Nanotechnologists at the University of Twente research institute MESA+ have discovered a new fundamental property of electrical currents in very small metal circuits. They show how electrons can spread out over the circuit like waves and cause interference effects at places where no electrical current is driven. The geometry of the circuit plays a key role in this so called nonlocal effect. The interference is a direct consequence of the quantum mechanical wave character of electrons and the specific geometry of the circuit. For designers of quantum computers, it is an effect to take account of. The results are published in the British journal Scientific Reports.
Interference is a common phenomenon in nature and occurs when one or more propagating waves interact coherently. Interference of sound, light or water waves is well known, but also the carriers of electrical current — electrons — can interfere. It shows that electrons need to be considered as waves as well, at least in nanoscale circuits at extremely low temperatures: a canonical example of the quantum mechanical wave-particle duality.
Gold ring
The researchers from the University of Twente have demonstrated electron interference in a gold ring with a diameter of only 500 nanometers (a nanometer is a million times smaller than a millimeter). One side of the ring was connected to a miniature wire through which an electrical current can be driven. On the other side, the ring was connected to a wire with a voltmeter attached to it. When a current was applied, and a varying magnetic field was sent through the ring, the researchers detected electron interference at the other side of the ring, even though no net current flowed through the ring.
DNA is similar to a hard drive or storage device, in that contains the memory of each cell of every living, and has the instructions on how to make that cell. DNA is four molecules combined in any order to make a chain of one larger molecule. And if you can read that chain of four molecules, then you have a sequence of characters, like a digital code. Over the years the price of sequencing a human genome has dropped significantly, much to the delight of scientists. And since DNA is a sequence of four letters, and if we can manipulate DNA, we could insert a message and use DNA as the storage device.
At this point in time, we are at the height of the information age. And computers have had an enormous impact on all of our lives. Any information is able to be represented as a collection of bits. And with Moore’s law, which states that computing power doubles every 18 months, our ability to manipulate and store these bits has continued to grow and grow. Moore’s law has been driven by scientists being able to make transistors and integrated circuits continuously smaller and smaller, but there eventually comes a point we reach in which these transistors and integrated circuits cannot be made any smaller than they already are, since some are already at the size of a single atom. This inevitably leads us into the quantum world. Quantum mechanics has rules which are, in many ways, hard for us to truly comprehend, yet are nevertheless tested. Quantum computing looks to make use of these strange rules of quantum physics, and process information in a totally different way. Quantum computing looks to replace the classical bits which are either a 0 or a 1, with quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both a 0 and a 1 at the same time. This ability to be two different things at the same time is referred to as a superposition. 200 qubits hold more bits of information than there are particles in the universe. A useful quantum computer will require thousands or even millions of physical qubits. Anything such as an atom can serve as a quantum bit for making a quantum computer, then you can use a superconducting circuit to build two artificial atoms. So at this point in time we have a few working quantum transistors, but scientists are working on developing the quantum integrated circuit. Quantum error correction is the biggest problem encountered in development of the quantum computer. Quantum computer science is a field that right now is in its very early stages, since scientists have yet been able to develop any quantum hardware.
A quantum computer would be perfect for tackling quantum problems like simulating the properties of a new molecule or material or help us to create a catalyst that will remove CO2 from the atmosphere, or make pattern recognition in computers much more efficient, and also in code breaking, and privacy and security of personal information since quantum information can never be copied.
A great deal of the energy we create has to go into maintaining computations and data storage but we can reduce our energy expenditure significantly by looking to nature. Nature is much more effective at information processing. For example, in the process of photo synthesis, there is a nanowire, who’s quantum efficiency is almost 100%. DNA is also a great example of energy efficiency represented in nature, since DNA base pairing can be considered a computational process. Computers generate heat by performing computations because each computation is irreversible. Quantum mechanics can make those computations reversible, since a quantum computer can perform two functions at the same time.
Science Documentary: Large Hadron Collider, Time, Galaxy Formation a Documentary on Particle Physics.
DARPA funds the Atoms-to-Products program that aims to maintain quantum nanoscale properties at the millimeter scale of microchips.
The main goal of the atoms-to-products program is to create technology and processes needed to create nanometer-scale pieces, with dimensions almost the size of atoms, into components and materials only millimeter scale in size. And to spur developments in the program DARPA has now posed the challenge to 10 laboratories across the nation.
To get the full benefits of nanoscale engineering at the millimeter scale, the organization has partnered with Intelligent Materials Solutions. “Our initial project will be to control infrared light by assembling nanoscale particles into finished components that are one million times larger,” explains Adam Gross, the team leader working closely with Christopher Roper to bring the Atoms-to Products project to fruition.
If nanotechnology continues to advance as experts expect, within 30 years it could give us ‘superhuman’ abilities. For example, we could survive for hours without needing to breathe.
The very mention of “nanobots” can bring up a certain future paranoia in people—undetectable robots under my skin? Thanks, but no thanks. Professor Ido Bachelet of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University confirms that while tiny robots being injected into a human body to fight disease might sound like science fiction, it is in fact very real.
Cancer treatment as we know it is problematic because it targets a large area. Chemo and radiation therapies are like setting off a bomb—they destroy cancerous cells, but in the process also damage the healthy ones surrounding it. This is why these therapies are sometimes as harmful as the cancer itself. Thus, the dilemma with curing cancer is not in finding treatments that can wipe out the cancerous cells, but ones that can do so without creating a bevy of additional medical issues. As Bachelet himself notes in a TEDMED talk: “searching for a safer cancer drug is basically like searching for a gun that kills only bad people.”
This came up recently and it occurred I never posted this here. This is a lecture by Robert Bradbury, not not Ray Bradbury. I had the pleasure of exchanging a few emails with him. Unfortunately those emails are lost so I cannot share them. He was an advocate of life extension and he was a big thinker. I’ll post both vids and a link to the M-brain page. He is not with us anymore I regret to say. Ready?
Renown aging expert Robert Bradbury discusses whole genome engineering, evolution and aging and ways to defeat aging. His talk touches on many areas including nanotechnology, biology, and computer science. More information can be found at http://manhattanbeachproject.com Follow updates at http://twitter.com/maxlifeorg
Graphene is a super strong, two-dimensional material with atom-thick layers. But now, a team of scientists have developed a new material with a similar structure that they’re calling borophene, and it may have graphene beat.
Borophene, a one atom thick sheet of boron, is being introduced by scientists as the next big thing after graphene, another two-dimensional material that made headlines back in 2004. If you aren’t aware, graphene is basically a supermaterial. A single layer of this is about 100 times stronger than steel and it is extremely flexible.
Now, according to research that was published in the journal Nature, borophene’s properties could potentially exceed those of graphene and other, similar materials in the 2D nanomaterial family.
Inhuman travels the globe to unveil for the first time how breakthrough advances in science, technology and philosophy—including cybernetics, bioengineering, nanotechnology, machine intelligence and synthetic biology are poised to create mind-boggling game changes to everything we have known until now about Homo sapiens.
As astonishing technological developments push the frontiers of humanity toward far-reaching morphological transformation (which promises in the very near future to redefine what it means to be human), an intellectual and fast-growing cultural movement known as transhumanism intends the use of these powerful new fields of science and technology as tools that will radically redesign our minds, our memories, our physiology, our offspring, and even perhaps—as Professor Joel Garreau, Lincoln Professor of Law, claims—our immortal souls.
