palm Springs on Hulu

Go here to read the rest:

How Much Time Actually Passes in the 'Palm Springs' Time Loop? - Decider

Image for representation. Credits: Dark/Netflix.

For a human, the smallest unit of time is a second.

However, it seems like the same does not stand true for the universe. According to a new study, scientists believe that the smallest length of time might be as tiny as a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. It has been suggested that the universe might have a fundamental clock that might be ticking faster than expected.

According to a team of physicists, time might be the result of a physical process. The study was published in the Physics Review Letters on June 19, 2020.

When asked about what exactly can be defined as time, Martin Bojowald, a physicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, told Live Science, We don't know. We know that things change, and we describe that change in terms of time.

In physics, time is described by two clashing theories. While quantum mechanics describes it as, Time is just there. Its fixed. Its a background, according to physicist Flaminia Giacomini of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. However, the general theory of relativity describes time in a different way altogether.

The scientists believe that studying different mechanisms and combining them all together, including fundamental clocks, might prove helpful in formulating a new theory about the concept of time.

Bojowald and his team have claimed that the ticks of two identically built atomic clocks would never be completely similar. This allows researchers to establish that time has a fundamental nature.

Read the rest here:

No Time? The Universe Follows a Clock of Its Own, Find Scientists - News18

A selection of women and people of color who achieved remarkable things in science after working on the Manhattan Project.

(Inside Science) -- The Manhattan Project wasnt only an endeavor of white men. Women and people of color played pivotal roles, despite discrimination and systematic barriers. Many members of these marginalized groups held nonresearch positions such as clerical work, construction, and maintaining and operating facilities. Some became renowned scientists -- both during and after World War II.

There is no record of any Black employees working at Los Alamos during the war. Other sites such as Oak Ridge only hired Black workers for low-level positions and forced them to live under far worse conditions than their white counterparts. Only a few Black people -- all of them men -- were ever hired to work on the Manhattan Project as scientists or technicians. Several other racial groups were also conspicuously absent.

White women had more opportunities. At that time, most research institutions had nepotism rules that forbade hiring both members of a married couple. Scientists often married other scientists, and the husbands career almost always took precedence, so such rules were a major barrier keeping women out of academia. But faced with labor shortages and an urgent need for scientific talent, many Manhattan Project sites actively recruited female scientists along with their husbands, resulting in a female scientific labor force hundreds strong.

After the war, the diverse Manhattan Project alumni went on to many and varied achievements, from making Nobel Prize-winning discoveries about the nature of atoms to developing new medicines for deadly diseases.

Isabella Karle was a chemist who worked to purify plutonium at the University of Chicagos Metallurgical Laboratory as part of the Manhattan Project. Karle and her husband Jerome left the Met Lab before the war was over to conduct their own research.

Karle invented and built an improved electron diffraction apparatus for identifying the molecular structure of gaseous chemicals. But not all molecules could be vaporized. To analyze chemicals in solid states, Karle developed improved methods of X-ray crystallography. Her methods confirmed her husbands theoretical work and solved the structures of biological molecules such as proteins -- an essential part of drug development.

When Karles husband won the 1985 Nobel Prize in chemistry for work they did together, he was upset that she was not included. She had to convince him to accept the prize, according to her New York Times obituary. But Karle won many awards of her own, including the National Medal of Science.

Mathematics prodigy J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. started college at age 13 and earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago at age 19. He was one of the few Black scientists to work on the Manhattan Project, studying fissionable materials at the Metallurgical Laboratory. He wasnt told the purpose of his research until after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

When the rest of his team was transferred to Oak Ridge, Jim Crow laws prevented Wilkins Jr. from joining them, so he took a post with Eugene Wigner working on nuclear reactors. After the war, he conducted research on optics and nuclear energy, and developed mathematical models and shielding techniques for gamma radiation.

Later, Wilkins Jr. launched Howard Universitys mathematics doctoral program. He received many awards and honors, including the U.S. Armys Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. He also served as president of the American Nuclear Society and as a council member for the American Mathematical Society.

Floy Agnes "Aggie" Lee was the daughter of a Pueblo Indian man and a German American woman. She learned to fly planes in college in hopes of joining the Womens Airforce Service Pilots. After graduating with a biology degree, she took a job at the Los Alamos drawing blood from researchers for testing. She witnessed the effects of radiation poisoning firsthand when two of the researchers she worked with were exposed during an accident.

She became friends and tennis partners with Enrico Fermi. His identity was kept secret from her for security reasons, and she was astonished when she finally learned who he was. "I said, 'Oh, I cant believe that,'" she recalled in an interview for Voices of the Manhattan Project. "I was beating him in tennis every time."

After the war, she worked at Argonne National Lab and earned a doctorate in zoology. She then spent many years studying the effects of radiation on living cells and chromosomes. She advocated for science education and helped found the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

Legendary physicist Chien-Shiung Wu was nicknamed "the first lady of physics" and "the queen of nuclear research." She emigrated to the U.S. from China in 1936 and completed her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1944 she went to Columbia University in New York to work on uranium enrichment for the Manhattan Project. Her contributions included improving the design for Geiger counters.

When the first large-scale plutonium reactor at Hanford shut down shortly after researchers tried to fire it up, Wu traced the problem to the presence of the xenon isotope Xe-135.

Wu later made many important advances in nuclear physics and even contributed to the understanding of sickle-cell anemia. She devised the experiment that disproved a supposed natural law known as conservation of parity, confirming theoretical work by Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang. Lee and Yang received a Nobel Prize for the discovery, but Wus role was not recognized. She did win many other honors, including the National Medal of Science, and became the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society.

Samuel Massie Jr. faced many hurdles of discrimination, but he didnt let it stop him from making lifesaving discoveries. He studied chemistry in part because he wanted to find a cure for his fathers asthma, and during his career, he worked on treatments for malaria, herpes, gonorrhea, meningitis, schizophrenia and cancer. He also developed foams to protect people from nerve gas.

When the University of Arkansas denied him admittance as an undergraduate due to his race, he attended Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College, graduating summa cum laude at age 18. Iowa State University accepted him as a doctoral student but forbade him from living on campus or using the same lab as white students.

While Massie was working on his doctorate, a member of the draft board in Arkansas refused to renew his draft deferment because of his race. Massie asked for help from Henry Gilman, who recruited him into the Manhattan Project converting uranium isotopes into usable liquids.

After the war, Massie Jr. became the first Black president of the Oklahoma Academy of Science and the first Black professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and later won an award from the White House.

Maria Goeppert Mayer was descended from six consecutive generations of university professors; she made it seven. She emigrated to the U.S. from Germany after completing her doctorate in quantum mechanics in 1930.

She was forced to take unpaid research positions for years due to nepotism rules that prevented her from being hired by the same institutions where her husband, chemist Joseph Edward Mayer, worked. That finally changed in 1942 when Mayer accepted a part-time job at Columbia University working on the Manhattan Project. She soon became the leader of a team of 20 researchers and technicians working to separate uranium isotopes.

After the bombs dropped in Japan, she worked part time at the University of Chicago, continuing research she started with Edward Teller during the war. She also held a part-time position at Argonne National Laboratory. She finally became a full-time paid professor at the University of California, San Diego in 1960.

Mayer is most famous for her shell model of atomic nuclei, which explains why atoms with certain "magic numbers" of protons or neutrons are especially stable. The discovery earned her part of the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics.

Inside Science would like to thank Alex Wellerstein, Vincent Intondi and Ruth Howes for providing information used in this article. For further reading about the people featured and other women and people of color who worked on the Manhattan Project, please see:

"Their Day in the Sun" by Ruth H. Howes & Caroline L. HerzenbergThe Atomic Heritage Foundation and Voices of the Manhattan ProjectBlackpast.orgThe Maria Goeppert Mayer biographical memoir at the National Academy of SciencesThe obituary for Samuel Massie by Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb in the Washington PostThe obituary of J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. by Ronald E. Mickens in Physics TodayThe obituary of Isabella Karle by Kenneth Chang in the New York TimesThe biography of Chien-Shiung Wu at the Manhattan Project National Historic Park

For more stories, videos and infographics related to Inside Science's coverage of the far-reaching ways that the Manhattan Project influenced science and society, visit our page: Seventy-Five Years After Trinity.

Read the rest here:

The Diversity and Greatness of Manhattan Project Alumni - Inside Science News Service

For the first time, a team led by researchers at MIT LIGO Laboratory has measured the effects of quantum fluctuations on objects at the human scale.

In a paper published in Nature, the researchers report observing that quantum fluctuations, tiny as they may be, can nonetheless kick an object as large as the 40kg mirrors of the US National Science Foundations Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), causing them to move by a tiny degree, which the team was able to measure.

The universe, as seen through the lens of quantum mechanics, is a noisy, crackling space where particles blink constantly in and out of existence, creating a background of quantum noise whose effects are normally far too subtle to detect in everyday objects.

It turns out the quantum noise in LIGOs detectors is enough to move the large mirrors by 10-20 meters a displacement that was predicted by quantum mechanics for an object of this size, but that had never before been measured.

A hydrogen atom is 10-10 meters, so this displacement of the mirrors is to a hydrogen atom what a hydrogen atom is to us and we measured that, says Lee McCuller, a research scientist at MITs Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

The researchers used a special instrument that they designed, called a quantum squeezer, to manipulate the detectors quantum noise and reduce its kicks to the mirrors, in a way that could ultimately improve LIGOs sensitivity in detecting gravitational waves, explains Haocun Yu, a physics graduate student at MIT.

Whats special about this experiment is weve seen quantum effects on something as large as a human, says Nergis Mavalvala, the Marble Professor and associate head of the physics department at MIT. We too, every nanosecond of our existence, are being kicked around, buffeted by these quantum fluctuations.

Its just that the jitter of our existence, our thermal energy, is too large for these quantum vacuum fluctuations to affect our motion measurably.

With LIGOs mirrors, weve done all this work to isolate them from thermally driven motion and other forces, so that they are now still enough to be kicked around by quantum fluctuations and this spooky popcorn of the universe.

Yu, Mavalvala, and McCuller are co-authors of the new paper, along with graduate student Maggie Tse and Principal Research Scientist Lisa Barsotti at MIT, along with other members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

LIGO is designed to detect gravitational waves arriving at the Earth from cataclysmic sources millions to billions of light years away.

The research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

Related

Read the original here:

Quantum physics used to physically move objects - IT-Online

IIIT Hyderabad successfully conducts Quantum Talks 2020, the first of its kind webinar on quantum information and computation in India

21 lectures by distinguished professors from across the country over 5 days

Hyderabad, July 9, 2020..:International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH) successfully conducted Quantum Talks 2020, the first of its kind webinar on quantum information and computation in India.

IIITHs robust quantum computing group with experts from the field and allied areas created an online platform that brought together the best minds from across the country and offered students a holistic view of the entire spectrum of modern research in quantum physics. Quantum computation, information processing and communication have emerged at the forefront of science and technology research in the last two decades. Quantum computers can fundamentally change what we do.

The 5-day symposium included 21lectures by distinguished professors from various institutions across the country (University of Hyderabad, IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur, IIT Jodhpur, IISER Thiruvananthapuram, IISER Kolkata, IISER Mohali, Harish Chandra Research Institute, University of Calcutta, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore University, IISER Bhopal, National Institute of Technology Patna, Delhi Technical University, S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Institute of Physics, Raman Research Institute and Institute of Mathematical Science) and covered the areas of quantum foundation, non-locality, cryptography, entanglement theory, quantum correlations, quantum thermodynamics and many body physics and of experimental research in quantum information.

Prof Indranil Chakrabarty and ProfSamyadeb Bhattacharya, co-organizers of the event fromCenter for Security, Theory & Algorithmic Research (CSTAR) at IIITH said, We are heartened by the encouraging response to such an initiative. Going forward, IIITH hopes to enable more of such platforms to stimulate discussions on quantum computing.

Website:www.iiit.ac.in

View post:

IIIT Hyderabad successfully conducts Quantum Talks 2020, the first of its kind webinar on quantum information and computation in India - IBG NEWS

Quantum entanglement that strange but potentially hugely useful quantum phenomenon where two particles are inextricably linked across space and time could play a major role in future radar technology.

In 2008, an engineer from MIT devised a way to use the features of entanglement to illuminate objects while using barely any photons. In certain scenarios, such technology promises to outperform conventional radar, according to its makers, particularly in noisy thermal environments.

Now, researchers have taken the idea much further, demonstrating its potential with a working prototype.

The technology might eventually find a variety of applications in security and biomedical fields: building better MRI scanners, for example, or giving doctors an alternative way of looking for particular types of cancer.

"What we have demonstrated is a proof of concept for microwave quantum radar," says quantum physicist Shabir Barzanjeh, who conducted the work at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.

"Using entanglement generated at a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, we have been able to detect low reflectivity objects at room temperature."

The device works along the same principles as a normal radar, except instead of sending out radio waves to scan an area, it uses pairs of entangled photons.

Entangled particles are distinguished by having properties that correlate with one another more than you'd expect by chance. In the case of the radar, one photon from each entangled pair, described as a signal photon, is sent towards an object. The remaining photon, described as an idler, is kept in isolation, waiting for a report back.

If the signal photon reflects from an object and is caught, it can be combined with the idler to create a signature pattern of interference, setting the signal apart from other random noise.

As the signal photons reflect from an object, this actually breaks the quantum entanglement in the truest sense. This latest research verifies that even when entanglement is broken, enough information can survive to identify it as a reflected signal.

It doesn't use much power, and the radar itself is difficult to detect, which has benefits for security applications. The biggest advantage this has over conventional radar, however, is that it's less troubled by background radiation noise, which affects the sensitivity and the accuracy of standard radar hardware.

"The main message behind our research is that quantum radar or quantum microwave illumination is not only possible in theory but also in practice," says Barzanjeh.

"When benchmarked against classical low-power detectors in the same conditions we already see, at very low-signal photon numbers, that quantum-enhanced detection can be superior."

There's plenty of exciting potential here, though we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves just yet. Quantum entanglement remains an incredibly delicate process to manage, and entangling the photons initially requires a very precise and ultra-cold environment.

Barzanjeh and his colleagues are continuing their development of the quantum radar idea, yet another sign of how quantum physics is likely to transform our technologies in the near future in everything from communications to supercomputing.

"Throughout history, proof of concepts such as the one we have demonstrated here have often served as prominent milestones towards future technological advancements," says Barzanjeh.

"It will be interesting to see the future implications of this research, particularly for short-range microwave sensors."

The research has been published in Science Advances.

See the original post:

Physicists Just Built The First Working Prototype Of A 'Quantum Radar' - ScienceAlert

An ultrashort x-ray laser pulse (in violet) removes an inner-shell electron from the iodine atom in ethyl iodide. The experiment times the propagation of the electron with attosecond precision, and measures how much the released electron is decelerated or accelerated by intramolecular forces. Credit: Philipp Rosenberger / LMU

Physicists have measured the flight times of electrons emitted from a specific atom in a molecule upon excitation with laser light. This has enabled them to measure the influence of the molecule itself on the kinetics of emission.

Photoemission the release of electrons in response to excitation by light is one of the most fundamental processes in the microcosm. The kinetic energy of the emitted electron is characteristic for the atom concerned, and depends on the wavelength of the light employed. But how long does the process take? And does it always take the same amount of time, irrespective of whether the electron is emitted from an individual atom or from an atom that is part of a molecule? An international team of researchers led by laser physicists in the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching has now probed the influence of the molecule on photoemission time.

The theoretical description of photoemission in 1905 by Albert Einstein marked a breakthrough in quantum physics, and the details of the process are of continuing interest in the world of science and beyond. How the motions of an elementary quantum particle such as the electron are affected within a molecular environment has a significant bearing on our understanding of the process of photoemission and the forces that hold molecules together.

In close collaboration with researchers from the King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), and additional international partners, the team at LAP has now determined how long it takes electrons to be photo-emitted from a specific atom within a molecule (in this case, the iodine in ethyl iodide). The measured times were in the range of tens of attoseconds. One attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second.

The researchers used a range of pulses in the x-ray region to excite the targeted electron. The use of machine learning helped to improve the precision of the analysis of the experimental data, and resulted in more accurate comparisons with theoretical predictions. The comparison of the experimental data with theoretical simulations finally revealed the influence of the molecule on the time that electrons need for the photoemission process, explains Professor Matthias Kling, who heads the Ultrafast Imaging and Nanophotonics group within the LAP team. The researchers found that the delay attributable to the molecular environment became larger as the energy of the light pulses and hence the initial kinetic energy imparted to the electrons was reduced.

The observations may be compared with exploring a landscape. When flying over it, many details on the ground remain unnoticed. At ground level, every single bump makes itself felt. The same is true for excited electrons. If the initial impulse is just enough to enable them to leave the molecule, the retarding effect of the forces that hold the molecule together is greater than when the kick is sufficiently energetic to eject them more promptly.

Our observations indicate that experiments tracing photoemission time permit us to learn about the forces within molecules, explains Professor Abdallah Azzeer, Head of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics at KSU in Riyadh. These studies could improve our understanding of quantum effects in molecules and chemical reactions, adds Prof. Alexandra Landsman from Ohio State University in the US, who leads the group that conducted the majority of the theoretical work.

Reference: Probing molecular environment through photoemission delays by Shubhadeep Biswas, Benjamin Frg, Lisa Ortmann, Johannes Schtz, Wolfgang Schweinberger, Tom Zimmermann, Liangwen Pi, Denitsa Baykusheva, Hafiz A. Masood, Ioannis Liontos, Amgad M. Kamal, Nora G. Kling, Abdullah F. Alharbi, Meshaal Alharbi, Abdallah M. Azzeer, Gregor Hartmann, Hans J. Wrner, Alexandra S. Landsman and Matthias F. Kling, 11 May 2020, Nature Physics.DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-0887-8

More:

Quantum Brakes to Learn About the Forces Within Molecules - SciTechDaily

How do protons fuse to power the sun? What happens to neutrinos inside a collapsing star after a supernova? How did atomic nuclei form from protons and neutrons in the first few minutes after the Big Bang?

Simulating these mysterious processes requires some extremely complex calculations, sophisticated algorithms, and a vast amount of supercomputing power.

Theoretical physicist William Detmold marshals these tools to look into the quantum realm. Improved calculations of these processes enable us to learn about fundamental properties of the universe, he says. Of the visible universe, most mass is made of protons. Understanding the structure of the proton and its properties seems pretty important to me.

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the worlds largest particle accelerator, investigate those properties by smashing particles together and poring over the subatomic wreckage for clues to what makes up and binds together matter.

Detmold, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and a member of the Center for Theoretical Physics and the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, starts instead from first principles namely, the theory of the Standard Model of particle physics.

The Standard Model describes three of the four fundamental forces of particle physics (with the exception of gravity) and all of the known subatomic particles.

The theory has succeeded in predicting the results of experiments time and time again, including, perhaps most famously, the 2011 confirmation by LHC researchers of the existence of the Higgs boson.

A core focus of Detmolds research is on confronting experimental data from experiments such as the LHC. After devising calculations, running them on multiple supercomputers, and sifting through the enormous quantity of statistics they crank out a process that can take from six months to several years Detmold and his team then take all that data and do a lot of analysis to extract key physics quantities for example, the mass of the proton, as a numerical value with an uncertainty range.

My driving concern in this regard is how will this analysis impact experimental results, Detmold says. In some cases, we do these calculations in order to interpret experiments done at the LHC, and ask: Is the Standard Model describing whats going on there?

Detmold has made important advances in solving the complex equations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a quantum field theory that describes the strong interactions inside of a proton, between quarks (the smallest known constituent of matter) and gluons (the forces that bind them together).

He has performed some of the first QCD calculations of certain particle decays reactions. They have, for the most part, aligned very closely with results from the LHC.

There are no really stark discrepancies between the Standard Model and LHC results, but there are some interesting tensions, he says. My work has been looking at some of those tensions.

Inspired to ask questions

Detmolds interest in quantum physics dates to his schoolboy days, growing up in Adelaide, Australia. I remember reading a bunch of popular science books as a young kid, he recalls, and being very intrigued about quarks, gluons, and other fundamental particles, and wanting to get into the mathematical tools to work with them.

He would go on to earn both his bachelors degree and PhD from the University of Adelaide. As an undergraduate studying mathematics, he encountered a professor who opened his eyes to the mysteries of quantum mechanics. It was probably the most exciting class Ive had. And I get to teach that now.

Hes been teaching that introductory course on quantum mechanics at MIT for a few years now, and he has become adept at spotting those students who are similarly seized by the subject. In every class there are students you can see the enthusiasm dripping off the page as they write their problem sets. Its exciting to interact with them.

While he cant always bring the full complexity of his research into those conversations, he tries to infuse them with the spirit of his enterprise: how to ask the questions that might yield new insights into the deep structures of the universe.

You can frame things in ways to inspire students to go into research and push themselves to learn more, he says. A lot of teaching is about motivating students to go and find out more themselves, not just information transmission. And hopefully I inspire my students the way my professor inspired me.

He adds: With all of us stuck at home or in remote locations, Im not sure that anyone is feeling particularly inspired right now, but this pandemic will eventually end, and sometimes getting lost in the intricacies of Maxwells equations gives a nice break from what is going on in the world.

Enhancing experiments

When he isnt teaching or analyzing supercomputer data, Detmold is often helping to plan better experiments.

The Electron-Ion Collider, a facility planned for construction over the next decade at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island, aims to advance understanding of the internal structure of the proton. Some of Detmolds calculations are aimed at providing a qualitative picture of the structure of gluons inside the proton, to help the projects designers know what to look for, in terms of orders of magnitude for detecting certain quantities.

We can make predictions for what well be seeing if you design it in a certain way, he says.

Detmold has also become something of an expert at orchestrating complex supercomputing projects. That entails figuring out how to run a huge number of calculations in an efficient way, given the limited availability of supercomputing power and time.

He and his lab members have developed algorithms and software infrastructure to run these calculations on massive supercomputers, some of which have different types of processing units that make data management complicated. Its a research project in its own right, how to perform those calculations in a way thats efficient.

Indeed, Detmold spends time working on how improve methods for getting to the answer. New algorithms, he says, are a key to advancing computation to tackle new problems, calculating nuclear structures and reactions in the context of the Standard Model.

Lets say theres a quantity we want to compute, but with the tools we have at the moment it takes 10,000 years of running a massive supercomputer, he says. Coming up with a new way to calculate something that actually makes it possible to do thats exciting.

Inspiring interest in the unknown

But fundamental mysteries are still at the center of Detmolds work. As quarks and gluons get farther apart from each other, the strength of their interactions increases. To understand whats happening in these low-energy states, he has advanced the use of a computational technique known as lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD), which places the quantum fields of the quarks and gluons on a discretized grid of points to represent space-time.

In 2017, Detmold and colleagues made the first-ever LQCD calculations of the rate of proton-proton fusion the process by which two protons fuse together to form a deuteron.

This process kicks off the nuclear reactions that power the sun. Its also exceedingly difficult to study through experiments. If you try to smash together two protons, their electric charges mean they dont want to be near each other, says Detmold.

It shows where this field can go, he says of his teams breakthrough. Its one of the simplest nuclear reactions, but it opens the doorway to saying we can address these directly from the Standard Model. Were trying to build upon this work and calculate related reactions.

Another recent project involved using LQCD to study the formation of nuclei in the universe its earliest moments. As well as looking at these processes for the actual universe, hes performed computations that change certain parameters the masses of quarks and how strongly they interact in order to predict how the reactions of Big Bang nucleosynthesis might have happened and how much they might have affected the evolution of the universe.

These calculations can tell you how likely it is to end up producing universes like the one we see, Detmold says.

Read more:

Exploring the quantum field, from the sun's core to the Big Bang - MIT News

In TV series Devs, a tech company has built an extremely powerful quantum computer. The show is both beautiful and captivating, says Rowan Hooper

By Rowan Hooper

BBC/FX Networks

Devs

BBC iPlayer and FX on Hulu

Halfway through episode two of Devs, there is a scene that caused me first to gasp, and then to swear out loud. A genuine WTF moment. If this is what I think it is, I thought, it is breathtakingly audacious. And so it turns out. The show is intelligent, beautiful and ambitious, and to aid in your viewing pleasure, this spoiler-free review introduces some of the cool science it explores.

Advertisement

Alex Garlands eight-part seriesopens with protagonists Lilyand Sergei, who live in a gorgeous apartment in San Francisco. Like their real-world counterparts, people who work atFacebook orGoogle, the pair take the shuttle bus to work.

They work at Amaya, a powerful but secretive technology company hidden among the redwoods. Looming over the trees is a massive, creepy statue of a girl: the Amaya the company is named for.

We see the company tag line asLily and Sergei get off the bus: Your quantum future. Is it just athrow-away tag, or should we think about what that line means more precisely?

Sergei, we learn, works on artificial intelligence algorithms. At the start of the show, he gets some time with the boss, Forest, todemonstrate the project he has been working on. He has managed to model the behaviour of a nematode worm. His team has simulated the worm by recreating all 302 of its neurons and digitally wiring them up. This is basically the WormBot project, an attempt to recreate a life form completely in digital code. The complete map of the connections between the 302 neurons of the nematode waspublished in 2019.

We dont yet have the processing power to recreate theseconnections dynamically in a computer, but when we do, it will be interesting to consider if the resulting digital worm, a complete replica of an organic creature, should be considered alive.

We dont know if Sergeis simulation is alive, but it is so good, he can accurately predict the behaviour of the organic original, a real worm it is apparently simulating, up to 10 seconds in thefuture. This is what I like about Garlands stuff: the show has only just started and we have already got some really deep questions about scientific research that is actually happening.

Sergei then invokes the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics conceived by Hugh Everett. Although Forest dismisses this idea, it is worth getting yourhead around it because the show comes back to it. Adherents say that the maths of quantum physics means the universe isrepeatedly splitting into different versions, creating a vast multiverse of possible outcomes.

At the core of Amaya is the ultrasecretive section where thedevelopers work. No one outside the devs team knows what it is developing, but we suspect it must be something with quantum computers. I wondered whether the devssection is trying to do with the 86 billion neurons of thehuman brain what Sergei has been doing with the 302 neurons of the nematode.

We start to find out when Sergei is selected for a role in devs. He must first pass a vetting process (he is asked if he is religious, a question that makes sense later) and then he is granted access to the devs compound sealed by alead Faraday cage, gold mesh andan unbroken vacuum.

Inside is a quantum computer more powerful than any currently in existence. How many qubits does it run, asks Sergei, looking inawe at the thing (it is beautiful, abit like the machines being developed by Google and IBM). Anumber that it is meaningless to state, says Forest. As a reference point, the best quantum computers currently manage around 50 qubits, or quantum bits. We can only assume that Forest has solved the problem ofdecoherence when external interference such as heat or electromagnetic fields cause qubits to lose their quantum properties and created a quantum computer with fantasticprocessing power.

So what are the devs using it for? Sergei is asked to guess, and then left to work it out for himself from gazing at the code. He figures it out before we do. Then comes that WTF moment. To say any more will give away the surprise. Yet as someone remarks, the world is deterministic, but with this machine we are gaining magical powers. Devs has its flaws, but it is energising and exciting to see TV this thoughtful: it cast a spell on me.

More on these topics:

Read more:

Devs: Here's the real science behind the quantum computing TV show - New Scientist News

Silver colored toaster with single slice of toast.

We're living in unprecedented times. Sure, there's a pandemic changing the world and retail shopping as we know it, but there are people making toast in their air fryers. Listen, air fryers are great and all, but leave the toasting to the toasters.

So what do we look for in a toaster? A fancy touchscreen? The ability to cook hot dogs? How about a combination toaster oven that bakes and toasts; or toasts, broils and bakes; or toasts, bakes, broils and is also an air fryer? How do you choose the best toaster for your kitchen?

When we think of a toaster we generally take the device itself for granted. A toaster is simply a device that turns electricity into heat to lightly burn the bread product that has been placed inside (or against the coils, as it was with the first toasters). It's not a complex process. Considering how old toaster technology is, thinking retro is completely aesthetic. Like this retro toaster that has a 50s look.

If you want something a bit more mid-century modern, then this group of toasters is your butter. While we cannot escape the crushing doom of time continuously moving forward, ignoring our minuscule and meaningless interactions, we can at least control the appearance of the devices we use to pass that time with bread products.

"It takes me back to a time when toast was really toast," said someone who likes retro toasters.

There are a lot of toasters that claim to be able to toast bagels, but those toasters are liars. If bagels are your main source of toasted carbs, then you are going to want to get an actual bagel toaster with extra wide slots and a croissant heating rack. This toaster says perception is a hot, buttered croissant.

The argument against wide slot toasters is that they are not as effective with slim white bread, but isn't the basic nature of your interaction with the passage of time just a metaphor for choosing what kind of bread to eat? The thickness of bagels speak to your inherent need to fill your time with as many new experiences as possible, while basic bread represents the monotony of life; a repeating cycle of mundane activities that separate us only slightly from ants because sometimes we wear hats.

"The only good bagel is an everything bagel", said my uncle at oneg between mouthfuls of white fish.

If you need more than just toast, then clearly you have risen to a plane of self awareness that demands multiple sources of stimulation in both the physical and mental realms. A combination toaster and oven might just help you ascend to undiscovered plateaus of existence with some crispy leftover chicky nugs.

There are some extremely complex toaster ovens out there, let's call them the quantum mechanics of toasters. There is a relatable confusion to all the buttons, settings and dials but like overall quantum physics, they are still relatable. But they aren't very easy to clean.

Which is why you should look for a toaster with a roll-top door. These toasters, unlike your never-ending struggle with the mental clutter that permeates your waking hours, are easy to clean. The roll-top prevents crumbs from getting stuck in between the door and the toaster, but like everything in existence, they are still touching in some sense. There are no spaces between the spaces. It's all connected. But with a roll-top, it's so much easier to clean the spaces that don't exist.

"It's really hard to cook leftover pizza in a regular toaster," said a guy hanging out at the vape shop.

We wake up every day, only slightly aware that it's a different day from the day before it, but a new day begins every moment, even in the fractional moments between the moments that we can just barely perceive thanks to the light from our sun and the whittling chucks falling from whatever we can grasp as our souls. Simplicity is often the best option.

You want toast? Get a basic toaster. It toasts, costs less than a fancy latte with whipped cream and an eye-rolling tip in the change jar and performs the primary function of a toaster it toasts bread.

Isn't that all we really want in life? To find our bread, in whatever form, and toast it when desired? To change the physical properties of something we generally take for granted in order to heighten our mental awareness of it for a myriad of pleasurable effects? That's what toast is. It's our sense of everything changing, while giving us some semblance of control.

Read the rest here:

How To Choose The Best Toaster - Forbes

String theorists are shifting focus to solve some rather sticky problems in physics.

Over the past few years, string theory has been less about trying to find a unifying description of all forces and matter in the universe, and more about exploring the AdS/CFT correspondence, a potential link between the tools and methods developed in the string community and some strange physics problems.

While it doesn't have a particularly catchy name, the AdS/CFT correspondence, it is a potentially powerful (but so for unproven) tool to solve complex riddles.

Related:Putting string theory to the test

The "AdS" in the AdS/CFT correspondence stands for "anti-de Sitter," which doesn't explain much at first glance. The name was inspired by Willem de Sitter, a physicist and mathematician who played around with Einstein's theory of general relativity shortly after it was published in 1917. De Sitter experimented with the idea of different kinds of theoretical universes, filling them up with various substances and figuring out how they would evolve.

His namesake, the "de Sitter universe," represents a theoretical cosmos completely devoid of matter but filled with a positive cosmological constant. While this isn't how our universe actually is, as the universe continues to age it will look more and more like de Sitter's vision.

The anti-de Sitter universe is the exact opposite: a completely empty cosmos with a negative cosmological constant, which is quite unlike what we see in our real universe.

But, while this strange theoretical "anti" universe isn't real, it's still a handy mathematical playground for string theory.

String theory itself requires 10 dimensions to be complete (6 of which are tiny and curled up to microscopic proportions), but versions of it can be cast into only 5 dimensions in an anti-de Sitter spacetime, and, while useful for our universe, can still function.

The other side of the AdS/CFT correspondence, CFT, stands for conformal field theory. Field theories are the bread and butter of our modern understanding of the quantum world; they are what happens when you marry quantum mechanics with special relativity and are used to explain three of the four forces of nature. For example, electromagnetism is described by the field theory called quantum electrodynamics (QED), and the strong nuclear force by the field theory called quantum chromodynamics (QCD).

But there's an extra word there: conformal. But before we get to conformal, I want to quickly talk about something else: scale invariance (trust me, this will make sense in a minute). A field theory is said to be scale invariant if the results don't change if the strength of interactions are varied. For example, you would have a scale invariant engine if you got the same efficiency no matter what kind of fuel you put in.

In strict mathematical terms, a conformal field theory is just a certain special case of scale invariant field theory, but almost all the time when physicists say conformal, they really mean scale invariant. So in your head every time you read or hear conformal field theory you can just replace it with scale invariant field theory.

Our universe is, by and large, decidedly not scale invariant. The forces of nature do change their character with different energy scales and interaction strengths some forces even merge together at high energies. Scale invariance, as beautiful as it is mathematically, simply doesn't seem to be preferred by nature.

Related:The history and structure of the universe (infographic)

So, on one side of the AdS/CFT correspondence, you have a universe that doesn't look like ours, and on the other, you have mathematical theory that doesn't apply to most situations. So what's the big deal?

The big deal is that over twenty years ago, physicists and mathematicians found a surprising link between string theories written in a five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime and conformal field theories written on the four-dimensional boundary of that spacetime. This correspondence so far unproven, but if there is a connection, it could have far-reaching consequences.

There are a lot of tools and tricks in the language of string theory, so if you're facing a thorny physics problem that can be written in terms of a conformal field theory (it's not common, but it does happen occasionally), you can cast it in terms of the 5d string theory and apply those tools to try to crack it.

Additionally, if you're trying to solve string theory problems (like, for example, the unification of gravity with other forces of nature), you can translate your problem into terms of a conformal field theory and use the tried-and-true techniques in that language to try to crack it.

Most work in this arena has been with trying to use the methods of string theory to solve real-world problems, like what happens to the information that's fallen into a black hole and the nature of high-energy states of matter.

Paul M. Sutteris an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of Your Place in the Universe.

Learn more by listening to the episode "Is String Theory Worth It? (Part 7: A Correspondence from a Dear Friend)" on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available oniTunesand on the Web athttp://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to John C., Zachary H., @edit_room, Matthew Y., Christopher L., Krizna W., Sayan P., Neha S., Zachary H., Joyce S., Mauricio M., @shrenicshah, Panos T., Dhruv R., Maria A., Ter B., oiSnowy, Evan T., Dan M., Jon T., @twblanchard, Aurie, Christopher M., @unplugged_wire, Giacomo S., Gully F. for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

Read more:

Exploring new tools in string theory - Space.com

The coronavirus is proving that we have to move faster in identifying and mitigating epidemics before they become pandemics because, in todays global world, viruses spread much faster, further, and more frequently than ever before.

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, its that while our ability to identify and treat pandemics has improved greatly since the outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 1918, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Over the past few decades, weve taken huge strides to improve quick detection capabilities. It took a mere 12 days to map the outer spike protein of the COVID-19 virus using new techniques. In the 1980s, a similar structural analysis for HIV took four years.

But developing a cure or vaccine still takes a long time and involves such high costs that big pharma doesnt always have incentive to try.

Drug discovery entrepreneur Prof. Noor Shaker posited that Whenever a disease is identified, a new journey into the chemical space starts seeking a medicine that could become useful in contending diseases. The journey takes approximately 15 years and costs $2.6 billion, and starts with a process to filter millions of molecules to identify the promising hundreds with high potential to become medicines. Around 99% of selected leads fail later in the process due to inaccurate prediction of behavior and the limited pool from which they were sampled.

Prof. Shaker highlights one of the main problems with our current drug discovery process: The development of pharmaceuticals is highly empirical. Molecules are made and then tested, without being able to accurately predict performance beforehand. The testing process itself is long, tedious, cumbersome, and may not predict future complications that will surface only when the molecule is deployed at scale, further eroding the cost/benefit ratio of the field. And while AI/ML tools are already being developed and implemented to optimize certain processes, theres a limit to their efficiency at key tasks in the process.

Ideally, a great way to cut down the time and cost would be to transfer the discovery and testing from the expensive and time-inefficient laboratory process (in-vitro) we utilize today, to computer simulations (in-silico). Databases of molecules are already available to us today. If we had infinite computing power we could simply scan these databases and calculate whether each molecule could serve as a cure or vaccine to the COVID-19 virus. We would simply input our factors into the simulation and screen the chemical space for a solution to our problem.

In principle, this is possible. After all, chemical structures can be measured, and the laws of physics governing chemistry are well known. However, as the great British physicist Paul Dirac observed: The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble.

In other words, we simply dont have the computing power to solve the equations, and if we stick to classical computers we never will.

This is a bit of a simplification, but the fundamental problem of chemistry is to figure out where electrons sit inside a molecule and calculate the total energy of such a configuration. With this data, one could calculate the properties of a molecule and predict its behavior. Accurate calculations of these properties will allow the screening of molecular databases for compounds that exhibit particular functions, such as a drug molecule that is able to attach to the coronavirus spike and attack it. Essentially, if we could use a computer to accurately calculate the properties of a molecule and predict its behavior in a given situation, it would speed up the process of identifying a cure and improve its efficiency.

Why are quantum computers much better than classical computers at simulating molecules?

Electrons spread out over the molecule in a strongly correlated fashion, and the characteristics of each electron depend greatly on those of its neighbors. These quantum correlations (or entanglement) are at the heart of the quantum theory and make simulating electrons with a classical computer very tricky.

The electrons of the COVID-19 virus, for example, must be treated in general as being part of a single entity having many degrees of freedom, and the description of this ensemble cannot be divided into the sum of its individual, distinguishable electrons. The electrons, due to their strong correlations, have lost their individuality and must be treated as a whole. So to solve the equations, you need to take into account all of the electrons simultaneously. Although classical computers can in principle simulate such molecules, every multi-electron configuration must be stored in memory separately.

Lets say you have a molecule with only 10 electrons (forget the rest of the atom for now), and each electron can be in two different positions within the molecule. Essentially, you have 2^10=1024 different configurations to keep track of rather just 10 electrons which would have been the case if the electrons were individual, distinguishable entities. Youd need 1024 classical bits to store the state of this molecule. Quantum computers, on the other hand, have quantum bits (qubits), which can be made to strongly correlate with one another in the same way electrons within molecules do. So in principle, you would need only about 10 such qubits to represent the strongly correlated electrons in this model system.

The exponentially large parameter space of electron configurations in molecules is exactly the space qubits naturally occupy. Thus, qubits are much more adapted to the simulation of quantum phenomena. This scaling difference between classical and quantum computation gets very big very quickly. For instance, simulating penicillin, a molecule with 41 atoms (and many more electrons) will require 10^86 classical bits, or more bits than the number of atoms in the universe. With a quantum computer, you would only need about 286 qubits. This is still far more qubits than we have today, but certainly a more reasonable and achievable number.The COVID-19 virus outer spike protein, for comparison, contains many thousands of atoms and is thus completely intractable for classical computation. The size of proteins makes them intractable to classical simulation with any degree of accuracy even on todays most powerful supercomputers. Chemists and pharma companies do simulate molecules with supercomputers (albeit not as large as the proteins), but they must resort to making very rough molecule models that dont capture the details a full simulation would, leading to large errors in estimation.

It might take several decades until a sufficiently large quantum computer capable of simulating molecules as large as proteins will emerge. But when such a computer is available, it will mean a complete revolution in the way the pharma and the chemical industries operate.

The holy grail end-to-end in-silico drug discovery involves evaluating and breaking down the entire chemical structures of the virus and the cure.

The continued development of quantum computers, if successful, will allow for end-to-end in-silico drug discovery and the discovery of procedures to fabricate the drug. Several decades from now, with the right technology in place, we could move the entire process into a computer simulation, allowing us to reach results with amazing speed. Computer simulations could eliminate 99.9% of false leads in a fraction of the time it now takes with in-vitro methods. With the appearance of a new epidemic, scientists could identify and develop a potential vaccine/drug in a matter of days.

The bottleneck for drug development would then move from drug discovery to the human testing phases including toxicity and other safety tests. Eventually, even these last stage tests could potentially be expedited with the help of a large scale quantum computer, but that would require an even greater level of quantum computing than described here. Tests at this level would require a quantum computer with enough power to contain a simulation of the human body (or part thereof) that will screen candidate compounds and simulate their impact on the human body.

Achieving all of these dreams will demand a continuous investment into the development of quantum computing as a technology. As Prof. Shohini Ghose said in her 2018 Ted Talk: You cannot build a light bulb by building better and better candles. A light bulb is a different technology based on a deeper scientific understanding. Todays computers are marvels of modern technology and will continue to improve as we move forward. However, we will not be able to solve this task with a more powerful classical computer. It requires new technology, more suited for the task.

(Special thanks Dr. Ilan Richter, MD MPH for assuring the accuracy of the medical details in this article.)

Ramon Szmuk is a Quantum Hardware Engineer at Quantum Machines.

View original post here:

Quantum computing will (eventually) help us discover vaccines in days - VentureBeat

One of my favorite things to talk about is attention. Its a highly underrated life practice, paying attention. Its mindfulness by another word. Being aware of ones own experience.

It doesnt end with that because the things that get our notice have a tendency to change once weve noticed them. Realize there is a hopeful thought in that fact alone. Add it to the math that there is more love in the world than hate, and what is revealed is an obvious trajectory that humanity steadily improves itself over time through the act of attention. Even if two steps forward usually means suffering through one step back, the overall movement is forward.

As far as the math goes, love is prevailing. It just doesnt make as big a show of itself as fear does. Love doesnt pique our sense of outrage. Dont be mistaken about how much love and attention and compassion and creativity and collaboration it takes to endure a pandemic. With so many of us on the planet, love is the reason our species even still exists. Take comfort in that if you can.

So here it must be pointed out that we are paying very special attention to a number of things right now that will undoubtedly reap the benefits of our heightened notice. There are systems on our planet that are in need of change. And it is not for me to conclude what systems need to change or in what ways. I have my opinions, however, that health care and the pharmaceutical industry will probably get the special attention they deserve. I think systems of government are under a very particular kind of scrutiny right now. I think we are noticing all of the fear that has been percolating beneath the surface of our society for so many decades. These things need our attention. And theyre getting it.

Humanity at large is getting a little bit of a reboot right now. The pandemic has focused our attention on things that have been neglected. That is a good thing. The positive aftershocks of this tragic time will be felt for decades to come.

Thats largely due to the physics of attention. The physics of attention are themselves an even more fascinating aspect of the entire mindful practice of simply noticing things. Because on the atomic level, we are able to prove that particles behave differently when we are looking at them. But heres the real shocker our linear brains cant seem to comprehend: Even when we record them using an electronic device with no one actually watching, they still behave differently. Just as if theyre being watched live. Like they know theyre being recorded.

It makes me deeply curious about what effect our attention has on our lives, and our obstacles. Especially when considered through the lens of future historians. Quantum physics explains it very technically that our heightened attention collapses a waveform from a series of potentials into specific outcomes that align with the observers expectations. Does that mean we have more power to effect positive change than we recognize, simply through our act of chosen observation?

When we are paying special attention to an issue, it typically gains wider attention when there is something about it that inspires us to feel better, or to want to feel better. Attention is an emotional experience. We gravitate toward the online content designed to ease our fears, or assuage our anger over injustice. Or alert us to it.

This is why fear is rampant on the internet. Conspiracy theories abound out of a desire to feel better, to feel safer, by being in the know. By being ready. By not having been made a fool of. No one wants to feel like that. Its easy to see how excessive fear or anxiety can drive us to tend to things that are in alignment with them. Our anxieties continuously seek validation. Pay attention to something different. And pray for those who are afraid.

We share loving stories for the same reason, though to feel better. We share them to feel safer by fostering a sense of belonging. All we all want is just to feel better. Fortunately, good thoughts are more powerful than negative ones. It takes fewer of them to create balance.

So if our attention goes where our emotional state drives us, and follows a predictable path, what is our role in the creation of our future not just that of the world, but our own individual lives? How about just getting through a day? Notice what youre noticing. Notice your emotions. Notice the emotions of other people. Send hope and love to others. Collapse their waveforms from a series of unknown potentials into something safe and concrete.

Thats what quantum physics is literally telling us occurs on the atomic level. What impact might that have on our consciousness? What impact might it have on the field that surrounds us?

Theres a beautiful line in Proverbs that invites us to make our ears attentive to wisdom and incline our hearts toward understanding. It teaches that if we call out for insight and raise our voice for understanding, if we seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasures, we will understand and find the knowledge of God.

I love the beauty and poetry of the way the advice and encouragement is given. It counsels us on what to notice most. It is teaching us to choose deliberately the things to which we attend, and defines their category: love. It leads us to believe that there is something to be gained by tending to wisdom and love. It is not instructing us toward any action other than to notice and seek.

For now, take some comfort if you can in the category of things that are getting our attention right now. Think of whats occurring in your own home at this moment and how your particular attention could transform your experience. Are you properly attending to things that deserve your gratitude?

What is being noticed by the world right now? Look for where the attention is going, for thats what will change next. Quite possibly for the better.

Wil Darcangelo, M.Div., is the minister at First Parish UU Church of Fitchburg and of First Church of Christ, Unitarian, in Lancaster and producer of The UU Virtual Church of Fitchburg and Lancaster on YouTube. Email wildarcangelo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @wildarcangelo. His blog, Hopeful Thinking, can be found at http://www.hopefulthinkingworld.blogspot.com.

View post:

An observed thing never doesnt change - Lowell Sun

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, May 16

The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, after a three-month-long break from all engagements since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, on Saturday, began two-day live teaching on tackling negative emotions of fear and anxiety precipitated by the global health crisis.

Drawing from the teachings of Buddhist scholar, Nagarjuna, in his text Precious Garland, the Dalai Lama stated that the analytical and scientific approach of the Nalanda tradition, forming the base for Tibetan Buddhism, was precise in the study of the workings of the human mind.

He compared it to quantum physics that made a distinction between appearance and reality.

Appearance can be misleading. An object can be dissected into the tiniest molecule. While inherently the object holds no fixed meaning, we as observers ascribe meaning to the object. Therefore, we should instead seek an objective reality, the Dalai Lama said.

The Dalai Lama observed how materialistic development with its comfort and ease has brought along the human ignorance towards inner peace, so much that even materially successful people feel discontent.

The antidote to this discontent was the understanding that mental and emotional well-being is central to self-confidence and happiness. Tibetan Buddhist philosophy espouses the transformation of mind as the key to achieving peace and happiness within oneself and in the world at large, Dalai Lama added.

Especially relevant in the present circumstances, the Dalai Lama spoke on the interdependence of all living beings.

An individual is reliant on the community to survive which teaches us to strive for kindness and compassion towards one another, qualities intrinsic to human nature, he said.

Similarly, in the COVID-19 crisis that we are facing today, the Dalai Lama stressed global cooperation and focus on what unites us as members of one human family.

In this vein, the Dalai Lama called upon all citizens of the world to also pay attention to the long-term issue of global climate change that had been set in motion and is expected to have far-reaching consequences within the next two decades.

Earlier whenever the Dalai Lama used to hold his teachings in Mcleodganj, it was a boom time for the local tourism industry. However, now with virtual online teachings, Mcleodganj wore a deserted look.

The general secretary of the Smart City Hotel Association, Dharamsala, Sanjeev Gandhi, said we hoped with the blessings of the Dalai Lama, the good days would return to the area and normalcy would return.

Visit link:

Develop inner peace, compassion to overcome COVID stress: Dalai Lama - The Tribune India

Last June, Boston University professor Gregg Jaeger travelled to Vxj, Sweden for a conference. It was the twentieth time that philosophers had gathered there to discuss questions that strike at the foundations of physics. Jaeger had been invited to give the opening talk, to speak about mysterious and sometimes controversial entities called virtual particles."

Whereas matter had long since been recognized to be made up of particles, the existence of virtual particles had been debated by philosophers of physics for at least thirty years. Mostly, they leaned towards their dismissal, but Jaeger is a believer.

Like ordinary particles, virtual particles come up incessantly in physicists work, in their theories, papers, and talks. But as their name suggests, they are far stranger than ordinary particles, which are already notoriously odd. Particles are the chief representatives of the world of the small, the quantum world. If you scaled everything up so that a particle was the size of a sand grain, you would be as tall as the distance from Earth to the Sun.

Physicists know from experience that particles are undoubtedly there, beyond sight. Virtual particles are much more elusive, to the point that the non-believers say they only exist in abstract math formulas. What does it even mean for virtual particles to be real?

Jaeger is a physicist-turned-philosopher, who published important quantitative results early in his career before spending the last ten years focused on the philosophy and interpretation of physics. He arrived at virtual particles as only the latest stop in a long journey of making sense of the quantum world.

There are two distinct narratives for virtual particles, and Jaeger subscribes to what philosophers call the realist position. Believers or realists argue that virtual particles are real entities that definitively exist.

In the realist narrative, virtual particles pop up when observable particles get close together. They are emitted from one particle and absorbed by another, but they disappear before they can be measured. They transfer force between ordinary particles, giving them motion and life. For every different type of elementary particle (quark, photon, electron, etc.), there are also virtual quarks, virtual photons, and so on.

Jaeger in his office. Image: Author

A useful analogy to the realist narrative of virtual particles is to imagine going to a big family reunion, full of cousins, parents, grandparents, and others. Each group of relatives represents some different type of particle, so for example, you and your siblings might all represent electrons, and your cousins might all represent photons. At this reunion, everyone happens to be a little stand-offish, mostly tucked away out of sight. When you see your sister, you walk up to shake hands, but when you look at her hand and go to grasp it, you find that your cousin has stuck his hairy hand in. He quickly shakes your hand and then your sisters. But when you look up, hes somehow disappeared, and your sister is walking away. Your cousin, the virtual photon, has just mediated the interaction between the two electrons of you and your sister.

Other philosophers have mainly upheld an opposing narrative, where virtual particles are not real and show up only in the mathematical theories and equations of quantum physics, which describe the particle world. The equations are correct, the doubters recognize, predicting all sorts of things like the peculiar magnetic properties of electrons and muons, for example.

But the entities called virtual particles are just parts of the math, these experts claim. Virtual particles have never been and cannot be directly observed, by their mathematical definition. They supposedly pop up only during fleeting particle interactions. And if they are real then they would possess seemingly unacceptable properties, like masses with values that can be squared (multiplied by themselves) to give negative numbers. They would be entirely out of the ordinary.

That physicists still claim these things to be real has haunted philosophers. Philosophers of physics, often highly trained physicists themselves, demand a story of reality that makes senseat least, as much as possible. Can the realist narrative really be true? Do bizarre things called virtual particles pop up and mediate all the interactions between observable particles?

As Jaeger explains, there are at least four different overarching mathematical theories of the quantum world. The most basic of these is called quantum mechanics. Virtual particles originate from a more advanced mathematical apparatus known as quantum field theory (QFT). If quantum mechanics is like the childrens book Clifford the Big Red Dog, then QFT is the Necronomicon, bound in skinfar more arcane and complex.

Physicists use quantum mechanics to explain the most fundamental quantum phenomena, like the simultaneous wave and particle nature of light. QFT on the other hand is used for predicting the results of extreme experiments at places like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). QFT does the heavy lifting, in other words.

The LHC is famous for its scattering experiments, where two or more particles are collided together and scatter off one another. During the collision, old particles are destroyed and new ones created. Physicists perform collisions over and over again in highly controlled circumstances and try to predict what particles come out and how. Recalling the metaphor of a family reunion, scattering experiments tell the story of how likely it is that your sister walks out from the handshake, and not some other relativean odd and yet distinct possibility.

In QFT, the probability of what particle comes out is decided by a complicated equation. Physicists solve it with a clever trick. They write out the solution as a sum of much simpler terms (summands), which is then squared. Technically, the sum contains infinitely many terms, but for many scenarios only the first few terms matter. Each of the terms in the sum contains physical quantities related to the incoming and outgoing particles, like their momentum, mass, and charge, all of which can be directly observed. However, each term can also contain physical quantities (like mass or charge) that correspond to entirely different particles, which are never observed. These are what are known as the virtual particles.

Before the LHC existed, in the 1940s, the renowned physicist Richard Feynman introduced a diagrammatic technique that made the role of the virtual particles clear. For each term in the sum for the QFT calculation, a so-called Feynman diagram can be drawn that depicts the incoming and outgoing particles. Virtual particles are drawn popping up in the center. These diagrams greatly aid in doing the complicated calculations. For every line in a diagram, for example, a physicist simply sticks another variable in their solution.

Feynman diagrams can seem to provide a temptingly accurate picture of what goes on in an experiment. However, for any experiment, there are actually infinitely many different Feynman diagrams, one for each term in the sum. This poses an interpretive problem because it seems incoherent. The theory suggests that anytime particle relatives shake hands at the family reunion, every other relative (an infinite number of them!) also stick theirs hands in.

One of Feynmans well-known contemporaries, Freeman Dyson, addressed this problem by making it clear that Feynman diagrams did not show a literal picture of reality. They were only supposed to be used as an aid to doing the math. On the other hand, Feynman sometimes suggested that the pictures actually were representative of reality.

But regardless of their interpretation, the diagrammatic technique caught on. And the virtual particles in the diagrams and the mathematics became objects of constant reference for physicistseven though the math was only meant to predict the outcomes of scattering experiments. The process of particles colliding into each other, which one would naively expect to be about forces and energy, turned out to be about virtual particles.

Image: Wikipedia/Krishnavedala

The fundamental thing that makes you know that the physical world is there is forces. Like you bang into things, right? Jaeger said, hitting his hand on the desk in his office. Ow! So thats something there. There's a world out there that's transmitted by a force. But when you try to [mathematically] understand this process of transmission, from the point of view of whats out there, and whats its structure, you end up with these virtual particles.

Many physicists who focus on quantitative results believe in a reality filled with virtual particles because QFT performs astoundingly well, predicting the outcomes of countless experiments. And QFT is rampant with virtual particles.

I have no problem at all with the fact that these virtual particles are real things that determine the forces in nature (except for gravity), said Lee Roberts, an experimental physicist and professor at Boston University, located only two blocks down from Gregg Jaegers office.

Roberts helps lead current efforts to measure the magnetic properties of muon particles with greater precision than ever before at Fermilabs Muon g-2 experiment. And whatever the questions may be around the existence of virtual particles, physicists like Roberts can hardly interpret the properties of muons without them.

Muons are like heavy electrons, carrying negative electric charge and a quantum property called spin. Roughly speaking, the muons spin can be thought of like the actual spin of a tiny rotating top. The rotation of the muons intrinsic charge produces a small magnetic field, called its magnetic moment.

Because it acts like a tiny magnet, the muon interacts with other electromagnetic fields, which are represented in the particle world by photons. To calculate the interaction, physicists use a similar process as for scattering experiments, writing the solution as an infinite sum. The terms in the sum are represented by nothing other than Feynman diagrams, where one muon particle and one photon flies in, and one single muon flies out. Virtual particles are drawn in the center hairy relatives, sticking their hands in.

All these interactions sum up to give the muon an anomalous magnetic moment, anomalous compared to the results of theories that came before QFT. But with QFT, physicists have predicted the magnetic moment almost exactly, like marking off the lines on a football pitch blindfolded and getting them accurate to the width of a hair. The accuracy of these calculations relies indispensably on the virtual particles.

With QFT being so accurate, it is clear that there must be some kind of reality to it. Perhaps the question then is not so much whether virtual particles are real, but what exactly the general picture of reality is, according to QFT.

Oliver Passon is one of the physicist-philosophers who object to the notion that virtual particles are real. He earned his Ph.D. in particle physics and is a highly experienced physicist, but now focuses on education research at the University of Wuppertal in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He studies how particle physics should be taught to high-school students, for whom it has become part of the standard curriculum.

Virtual particles are a mess, Passon summarized for Motherboard.

For Passon, the realist view arises from a sloppy interpretation of the math, and it has led physicists to make other interpretive mistakes, for example, in explaining the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC. He wrote about his views in a paper last year.

Passons objections can be explained in the context of the famous quantum mechanics test-case known as the double-slit or two-slit experiment. In a two-slit experiment, physicists fire particles such as photons one at a time at a wall with two tiny slits. The probability of where exactly a particle lands on the other side of the wall is related to the square of a sum, similarly as in a scattering calculation from QFT. But in this case there are only two terms in the sum, each reflecting the narrative of the particle passing through only one of the slits. Which slit does the particle pass through? Quantum mechanics cannot say, because the mathematics requires the term that represents each possibility to be summed with the other and squared.

The question whether one or the other thing happens makes no sense. Its not a tough questionits not even reasonable to ask, Passon said. This is what I take to be the key message of all of quantum mechanics.

The two-slit experiment seems to show that individual mathematical terms by themselves have no realism, and only their superposition (summation and squaring) have meaning. Thus, in Passons view, virtual particles that show up in individual QFT terms should not be considered real. This argument against virtual particles is known to philosophers as the superposition argument, and it can seem like a strong one.

But Jaeger thinks the argument is besides the point. Ironically, he sees this critique as being stuck in mathematical abstractions itself. He agrees that the individual terms cannot tell the whole story, "but it doesnt mean the particle didnt go through space, he said.

The mathematics may not tell which slit the particle passes through, but it doesnt mean that the mathematics is wrong. The mathematics still correctly predicts the passage of a particle through intervening space, and the probability of where it eventually lands. And in QFT, the mathematics indisputably relies on the presence of virtual particles.

Interestingly, quantum field theory actually says matter is fundamentally made up of fields rather than particles, let alone virtual particles. For every elementary particle, such as a photon, QFT says there is a fundamental field (such as a photon field) existing in space, overlapping with all of the other particle fields. Most of these fields are invisible to our eyes, with notable exceptions like the photon field.

Ask any physicist on the planet, whats our current best theory of physics, and theyre going to give you a theory of fields, said David Tong, a theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Cambridge. It doesnt include one particle in those equations [for fields]. Still, physicists more commonly refer to particles than their underlying fields, as particles can provide a more convenient and intuitive concept.

To question the existence of ordinary (non-virtual) particles would be counterproductive, according to Brigitte Falkenburg, a professor at the Technical University of Munich who wrote a comprehensive book on the subject, Particle Metaphysics.

The evidence against their existence is that they cannot be directly observed, but then, this was the argument of Galileos enemies, who refused to look through the telescope to observe Jupiters moons, Falkenburg said.

Particles and fields might instead be looked at as two different interpretations of the same thing. The physicist Matt Strassler has blogged extensively to try and clarify the interpretation of virtual particles based on an understanding of fields.

As he writes on his blog, particles can be thought of like permanent ripples in the underlying particle fields, like ripples fixed on the surface of water. Virtual particles on the other hand are more like fleeting waves.

As Jaeger points out, under this interpretation, the narrative of infinitely many virtual particles popping up makes more sense. There are only a finite number of particle fields, since only a finite number of elementary particles have been discovered. An infinitude of virtual particles popping up would be just like the infinitude of small changes that we can feel in a single gusting wind.

Jaeger is currently refining his own picture of virtual particles as fluctuations in the underlying quantum fields. The key part about these fluctuations for Jaeger is that they must conserve overall quantities like energy, charge and momentum, the key principles of modern physics.

In the end, there seems to be good reason not to think of virtual particles as ordinary, observable particles, but that whatever they are, they are real. The difficulty of interpreting their existence points at the complexity of the quantum field theory from which they originate.

As of now, no one knows how to replace QFT with a theory that is more straightforward to explain and interpret. But if they did, then they would have to settle the question of the true nature of the virtual particle, perhaps the most enigmatic inhabitant of the smallest of scales.

Visit link:

OK, WTF Are Virtual Particles and Do They Actually Exist? - VICE

Similar to the situation cosmologists confront today, however, the physicists of 1904 had not yet been able to address a few challenges. The medium through which they believed light traveled the luminiferous ether should have induced variations in the speed of light, and yet light always moves through space at the same rate. Astronomers observed the orbit of Mercury to be slightly different from what Newtonian physics predicted, leading some to suggest that an unknown planet, dubbed Vulcan, might be perturbing Mercurys trajectory.

Physicists in 1904 had no idea what powered the Sun no known chemical or mechanical process could possibly generate so much energy over such a long time. Lastly, scientists knew various chemical elements emitted and absorbed light with specific patterns, none of which physicists had the slightest idea how to explain. In other words, the inner workings of the atom remained a total and utter mystery.

Although few saw it coming, in hindsight, its clear that these problems were heralds of a revolution in physics. And in 1905, the revolution arrived, ushered in by a young Albert Einstein and his new theory of relativity. We now know that the luminiferous ether does not exist and that there is no planet Vulcan. Instead, these fictions were symptoms of the underlying failure of Newtonian physics. Relativity beautifully solved and explained each of these mysteries without any need for new substances or planets.

Furthermore, when scientists combined relativity with the new theory of quantum physics, it became possible to explain the Suns longevity, as well as the inner workings of atoms. These new theories even opened doors to new and previously unimagined lines of inquiry, including that of cosmology itself.

Scientific revolutions can profoundly transform how we see and understand our world. But radical change is never easy to see coming. There is probably no way to tell whether the mysteries faced by cosmologists today are the signs of an imminent scientific revolution or merely the last few loose ends of an incredibly successful scientific endeavor.

There is no question that we have made incredible progress in understanding our universe, its history, and its origin. But it is also undeniable that we are profoundly puzzled, especially when it comes to the earliest moments of cosmic history. I have no doubt that these moments hold incredible secrets, and perhaps the keys to a new scientific revolution. But our universe holds its secrets closely. It is up to us to coax those secrets from its grip, transforming them from mystery into discovery.

Continued here:

Is the Big Bang in crisis? | Astronomy.com - Astronomy Magazine

Written by AZoQuantumMay 13 2020

The amount of energy needed to make or disintegrate a molecule can now be calculated more accurately than traditional methods using a new machine learning tool. Although the new tool can only deal with simple molecules at present, it opens the door to gain future insights into quantum chemistry.

Using machine learning to solve the fundamental equations governing quantum chemistry has been an open problem for several years, and theres a lot of excitement around it right now.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Carleo, who is the co-creator of the tool, added that better insights into the formation and degradation of molecules could expose the inner workings of the chemical reactions crucial to life.

Carleo and his colleagues Kenny Choo from the University of Zurich and Antonio Mezzacapo from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, published their study in Nature Communications on May 12th, 2020.

The tool developed by the researchers predicts the energy required to put together or break apart a molecule, for example, ammonia or water. For this calculation, it is necessary to determine the electronic structure of the molecule, which comprises the collective behavior of the electrons binding the molecule together.

The electronic structure of a molecule is complex to find and requires determining all the possible states the electrons in the molecule could be in, along with the probability of each state.

Electrons interact and entangle quantum mechanically with each other. Therefore, researchers cannot treat them individually. More electrons lead to more entanglements, and thus the problem turns exponentially more challenging.

There are no exact solutions for molecules that are more complex compared to the two electrons found in a pair of hydrogen atoms. Even approximations are not so accurate when more than a few electrons are involved.

One of the difficulties is that the electronic structure of a molecule includes states for an infinite number of orbitals that move further away from the atoms. Moreover, it is not easy to differentiate one electron from another, and the same state cannot be occupied by two electrons. The latter rule is the result of exchange symmetry, which governs the consequences when identical particles change states.

Mezzacapo and the team at IBM Quantum devised a technique for reducing the number of orbitals considered and enforcing exchange symmetry. This technique is based on approaches developed for quantum computing applications and renders the problem more analogous to scenarios in which electrons are restricted to predefined locations, for example, in a rigid lattice.

The problem was made more manageable by the similarity to rigid lattices. Earlier, Carleo trained neural networks to remodel the behavior of electrons restricted to the sites of a lattice.

The researchers could propose solutions to Mezzacapos compacted problems by extending those techniques. The neural network developed by the team calculates the probability for each state. This probability can be used to predict the energy of a specific state. The molecule is the most stable in the lowest energy level, also called the equilibrium energy.

Thanks to the innovations of the researchers, the electronic structure of a basic molecule can be calculated quickly and easily. To demonstrate the accuracy of their approaches, the researchers estimated the amount of energy required to break a real-world molecule and its bonds.

The researchers performed calculations for lithium hydride (LiH), dihydrogen (H2), water (H2O), ammonia (NH3), dinitrogen (N2), and diatomic carbon (C2). The researchers estimates for all the molecules were found to be highly accurate even in ranges where current methods struggle.

The aim of the researchers is to handle larger and more complex molecules by employing more advanced neural networks. One objective is to tackle chemicals such as those found in the nitrogen cycle, where nitrogen-based molecules are made and broken by biological processes to render them usable for life.

We want this to be a tool that could be used by chemists to process these problems.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Carleo, Choo, and Mezzacapo are not the only researchers seeking to use machine learning to handle problems in quantum chemistry. In September 2019, they first presented their study on arXiv.org. In the same month, a research group in Germany and another one at Googles DeepMind in London reported their studies that involved using machine learning to reconstruct the electronic structure of molecules.

The other two groups made use of a similar method that does not constrain the number of orbitals considered. However, this inclusiveness is more computationally laborious, a disadvantage that will only worsen when more complex molecules are involved.

Using the same computational resources, the method employed by Carleo, Choo, and Mezzacapo produces higher accuracy; however, the simplifications performed to achieve this accuracy could lead to biases.

Overall, its a trade-off between bias and accuracy, and its unclear which of the two approaches has more potential for the future. Only time will tell us which of these approaches can be scaled up to the challenging open problems in chemistry.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Choo, K., et al. (2020) Fermionic neural-network states for ab-initio electronic structure. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15724-9.

Source: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/

See the original post:

New Tool Could Pave the Way for Future Insights in Quantum Chemistry - AZoQuantum

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Registration is now open for the inaugural IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE20), a multidisciplinary event focusing on quantum technology, research, development, and training. QCE20, also known as IEEE Quantum Week, will deliver a series of world-class keynotes, workforce-building tutorials, community-building workshops, and technical paper presentations and posters on October 12-16 in Denver, Colorado.

"We're thrilled to open registration for the inaugural IEEE Quantum Week, founded by the IEEE Future Directions Initiative and supported by multiple IEEE Societies and organizational units," said Hausi Mller, QCE20 general chair and co-chair of the IEEE Quantum Initiative."Our initial goal is to address the current landscape of quantum technologies, identify challenges and opportunities, and engage the quantum community. With our current Quantum Week program, we're well on track to deliver a first-rate quantum computing and engineering event."

QCE20's keynote speakersinclude the following quantum groundbreakers and leaders:

The week-long QCE20 tutorials program features 15 tutorials by leading experts aimed squarely at workforce development and training considerations. The tutorials are ideally suited to develop quantum champions for industry, academia, and government and to build expertise for emerging quantum ecosystems.

Throughout the week, 19 QCE20 workshopsprovide forums for group discussions on topics in quantum research, practice, education, and applications. The exciting workshops provide unique opportunities to share and discuss quantum computing and engineering ideas, research agendas, roadmaps, and applications.

The deadline for submitting technical papers to the eight technical paper tracks is May 22. Papers accepted by QCE20 will be submitted to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The best papers will be invited to the journalsIEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering(TQE)andACM Transactions on Quantum Computing(TQC).

QCE20 provides attendees a unique opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities with quantum researchers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, developers, students, practitioners, educators, programmers, and newcomers. QCE20 is co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Communications Society, IEEE Council on Superconductivity,IEEE Electronics Packaging Society (EPS), IEEE Future Directions Quantum Initiative, IEEE Photonics Society, and IEEETechnology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS).

Register to be a part of the highly anticipated inaugural IEEE Quantum Week 2020. Visit qce.quantum.ieee.org for event news and all program details, including sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities.

About the IEEE Computer SocietyThe IEEE Computer Society is the world's home for computer science, engineering, and technology. A global leader in providing access to computer science research, analysis, and information, the IEEE Computer Society offers a comprehensive array of unmatched products, services, and opportunities for individuals at all stages of their professional career. Known as the premier organization that empowers the people who drive technology, the IEEE Computer Society offers international conferences, peer-reviewed publications, a unique digital library, and training programs. Visit http://www.computer.orgfor more information.

About the IEEE Communications Society The IEEE Communications Societypromotes technological innovation and fosters creation and sharing of information among the global technical community. The Society provides services to members for their technical and professional advancement and forums for technical exchanges among professionals in academia, industry, and public institutions.

About the IEEE Council on SuperconductivityThe IEEE Council on Superconductivityand its activities and programs cover the science and technology of superconductors and their applications, including materials and their applications for electronics, magnetics, and power systems, where the superconductor properties are central to the application.

About the IEEE Electronics Packaging SocietyThe IEEE Electronics Packaging Societyis the leading international forum for scientists and engineers engaged in the research, design, and development of revolutionary advances in microsystems packaging and manufacturing.

About the IEEE Future Directions Quantum InitiativeIEEE Quantumis an IEEE Future Directions initiative launched in 2019 that serves as IEEE's leading community for all projects and activities on quantum technologies. IEEE Quantum is supported by leadership and representation across IEEE Societies and OUs. The initiative addresses the current landscape of quantum technologies, identifies challenges and opportunities, leverages and collaborates with existing initiatives, and engages the quantum community at large.

About the IEEE Photonics SocietyTheIEEE Photonics Societyforms the hub of a vibrant technical community of more than 100,000 professionals dedicated to transforming breakthroughs in quantum physics into the devices, systems, and products to revolutionize our daily lives. From ubiquitous and inexpensive global communications via fiber optics, to lasers for medical and other applications, to flat-screen displays, to photovoltaic devices for solar energy, to LEDs for energy-efficient illumination, there are myriad examples of the Society's impact on the world around us.

About the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management SocietyIEEE TEMSencompasses the management sciences and practices required for defining, implementing, and managing engineering and technology.

Read the original here:

Registration Open for Inaugural IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE20) - thepress.net

Several state news organizations have asked for what are clearly public documents from the state Public Service Commission. The commissions response? It has filed a lawsuit against those news organizations.

This represents a troubling pattern of behavior on the part of public agencies. The agencies claim they sue in order to get the courts to tell them what documents they are required to turn over. But this action forces anyone who makes a request for public documents not just media organizations to retain legal counsel, often at considerable expense.

The case in point involves emails sent and received by one commissioner, Roger Koopman. Koopman has been embroiled in internal disputes within the all-Republican commission. And some of the emails in question were leaked to a right-wing media website that posted them online. That prompted other news organizations the Billings Gazette, Yellowstone Public Radio and the Great Falls Tribune to request all the emails associated with the controversy.

This isnt quantum physics. The courts have long established that emails sent and received by public officials using government computers and email services are public documents and must be turned over on request from the public. State open government law requires public officials to balance the right to privacy with their obligations to hand over public documents. And Koopman maintains that three of the emails leaked to NorthWest Liberty News were personal in nature and should be exempted from public disclosure. These are simple determinations to make and the commission does not need a district court judge to make those determinations.

Lets call this what it is. The net effect of dragging these requests into court is to discourage requests for public documents. Any member of the public has a right to see public documents. But not everyone has the resources to hire a lawyer to get those documents nor should they have to.

The Montana Constitution and the statutes that emanate from it are clear. Government is to be transparent in all its actions. All meetings are to be open to the public and what are clearly public documents must be produced when requested.

Lets put the public back into the Public Service Commission: rescind the court action and hand over the emails in question.

To see what else is happening in Gallatin County subscribe to the online paper.

Read the original here:

What part of 'public' does PSC not get? - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle