Daily Archives: January 9, 2022

To catch an insurrectionist: Facebook and Google are helping the FBI find January 6 rioters – Vox.com

Posted: January 9, 2022 at 4:10 pm

A few days after the Capitol insurrection last January, the FBI got two tips identifying an Ohio man named Walter Messer as a participant, and both cited his social media posts about being there. To verify those tips, the FBI turned to three companies that held a large amount of damning evidence against Messer, simply as a result of his normal use of their services: AT&T, Facebook, and Google.

AT&T gave the FBI Messers telephone number and a list of cell sites he used, including one that covered the US Capitol building at the time of the insurrection, per the criminal complaint against Messer. Facebook told the FBI that the phone number provided by AT&T was linked to Messers Facebook account, where he posted several selfies from inside the Capitol during the riot.

Google gave the FBI precise location data showing Messers journey from Ohio to DC and back again between January 5 and 7, as well as his location on the afternoon of January 6 as he wandered around and ultimately inside the Capitol building. The complaint also lists videos of the riot posted on Messers YouTube channel, Messers YouTube searches, internet searches, and emails from his Gmail account all used to help build a case against him.

Messer was arrested in late July. He has pleaded not guilty to charges including trespassing and violent entry on Capitol grounds.

This case is just a small part of whats become one of the largest investigations in FBI history, as agents and other law enforcement officers scramble to identify hundreds, if not thousands, of people who invaded the Capitol on January 6 in an unprecedented attempt to stop the democratic transfer of power.

A year later and with more than 700 people charged, we now have a look at how the law enforcement agency handles such an enormous task (or at least, as much as theyre willing to reveal to the public). Rather than revealing the breadth of the FBIs domestic surveillance capabilities, the majority of cases show the power of the tech industry to collect and collate vast amounts of data on its users and their obligation to share that data with law enforcement when asked.

Case files on the hundreds of people arrested so far show a heavy reliance on the vast stores of data obtained from companies like Facebook and Google. Many defendants were identified simply by getting tips from the public. The FBI used its various social media accounts and a section of its website dedicated to the investigation to call for tips. The agency has received more than 200,000 of them, supplied by everyone from close family members to complete strangers. In some cases, amateur sleuths and crowdsourced investigations yielded better results faster than the professionals.

Even as the insurrection unfolded, it was apparent that there would be plenty of evidence for investigators to find if they wanted to pursue cases against the rioters. In fact, the rioters generated so much evidence that the Department of Justice has paid more than $6 million to build a database of it to provide to defendants attorneys as the cases wind their way through the legal system.

I dont think we can conclusively say that the social media evidence was the only thing that got them caught, but an element of social media evidence was involved, Jon Lewis, research fellow at George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism, told Recode. He added that social media evidence has played a role in about 75 percent of cases so far.

Its now clear that the FBI either failed to recognize or neglected to act upon a threat that should have been hard to miss, if the agency had been thoroughly monitoring social media in the days leading up to the attack.

As the FBIs investigation ramped up in the days and weeks following January 6, the agency found itself with images of thousands of potential suspects. To put names to faces, it appealed to the public for help, which has been quite effective. The FBIs wanted posters have led to some of those 200,000 tips, while many others came from people who saw alleged participants own social media posts, read local media interviews with people who freely admitted to breaching the Capitol building, or even gotten confessions from matches on dating apps (this has happened at least twice on Bumble).

At the same time, loosely organized groups of online amateur sleuths, like the Sedition Hunters, have amassed their own pool of suspects. Sometimes, the sleuths find clearer photos than what the FBI has. Theyve also given them clever hashtags #BloatedCuomo and #ZZTopPB, for instance to help their photos circulate and be more memorable.

In some ways, they kicked the FBIs butt in the early days in terms of using these investigative techniques and open source intelligence to figure out who a lot of these individuals were, said Ryan Reilly, senior justice reporter at HuffPost, who has been tracking the Sedition Hunters efforts for an upcoming book.

There is at least one case of the Sedition Hunters doing a better job of identifying a suspect than the FBI did. The FBI falsely identified an Alaska woman as a person who helped steal a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosis office. Agents went so far as to break down the womans door and search her home last spring. But looking through Facebook and using publicly available facial recognition tools, online sleuths were able to identify another woman, Maryann Mooney-Rondon, as the suspect. They found photos of Mooney-Rondon wearing the same jewelry as the woman in the video inside the Capitol building. She and her son Rafael Rondon were arrested in October and pleaded not guilty to charges including theft of government property and trespassing.

The FBI might not have to rely so heavily on others to make these initial identifications if the alleged participants were on their radar in the first place. Despite having months, if not years, to recognize the growing threat of QAnon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and right-wing extremists, including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters, the FBI failed to realize the potential for violence those groups could do.

They also didnt seem to take seriously the widely publicized Stop the Steal rally that immediately preceded the insurrection and prompted thousands to march to the Capitol in an attempt to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. There was at least one FBI informant in the crowd, and reports about what law enforcement knew and when have varied. But many see January 6 as a fundamental failure to either collect or correctly assess intelligence (if not both), given the ultimate result.

The FBI and Justice Department have long deprioritized white supremacist and far-right militant violence in their domestic terrorism program, Michael German, a former FBI agent and current fellow with the Brennan Center for Justices liberty and national security program, told Recode. So it would seem that this was the prime opportunity for the FBI to engage. But they chose not to.

Contrast this apparent lack of action with reports of law enforcements close monitoring and infiltration of groups associated with left-leaning movements, such as in Portland, Oregon. The New York Times recently reported that activists involved in Portland protests against police violence were subject to extensive surveillance operations in the summer of 2020. The FBI is also famous for decades of history surveilling Black activists, and there are countless reports of law enforcement monitoring of Muslim communities for years following 9/11.

So much of the organizing went on in places that the FBI would never be allowed to surveil (particularly under a Trump presidency), explained Joseph Brown, a professor of political science at University of Massachusetts Boston. The agencys surveillance capabilities are very good, but they could never have been employed fully in this case.

German, the former FBI agent, says he finds it troubling that so many allegedly violent participants remain unidentified. He expected the agency to make it a priority to find and arrest the most dangerous offenders as soon as possible. Instead, it appears that the FBI has gone after the low-hanging fruit the people who essentially told on themselves, as Lewis, the extremism researcher, noted.

The numbers back up these claims. Of the more than 725 people who have been arrested for Capitol riot-related crimes, less than a third of them have been charged with assaulting or resisting law enforcement officers, and only 75 people have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer. At least 350 people the FBI suspects committed violent acts on Capitol grounds remain unidentified, though its likely this list will grow, with as many as 2,000 people expected to be charged by the time the investigation concludes. Meanwhile, the Sedition Hunters have listed hundreds more in their own unofficial database.

Reading through the cases of the people who have been charged paints a picture of just how extensively various companies track us, and how much more of our data a company like Google has than the actual government apparently does. The January 6 investigation is not an isolated example of this, although it makes for a pretty good one, given its scale, notoriety, and just how much digital evidence was left by so many people.

Social media has become a place where investigators, more and more often, are getting formally trained to look for evidence on a regular basis, said Adam Wandt, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and cybercrime investigations expert.

While those accused of taking part in the riot posted plenty of evidence on various platforms, tracking that goes on underneath the surface can also be used against them in the coming months and years. Though controversial, law enforcement has used some of these methods of tracking and data collection in the Capitol insurrection investigation.

For example, the FBI admits to using commercial facial recognition technology systems, including Vigilant Solutions and Clearview AI, which scrape the internet for photos, rather than relying on license photos and mugshots. Stephen Chase Randolph was identified by using an open source facial recognition tool that matched a photo of him on his girlfriends Instagram page. Randolph is accused of assaulting a police officer and rendering her unconscious. He has pleaded not guilty.

Geofence warrants are another tool that has drawn concern among privacy and civil rights groups. Also known as reverse search warrants, these orders require companies to provide all the accounts that were in a certain area at a certain time, in the hope that a suspect can be identified within that group. That means the devices of perfectly innocent people might be caught in, essentially, a digital dragnet. Law enforcement agencies are using them more and more with little oversight. Documents in multiple January 6 cases say the FBI has and is using geofence data of all devices on the Capitol grounds during the insurrection. Anyone inside the Capitol building who had an Android phone turned on or used a Google application during the riot was likely caught in the geofence warrant.

This seems to be how the agency found Amy Schubert. After receiving a tip that a woman wearing a jacket with a Joliet, Illinois, unions logo on it could be seen in a YouTube video of the insurrection, the FBI searched its geofence database for Google accounts that had a Joliet area code. There were six. Two of those belonged to women, and a quick search revealed Schuberts Facebook page, which featured a photo of a woman who looked just like the woman in the video. Investigators got a search warrant for Schuberts Google account and found that her phone was inside the Capitol building on January 6 and that it took several photos and videos while there. Some of them showed her husband, John. He was also arrested. Both Schuberts pleaded guilty to demonstrating in a Capitol building in December.

Thats not to say that the Schuberts and other Capitol rioters wouldnt have been caught if not for Google; the FBI may have other tools at its disposal it could have used to identify and catch them. But Google certainly seems to be the simplest, and bound by the fewest legal restrictions when it comes to collecting and keeping so much data on so many people unlike the government, which has to get warrants and show cause to monitor American citizens this way. That means a bunch of private businesses are almost certainly tracking you right now. Unless it has a good reason to do so, the government probably isnt.

While tech companies have helped the FBI find the people who didnt make much or enough of an effort to hide their actions, one of the most potentially dangerous suspects remains at large: The person who placed pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the insurrection has yet to be identified. The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest, and has released surveillance videos and photos of the suspect with their face obscured, a map of their likely route, and detailed information about the shoes they were wearing.

The FBI also says its interviewed hundreds of people, collected tens of thousands of video files, and followed up on more than 300 tips trying to find the pipe bomber, yet they remain unknown and on the loose as far as we know. The Sedition Hunters have even dedicated a section of their site to them. But without a preponderance of social media evidence and mobile device data, it seems to be a lot harder for the FBI to identify people who make efforts to stay hidden.

Others have been less careful. In the weeks after the Capitol riot, Walter Messer, the Ohio man, did some internet sleuthing of his own, according to the web search history the FBI obtained from Google. He looked up news articles about Capitol arrests, FBI billboards, and Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died shortly after the riot. Messer also wanted to know what the penalties were for violating federal trespassing laws. A few months later, when he was charged with breaking federal trespassing laws, these searches were used as probable cause to arrest him.

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To catch an insurrectionist: Facebook and Google are helping the FBI find January 6 rioters - Vox.com

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It takes a woman and her unflinching will to bring about reform: Google pays tribute to Fatima Sheikh – The Indian Express

Posted: at 4:10 pm

Considered to be the first Muslim woman teacher in India, Google on Sunday paid tribute to educator and feminist icon Fatima Sheikh on her 191st birth anniversary.

Notably, Sheikh played an important role in establishing one of Indias first schools for girls. Sheikh co-founded the Indigenous Library in 1848 along with pioneers of womens education and social reformers, Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule.

It takes a woman and her unflinching will to bring about reform in the face of resistance, Google India tweeted.

Sheikh was born on January 9, 1831, in Pune, Maharashtra. She lived with her brother Usman. They welcomed the Phule couple to their home after they were evicted for attempting to educate lower caste people. The Indigenous Library was opened under the Sheikhs roof.

Dalits, Muslim women and children from marginalised communities, to whom doors of the school were shut, gained education with the efforts of Phule and Sheikh.

Although Sheikhs story has been historically overlooked, the Indian government shone new light on her achievements in 2014 by featuring her profile in Urdu textbooks alongside other trailblazing Indian educators, said Google India.

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It takes a woman and her unflinching will to bring about reform: Google pays tribute to Fatima Sheikh - The Indian Express

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CBC, Bell among broadcasters urging Ottawa to force Google and Facebook to share revenue: documents – National Post

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Bell told the government that it supports a regime in which 'digital services that provide our news stories to the users of their platforms' have to 'financially contribute'

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Some of Canadas largest broadcasters urged the federal government to force Google and Facebook to share revenue with them, arguing those funds are needed for their beleaguered local TV news operations.

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Bell Media cannot continue to operate its news business at a loss indefinitely, the company said in its submission to a Heritage Canada consultation on the Liberal governments promised news compensation legislation, obtained through access to information.

Bell, whose Bell Media division includes CTV, said we firmly believe that all Canadian broadcasters who gather and produce news should be included in any news compensation regime.

More than three quarters of the companys local TV stations havent been profitable in several years, experiencing an aggregate loss of $340.7 million since 2012. In fact, local television is buckling under extreme financial pressure with the sector being unprofitable since 2012, it said, noting that in the past five years, privately-owned TV and radio stations have seen cumulative revenue losses of $1.36 billion.

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Bell submitted the document as part of an initial consultation in which the government reached out to specific stakeholders to ask what tack it should take in its legislation aimed at forcing web giants to share revenue with news publishers. The Liberal government has since said it will follow the Australian model, which imposes bargaining rules for publishers and online platforms. News media that publish online, including TV and radio stations, apply to be included in Australias news media bargaining code.

In mid-December, the mandate letter for Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez directed him to introduce, by early 2022, legislation that would level the playing field between global platforms and Canadian outlets.

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The biggest targets of that legislation will be Google and Facebook, whose parent company rebranded to Meta in October. The two companies earn an estimated 80 per cent of all digital advertising revenue in Canada.

The National Post requested all 46 of the written documents submitted in the first phase of its consultation, which took place in the spring. The partially redacted document released by the government did not include the comments submitted by Google, Apple News Canada or Rogers, another large broadcaster. While it had notes from at least one meeting with Reddit, it did not include any notes from conversations with representatives from Meta, which was among the companies that the government said provided input and information orally.

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Bell told the government that it supports a regime in which all online digital services that provide our news stories to the users of their platforms have to financially contribute to our news ecosystem.

The company argued that while broadcasters have put their content online, they cant earn enough from online advertising to justify the expense of funding the operations, while Google and Facebook online ad revenue continues to grow.

These digital platforms are growing their revenue at the expense of Canadian broadcasters while at the same time profit from the content we create through our local news infrastructure (i.e. our local journalists and news gathering resources), it argued.

Frankly, without news content provided by our journalists, these platforms would have significantly less content to provide.

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Corus, which owns Global, argued that news outlets effectively have no choice but to use Google a company can opt not to be indexed by Google, which would stop Google from monetizing the news content, but doing so would close an important connection to market.

Similarly, news outlets that dont post content to Facebook and Instagram are cutting themselves off from the 25.5 million Canadians who use these platforms, Corus said. Those who do choose to participate do so on Facebooks terms, where all of the costs of creating the content are borne by us, and Facebook holds almost all of the tools to monetize it.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters told the government that according to a 2018 report, more than 75 per cent of Canadians turn to TV and radio to get their news, and that the value of news content to digital platforms is clear.

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While they may help to direct audiences to news sites and create some value for publishers, they retain most of the value of the user interaction through their ability to gather, aggregate, resell and exploit user data to advertisers through their algorithms, the CAB said.

CBC/Radio-Canada pointed out in its submission that public broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Special Broadcasting Service, are included in Australias regime.

It said that any funds the CBC would obtain from the digital platforms would be reinvested into Canadian content, including but not limited to, our digital properties.

CBC urged the government to act quickly. If we take too long to implement a solution, too many news outlets will close, too many journalists will be let go or not developed, and misinformation and disinformation will continue to spread, leading to distrust in our institutions and sowing divisions in our communities.

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5 Things We Learned From Verizon’s 5G Ultra Show – Complex

Posted: at 4:10 pm

As the first carrier in the world to launch a 5G network back in April 2019, Verizon has always been ahead of the curve. Now stepping into 2022, the telecom giant is continuing to push the way we communicate towards the future.

Providing up to 10 times faster speeds than median Verizon 4G LTE speeds, 5G Ultra Wideband will reach 100 million soon after it launches in the coming weeks. From the ability to watch High Definition content on the go to streaming console-quality games, the new technology promises to be a game-changer in more significant ways.

To celebrate the launch, actress Elizabeth Banks hosted Verizons 5G Ultra Show, a star-powered live stream that aired on January 4th. In case you missed the event, here are a few key things we took away from the half-hour presentation.

Basketball games or enormous music festivals can slow down connection speeds to a crawl with so many people downloading and uploading various content. With that in mind, it made sense for the 5G Ultra Show to provide an example of how practical 5G Ultra Wideband can be when you are connected to it in extremely crowded areas.

Taking viewers to Sofi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, ESPN SportsCenter anchor Hannah Storm gave insight into how 5G Ultra Wideband will change the sporting event experience. When connected to 5G Ultra Wideband, visitors of Sofi can stream videos, text, and make phone calls even when in a crowd.

When thousands of fans and even more devices connect all at the same time, stadium operations could change forever, Storm shared.

This includes the ability for ticketless entry to become the norm, touchless sales at concession stands, and even AR Wayfinding to locate seats or bathrooms with the shortest lines.

Before using a bus, subway, or even plane, most smartphone users find it easier to download standard-definition video on WiFi before heading out into the open world instead of relying on cellular data to stream content. Having up to 10 times faster speeds through 5G Ultra Wideband, however, opens the door for more reliable streaming.

The same goes for video conferencing over cellular networks, according to Andrea Caldini, Verizons VP of Product & Technology, who explains, Video chats, business calls and FaceTimes will be able to stream live with HD video and audio with fewer frozen faces or stuttering.

Public WiFi found in places like coffee shops, hotels, airports, parks, malls,and restaurants allow people to stay connected to social media or, most importantly, work on the go. According to reports, 82% of U.S. residents say they use public WiFi when available.

That said, too many individuals on a given WiFi network can slow things down too much to even be useful. Not to mention using public networks can be risky thanks to Man-in-the-Middle attacks and WiFi snooping. Individuals concerned with cyber security on public WiFi usually have to use VPNs for an added layer of digital protection. Verizon hopes to change all of that through 5G Ultra Wideband.

Verizon VP of Network Engineering Philip French says 5G Ultra Wideband could deliver the industrys biggest hotspot. This means that business owners like jewelry designer Lauren Harwell Godfrey can download huge graphic files and talk to customers through high definition video conferencing software efficiently without worrying about sensitive information being exposed, which is a win-win for everyone.

Mobile gaming has quickly taken a little over half of the overall video game industry. Between better smartphone hardware technology and faster connection speeds, the segment is inching closer to providing console-quality gaming.

Greg Borrud, the General Manager for developer Niamic Studios, says that 5G Ultra Wideband allows them to take augmented reality used in games theyve developed like Pokemon Go to the next level. He even mentioned how their development platform Lightship can change mobile gaming through the new connection speeds Verizon is enabling.

Experiences that feel less like a game and more like another reality that is layered onto and woven into our own, Borrud explains. 5G and edge Compute will allow those games to be richer, more cinematic multiplayer experiences that gamers can explore with incredibly low latency.

Depending on where one lives or conducts business, their broadband internet options can be limited. Over the years, Verizon has done their part to provide quality service for its consumers via Fios. Now, Verizon is providing even more options for broadband connectivity with the introduction of their 5G Home router and 5G Business Internet, which is all powered by 5G Ultra Wideband.

Actor and PC gaming enthusiast Terry Crews displayed how all users of 5G Home have to do is plug in the router and follow Verizons self-set-up guide. Adding the cherry on top is the lack of an annual contract. Through 5G Home, users can have speedy internet access without fumbling wires or going through annoying set-ups.

Verizon 5G Business Internet also has a self-set up option for select plans that makes it easy for business owners to get started and get ultra fast speeds. All of this is provided with a 10-year price guarantee with no long-term contract. Crews even gifted popular Los Angeles bookstore Malik Books with their very own 5G Business Internet router during the 5G Ultra Show.

If that doesnt get you pumped for what 5G Ultra Wideband has in store, you can check out the full event here.

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5 Things We Learned From Verizon's 5G Ultra Show - Complex

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Inside group of scuba-diving sleuths who have cracked 7 cold cases in 2 months as they reveal how they f… – The US Sun

Posted: at 4:10 pm

A CRACK team of scuba-diving sleuths has solved a staggering seven cold cases in just two months, bringing much-needed closure to heartbroken families who had been left without answers for years.

The group, known as Chaos Divers, operates out of Southern Illinois and is comprised of divers Jacob Grubbs and Eric Bussick, and head of logistics Lindsey Bussick.

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Between October and December of last year, the trio managed to solve seven missing persons cases in a number of different states, including in Illinois, Oregon, Kentucky, and Texas.

Their most recent discovery came on December 5 when the group found the remains of Jeff Anthony Shepherd in a pickup truck submerged in Strunk, KY, pond.

Shepherd had been missing for more than three years, having last been seen leaving a bar in Winfield on March 18, 2018. He had called his mother letting her know he was on his way home but never made it back.

In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Jacob Grubbs, 33, revealed that he, Eric, and Lindsey never anticipated becoming independent cold case investigators but were inspired to do so following a chance discovery made by a friend in 2019.

Jacob, a keen fisherman, started scuba diving a few years ago so he could help to clean trash out of river systems, lakes, and local swimming holes.

While doing so, the former coal miner said he started finding all kinds of items - from discarded iPhones to lost wallets - and decided to set up a YouTube page to document his interesting discoveries.

"I used to watch a lot of videos about it on Youtube and I honestly thought they were fake until I started doing it, and then I was like, wow!," Jacob told The Sun.

He quickly amassed a large social media following on YouTube and befriended a number of other divers uploading similar videos to him.

One of those divers was Jared Leisek, who runs the YouTube page Adventures with Purpose.

Leisek made headlines in December 2019 when he happened across a car with a body inside during a dive in Oregon and ended up accidentally solving a cold case single-handedly.

Jacob drove up to St. Louis to assist Leisek with the dive where they recovered the body of Nathan Ashby from the Missouri River.

The 22-year-old had been missing since July 31, 2019, when he vanished while driving his 1994 Chevy Silverado to work around 6.45am.

After the incredible discovery was made, Jacob said he felt "compelled" to continue investigating cold cases in the Southern Illinois area.

Families searching for missing loved ones then started reaching out to him directly, and he decided to take the venture up as his full-time job.

"In the last two months, we've brought seven people home by ourselves," Jacob told The Sun in late December.

And during a road trip with Adventures With Purpose and other groups in the fall, Chaos Divers helped to solve a further 16 cases in 45 days.

"I'm still in awe of being able to help so many families in such a short time," he said.

"It's been an amazing feeling, particularly when we were able to solve a case after 23 years in October."

During their road trip with Adventures With Purpose (AWP) back in October, Chaos Divers helped to solve the disappearance of 20-year-old Samantha Jean Hopper, who vanished with her one-year-old daughter Courtney Esther Danielle Holt on the night of September 11, 1998.

According to police, Hopper, who was eight months pregnant at the time, had plans to drop off her daughter with a family member before heading to a concert in Little Rock in her blue Ford Tempo.

However, she never made it to either location, and neither Hopper nor Courtney was seen ever alive again.

Hopper also left behind another daughter, Dezarea Carpenter, who is now an adult and lives in Florida.

Chaos Divers and AWP met with Dezarea, along with Hopper's mother and best friend to learn more about her and her last known whereabouts.

Working from clues about Samanthas habits and the events of that day in 1998, the two dive teams split up to scan multiple locations in the area of Lake Dardanelle.

Divers with AWP took a route along Mill Creek, while Jacob and the rest of Chaos Divers searched the Illinois Bayou near Pleasant View Road.

Around an hour into the search, Chaos Divers made a discovery in the Illinois Bayou after picking up images of a small, overturned car eight feet below the surface of the water on a sonar scanner.

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After entering the water, Choas Divers matched the vehicle to Hopper's blue Tempo. Human remains were also found inside.

Hooper's family members were present at the scene when the car was lifted from the water.

Weeks later, investigators with the Arkansas State Crime Lab in Little Rock positively identified the remains as Hopper and Courtney's.

Jacob described the discovery as a bittersweet gut-punch.

"That one hit me hard," Jacob said. "But I was glad to be able to bring her other daughter answers as to where her mother and sister had been for the last 23 years.

"I am super proud of the team and myself for being able to do that."

Lindsey Bussick is in charge of determining which cases Chaos Divers are able to investigate and those they aren't.

Family members and friends of missing people regularly reach out to the group seeking their help to find a long-lost loved one.

Police departments across the country that otherwise lack the technological resources to conduct such searches also sometimes request their expertise, she said.

"We get as many details as we can, from where they were last seen, where they were headed and the location of the last ping of their cellphone," Lindsey told The Sun.

"From there, we kind of map out their last known movements and identify any waterways they may have passed before vanishing.

"If there aren't any waterways then we can't help," she continued. "Everything we do is based off water. Also, if there isn't a vehicle involved we also can't help, because our sonar is set up to see cars or other vehicles beneath the water."

While the group takes on as many cases as they can, going out on the road almost every week, Lindsay said the work doesn't come without its emotional challenges.

Such challenges often arise in the wake of solving a case, Lindsay said, where the team's initial elation is almost immediately displaced by feelings of sadness for the subject's family.

"It is a heartbreaking moment to have to look someone in the eye and say, 'We've found them. They are gone,'" she said.

"But at the same time as these tears are rolling down their face you're watching this weight be lifted off of them, because for the first time and however many months, years, or decades, they know where their loved one is and they don't have to wonder anymore, they don't have to worry.

"So it's heartbreaking, but it's heartwarming at the same time; it's very surreal because you just gave them the worst news but at the same time, they're just so grateful that somebody did something for them."

Lindsey described the feeling of closing a case as a bittersweet "gut-wrenching sensation that you never want to give up."

Jacob added: "It's also about helping to put rumors to bed.

"Quite often with these cases, the time that has passed without answers allows rumors to fly, and before you know it, people are offering up theories of a murder or drug deal gone wrong.

"But then in actuality, it was an accident. And now the family has answers, they have closure. They finally know where their loved one is, and so we help put those rumors to rest."

Another family Chaos Divers helped to provide answers were relatives of Brian Goff and Joni Davis, who they found in the Ohio Valley in November 2021, three years after the couple vanished.

The group originally arrived in the region to search in the Hancock County area of the Ohio River for Karen Adams,who was last seen at a nearby casino on March 11, 2007.

They searched three different locations across three consecutive days for Karen but came up empty-handed.

While in the area, they got a tip from another diver group about the case of Goff and Davis, who pointed them to a body of water in Jefferson County that had not yet been searched.

"They told us there was one spot that kind of bothered them about the case, which was around a mile south of where Brian's cellphone last pinged.

"They weren't sure whether it had been searched, or how well it had been searched, so we decided to go there to kind of alleviate any doubt over whether they might be there or not."

Joni Davis, 56, and her longtime boyfriend and caregiver, 65-year-old Brian Goff, disappeared in June 2018.

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At aged 35, Joni suffered a huge seizure in her sleep and was hospitalized in a coma for several months. While she eventually re-learned how to walk, speak and feed herself, Joni was left permanently brain damaged and required full-time care.

"They were extremely meticulous in their daily routine: they ate at the same places on the same days, went to the same gas station to fill up their tank - everything was laid out and organized for them, kind of like OCD," Jacob said.

"So when they went missing, almost instantly alarm bells started going off for everyone who knew them."

Brian's car was last sighted by a gas station surveillance camera heading north in Belmont County, not long after the couple had dined at a local Pizza Hut - as they always did on Sundays.

The last ping from Goffs cellphone was in neighboring Jefferson County. After that, all traces of the couple ceased.

Chaos Divers retraced the couple's steps in the early morning hours of November 11. They were driving past Rushman Road, near where the couple's phone last registered, which runs adjacent to the Ohio River.

"We were driving that path when we noticed this one spot, an opening by the water that didn't have a guardrail in front of it, nor any weeds or reeds or anything like that," Jacob said.

"There was just this one little tree there, and for some reason that stood out in my mind. It was almost like a light was shining down on it."

Jacob put on his dive gear and entered the water at 3am. Within minutes, he'd found a light blue Oldsmobile 88 in a shallow portion of the river.

The license plate of the car matched one registered to Brian.

Inside the vehicle, police later found two sets of human remains strapped into the front seats. They were confirmed to belong to Brian and Joni.

While it remains unclear whether the couple entered the river accidentally or intentionally, Jacob and Lindsay say their relatives were just grateful to know where they were.

"We met with Johnny's sister, and brother in law and brother in law and then three members of Brian's family, and they were heartbroken," Lindsey said. "But at the same time, so incredibly grateful."

"There were lots of hugs and tears," she added. "They just wanted us to know how appreciative we were that we were able to bring them home."

Choas Divers say they intend to continue working year-round to help solve other cold cases in and around Illinois.

As they did last fall, they intend to set out on the road later this year with Adventures with Purpose to solve more cases in quick succession.

The team do not charge families for their recovery efforts and fund their trips entirely from revenue generated from the social media pages, independent donations, and merchandise sales on their website.

To donate to Chaos Divers click here.

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Power Moves: Meet the newest faces on the DMV’s quantum computing scene – Technical.ly

Posted: at 4:09 pm

Power Movesis a column where we chart the comings and goings of talent across the region. Got a new hire, new gig or promotion? Email us at dc@technical.ly.

This week, Leesburg, Virginia company Quantum Computing added former board member William McGann as its new COO and CTO. According to Quantum Computing, hell lead the team as it continues to advance and innovate its quantum optimization software.

As a leader, I look forward to establishing an exciting, fast-paced business rhythm that is customer-focused and leading through innovation, McGann said in a statement. We will aspire to be the best in all that we do and endeavor to become the preeminent leader in delivering quantum solutions to the market that advance customer business and application outcomes.

William McGann. (Photo via LinkedIn)

The company also added Michael Turmelle, a former chairman of Ideal Power, to its board of directors.

And following its uber-successful IPO in 2021, College Park, Maryland quantum firm IonQ has pulled some power players into its fold.

On the leadership side, IonQ has added two new members. Ariel Braunstein, the cofounder of Pure Digital Technology and a former product lead at Cisco and Googles AV/VR department will join as senior VP of product management. Dean Kassman, former senior director at Blue Origin, was also named as VP of research and development.

Additionally, the company added Inder Singh, executive VP and CEO at Arm, a British semiconductor firm, to its board.

It is an incredibly exciting time to join IonQs Board, having watched the company grow from a startup to the quantum computing industry leader it is today, said Singh in a statement. Government, business and society as a whole are quickly recognizing quantums ability to solve previously impossible problems, and they are turning to IonQ for counsel and strategic partnership. I could not be more excited to be joining the Board and helping the team potentially shape the next frontiers of technology.

Inder Singh. (Photo via LinkedIn)

In the past month, Fairfax, Virginia software developer 3Pillar has made a ton of hiring moves, including adding three members to its C-suite.

In mid-December, the company added Ken Krtiz as senior VP of banking and insurance, Chris Hansen as senior VP of communications and Kim Mirazimi as senior VP of commercial sector clients.

At the top, 3Pillar promoted its chief delivery officer David Sawatzky to the role of COO. Jamie Whitacre, previously the senior VP of talent, was also bumped up to the role of chief people officer. And just this week, 3Pillar appointed Jeff Sperber as its new CFO. Sperber was previously the CFO for companies including Class Valuation, TalentReef, NetDocuments and Accenture Mortgage Cadence.

Im thrilled to continue my journey at 3Pillar as we expand our global presence and scale our culture, said Whitacre in a statement. Our next phase of growth is critical in helping us attain our vision of becoming the employer of choice in digital product development services.

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Expect smarter apps, quantum leaps, deeper space exploration, nanovaccines and more in 2022 – Cyprus Mail

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Super-Resolution Imaging of a Single Cold Atom on a Nanosecond Timescale – SciTechDaily

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The team of academician GUO Guangcan of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made important progress in the research of cold atom super-resolution imaging. The team achieved super-resolution imaging of a single ion in an ion trap system. The results were published in Physical Review Letters.

The cold atom system is an ideal experimental platform for studying quantum physics, as well as an important physical system for experimental research on quantum simulation, quantum computing, and quantum precision measurement. One of the core experimental techniques in the cold atom system is high-resolution single-particle imaging. In the past ten years, the microscopic imaging technology of the cold atom system has developed rapidly. However, the newly developed technologies are still limited by the fundamental optical diffraction limit, and the resolution can only reach the order of optical wavelength. It is difficult to study quantum phenomena related to the details of the wave function. To study such problems requires optical super-resolution imaging.

Optical super-resolution imaging has developed into a mature tool in the fields of chemistry and biology. However, due to the complexity of cold atom experiments, it is extremely challenging to apply super-resolution imaging technology to cold atom systems. Prior to this, the world has not yet made progress on the direct super-resolution imaging of single atoms (ions).

In this study, the researchers adopted the main idea of the Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy in the classical super-resolution imaging field, and combined it with the atomic quantum state initialization and reading technology of the cold atom system. They realized super-resolved imaging of a single cold atom (ion) directly for the first time.

Experimental results showed that the spatial resolution of the imaging method can exceed the diffraction limit by more than one order, and the imaging resolution of 175 nm can be achieved by using an objective lens with a numerical aperture of only 0.1.

To further demonstrate the time resolution advantage of this method, the researchers achieved both a time resolution of 50 ns and a single ion positioning accuracy of 10 nm, and used this method to clearly capture the rapid harmonic oscillations of the ion in the trap. Theoretically, by increasing the numerical aperture of the imaging objective and the center extinction ratio of the depleted light (the doughnut spot), the spatial resolution can be further improved to below 10 nm.

This experimental technique can be extended to the multi-body and correlation measurement of cold atom systems, and has good compatibility with other cold atom systems. It can be applied to optical lattices, neutral atom optical tweezers, and cold atom-ion hybrid systems.

Reference: Super-resolved Imaging of a Single Cold Atom on a Nanosecond Timescale by Zhong-Hua Qian, Jin-Ming Cui, Xi-Wang Luo, Yong-Xiang Zheng, Yun-Feng Huang, Ming-Zhong Ai, Ran He, Chuan-Feng Li and Guang-Can Guo, 23 December 2021, Physical Review Letters.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.263603

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Will Innovation Make Us Better Off? – Forbes

Posted: at 4:09 pm

Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, standing in front of IBM Q System One on October 18, 2019 at ... [+] the company's research facility in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

In the past year the share price of Apple AAPL has outperformed Bitcoin, and Tesla's TSLA share price which has hitherto been umbilically linked to bitcoin, has been far more jumpy (over the last two years it has had 29 one day moves of more than 10% as compared to a mere 17 for bitcoin).

These insights beg lots of questions, about market functioning, investor appetiteand simply, whether bitcoin is now old and dull. There is a debate that instead of being a risky asset across the spectrum of broad asset classes (bonds, equities etc), bitcoin is simply a safe asset within a highly volatile crypto world, though the fact that bitcoin has fallen 15% since I started writing this note nods to the former.

More importantly, it might be that bitcoin isout of fashion and is being replaced in the mindsets of investors by other speedy innovations. Recall the memorableline from a Davos speech by Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau where he said 'The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.

Exponential

The spirit of this phrase is caught by the many year ahead forecasts from futurologists, economists and thinkers. Having made my own forecasts before Christmas I have the benefit of sitting back and reading others, one excellent example being Azeem Azars weekly Exponential email, and a growing number of other notes that try to summarise what is bubbling up.

What is noticeable is that there is a strong sense of the Roaring 20s in threads of structural trends that analysts see taking place in the aftermath of a pandemic. Chief amongst them is a focus on nuclear power as a substitute to fossil fuels, not to mention the entire greentech complex.

If the forecasts and thought pieces I have mentioned are a good representation of where capital will flow, then a new, exciting infrastructure is being built in computing, logistics and finance to name a few sectors that happen to be united by data intensity. I might say that having witnessed the dot.com bubble, the only value of an asset bubble is that it leaves behind it an important infrastructure (telecoms in this case).

MetaVerse

My three key takeaways from parsing many reports, is that whilst on one hand exciting, the central message of the new emerging technologies is that they will lead to a historic and potentially overwhelming challenge to humanity, and in particular to our minds and sociability, with potentially very impactful health related benefits.

Without exaggerating, I feel that 2022 is a threshold year when innovative technologies make our bodies healthier but invade our mental spaces.

To first take a collection of the most popular trends, they cluster around web 3.0, NFTs, metaverse, social media and crypto currencies. In a brutal way that means that we will all spend more time out of the light, hunched over phones and doubting whether the people and things we have encountered in the metaverse are real at all, and whether it was worth investing USD 10,000 in a metaverse apartment.

This trend is historic because for the first time, and with only the force of religion (and maybe politics) as a rival, humans will spend time and enjoy experiences in an unreal world, and for some this will come to dominate their existence. Two very obvious side-effects will be sociability and mental health.

Quantum

In previous bulletins I have remarked that mental health needs to become a core pillar of how health services are reimagined, and it may be that the metaverse is the trigger (ironically it is used to help soldiers overcome post traumatic stress disorder).

Also on the positive side, the enormous advances in medicine and health tech much of it spurred by the coronavirus crisis, will have a positive effect on humans pending at least two factors, that the bounty of these advances can be as widely spread as possible, and that the ways in which they are delivered is rethought in the sense that healthcare systems need to change.

One inspiration here, and my second point, is that the rising attention that technologies like blockchain have cast on decentralized autonomous organisations effectively organisations run by a coded relationships between disparate parties, as opposed to a centralized or even hierarchical bureaucracy (i.e. healthcare systems). While it is a stretch to imagine that todays healthcare systems and other institutional arrangements can be quickly replaced by decentralized forms, there is much that blockchain can do to cut that bureaucracies (closer relationships between doctors, patients, billing and other parties like pharmacists).

DAO

A third related, threshold change in technological influence that is getting a lot of attention and capital, quantum computing (70% of startup level investment in tech hardware goes to quantum computing projects). Governments, notably China and the European Union are also spending heavily on it. In brief quantum computing is revolutionary in that it uses different arrangements of bits to produce more powerful processing. Though there are not yet many applications of quantum computing it has the capacity to dramatically change aspects of healthcare, finance and industrial sectors like chemicals.

Having already witnessed historic, positive changes that resulted from the pandemic the general patience and obeisance of the worlds population, the acceptance of working from home and the power of vaccines, we are now crossing a threshold in terms of how technology will change our bodies, as well as our minds and the ways we relate to the world.

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Creating the Heart of a Quantum Computer: Developing Qubits – SciTechDaily

Posted: at 4:09 pm

By Shannon Brescher Shea, U.S. Department of EnergyJanuary 3, 2022

A computer is suspended from the ceiling. Delicate lines and loops of silvery wires and tubes connect gold-colored platforms. It seems to belong in a science-fiction movie, perhaps a steam-punk cousin of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But as the makers of that 1968 movie imagined computers the size of a spaceship, this technology would have never crossed their minds a quantum computer.

Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that conventional computers cant. Conventional computer chips can only process so much information at one time and were coming very close to reaching their physical limits. In contrast, the unique properties of materials for quantum computing have the potential to process more information much faster.

These advances could revolutionize certain areas of scientific research. Identifying materials with specific characteristics, understanding photosynthesis, and discovering new medicines all require massive amounts of calculations. In theory, quantum computing could solve these problems faster and more efficiently. Quantum computing could also open up possibilities we never even considered. Its like a microwave oven versus a conventional oven different technologies with different purposes.

But were not there yet. So far, one company has claimed its quantum computer can complete a specific calculation faster than the worlds fastest conventional supercomputers. Scientists routinely using quantum computers to answer scientific questions is a long way off.

To use quantum computers on a large scale, we need to improve the technology at their heart qubits. Qubits are the quantum version of conventional computers most basic form of information, bits. The DOEs Office of Science is supporting research into developing the ingredients and recipes to build these challenging qubits.

DOEs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is using a sophisticated cooling system to keep qubits the heart of quantum computers cold enough for scientists to study them for use in quantum computers. Credit: Image courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

At the atomic scale, physics gets very weird. Electrons, atoms, and other quantum particles interact with each other differently than ordinary objects. In certain materials, we can harness these strange behaviors. Several of these properties particularly superposition and entanglement can be extremely useful in computing technology.

The principle of superposition is the idea that a qubit can be in multiple states at once. With traditional bits, you only have two options: 1 or 0. These binary numbers describe all of the information in any computer. Qubits are more complicated.

Imagine a pot with water in it. When you have water in a pot with a top on it, you dont know if its boiling or not. Real water is either boiling or not; looking at it doesnt change its state. But if the pot was in the quantum realm, the water (representing a quantum particle) could both be boiling and not boiling at the same time or any linear superposition of these two states. If you took the lid off of that quantum pot, the water would immediately be one state or the other. The measurement forces the quantum particle (or water) into a specific observable state.

Entanglement is when qubits have a relationship to each other that prevents them from acting independently. It happens when a quantum particle has a state (such as spin or electric charge) thats linked to another quantum particles state. This relationship persists even when the particles are physically far apart, even far beyond atomic distances.

These properties allow quantum computers to process more information than conventional bits that can only be in a single state and only act independently from each other.

But to get any of these great properties, you need to have fine control over a materials electrons or other quantum particles. In some ways, this isnt so different from conventional computers. Whether electrons move or not through a conventional transistor determines the bits value, making it either 1 or 0.

Rather than simply switching electron flow on or off, qubits require control over tricky things like electron spin. To create a qubit, scientists have to find a spot in a material where they can access and control these quantum properties. Once they access them, they can then use light or magnetic fields to create superposition, entanglement, and other properties.

In many materials, scientists do this by manipulating the spin of individual electrons. Electron spin is similar to the spin of a top; it has a direction, angle, and momentum. Each electrons spin is either up or down. But as a quantum mechanical property, spin can also exist in a combination of up and down. To influence electron spin, scientists apply microwaves (similar to the ones in your microwave oven) and magnets. The magnets and microwaves together allow scientists to control the qubit.

Since the 1990s, scientists have been able to gain better and better control over electron spin. Thats allowed them to access quantum states and manipulate quantum information more than ever before.

To see where thats gone today, its remarkable, said David Awschalom, a quantum physicist at DOEs Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago as well as Director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange.

Whether they use electron spin or another approach, all qubits face major challenges before we can scale them up. Two of the biggest ones are coherence time and error correction.

When you run a computer, you need to be able to create and store a piece of information, leave it alone, and then come back later to retrieve it. However, if the system that holds the information changes on its own, its useless for computing. Unfortunately, qubits are sensitive to the environment around them and dont maintain their state for very long.

Right now, quantum systems are subject to a lot of noise, things that cause them to have a low coherence time (the time they can maintain their condition) or produce errors. Making sure that you get the right answer all of the time is one of the biggest hurdles in quantum computing, said Danna Freedman, an associate professor in chemistry at Northwestern University.

Even if you can reduce that noise, there will still be errors. We will have to build technology that is able to do error correction before we are able to make a big difference with quantum computing, said Giulia Galli, a quantum chemist and physicist at DOEs Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago.

The more qubits you have in play, the more these problems multiply. While todays most powerful quantum computers have about 50 qubits, its likely that they will need hundreds or thousands to solve the problems that we want them to.

The jury is still out on which qubit technology will be the best. No real winner has been identified, said Galli. [Different ones] may have their place for different applications. In addition to computing, different quantum materials may be useful for quantum sensing or networked quantum communications.

To help move qubits forward, DOEs Office of Science is supporting research on a number of different technologies. To realize quantum computings enormous scientific potential, we need to reimagine quantum R&D by simultaneously exploring a range of possible solutions, said Irfan Siddiqi, a quantum physicist at the DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.

Superconducting Qubits

Superconducting qubits are currently the most advanced qubit technology. Most existing quantum computers use superconducting qubits, including the one that beat the worlds fastest supercomputer. They use metal-insulator-metal sandwiches called Josephson junctions. To turn these materials into superconductors materials that electricity can run through with no loss scientists lower them to extremely cold temperatures. Among other things, pairs of electrons coherently move through the material as if theyre single particles. This movement makes the quantum states more long-lived than in conventional materials.

To scale up superconducting qubits, Siddiqi and his colleagues are studying how to build them even better with support from the Office of Science. His team has examined how to make improvements to a Josephson junction, a thin insulating barrier between two superconductors in the qubit. By affecting how electrons flow, this barrier makes it possible to control electrons energy levels. Making this junction as consistent and small as possible can increase the qubits coherence time. In one paper on these junctions, Siddiqis team provides a recipe to build an eight-qubit quantum processor, complete with experimental ingredients and step-by-step instructions.

Qubits Using Defects

Defects are spaces where atoms are missing or misplaced in a materials structure. These spaces change how electrons move in the materials. In certain quantum materials, these spaces trap electrons, allowing researchers to access and control their spins. Unlike superconductors, these qubits dont always need to be at ultra-low temperatures. They have the potential to have long coherence times and be manufactured at scale.

While diamonds are usually valued for their lack of imperfections, their defects are actually quite useful for qubits. Adding a nitrogen atom to a place where there would normally be a carbon atom in diamonds creates whats called a nitrogen-vacancy center. Researchers using the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, a DOE Office of Science user facility, found a way to create a stencil just two nanometers long to create these defect patterns. This spacing helped increase these qubits coherence time and made it easier to entangle them.

But useful defects arent limited to diamonds. Diamonds are expensive, small, and hard to control. Aluminum nitride and silicon carbide are cheaper, easier to use, and already common in everyday electronics. Galli and her team used theory to predict how to physically strain aluminum nitride in just the right way to create electron states for qubits. As nitrogen vacancies occur naturally in aluminum nitride, scientists should be able to control electron spin in it just as they do in diamonds. Another option, silicon carbide, is already used in LED lights, high-powered electronics, and electronic displays. Awschaloms team found that certain defects in silicon carbide have coherence times comparable to or longer than those in nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds. In complementary work, Gallis group developed theoretical models explaining the longer coherence times.

Based on theoretical work, we began to examine these materials at the atomic scale. We found that the quantum states were always there, but no one had looked for them, said Awschalom. Their presence and robust behavior in these materials were unexpected. We imagined that their quantum properties would be short-lived due to interactions with nearby nuclear spins. Since then, his team has embedded these qubits in commercial electronic wafers and found that they do surprisingly well. This can allow them to connect the qubits with electronics.

Materials by Design

While some scientists are investigating how to use existing materials, others are taking a different tack designing materials from scratch. This approach builds custom materials molecule by molecule. By customizing metals, the molecules or ions bound to metals, and the surrounding environment, scientists can potentially control quantum states at the level of a single particle.

When youre talking about both understanding and optimizing the properties of a qubit, knowing that every atom in a quantum system is exactly where you want it is very important, said Freedman.

With this approach, scientists can limit the amount of nuclear spin (the spin of the nucleus of an atom) in the qubits environment. A lot of atoms that contain nuclear spin cause magnetic noise that makes it hard to maintain and control electron spin. That reduces the qubits coherence time. Freedman and her team developed an environment that had very little nuclear spin. By testing different combinations of solvents, temperatures, and ions/molecules attached to the metal, they achieved a 1 millisecond coherence time in a molecule that contains the metal vanadium. That was a much longer coherence time than anyone had achieved in a molecule before. While previous molecular qubits had coherence times that were five times shorter than diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers times, this matched coherence times in diamonds.

That was genuinely shocking to me because I thought molecules would necessarily be the underdogs in this game, said Freedman. [It] opens up a gigantic space for us to play in.

The surprises in quantum just keep coming. Awschalom compared our present-day situation to the 1950s when scientists were exploring the potential of transistors. At the time, transistors were less than half an inch long. Now laptops have billions of them. Quantum computing stands in a similar place.

The overall idea that we could completely transform the way that computation is done and the way nature is studied by doing quantum simulation is really very exciting, said Galli. Our fundamental way of looking at materials, based on quantum simulations, can finally be useful to develop technologically relevant devices and materials.

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