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Category: quantum physics

A team of physicists and engineers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) successfully demonstrated the feasibility of low-cost and high-performance radio frequency modules for qubit controls at room temperature. They built a series of compact radio frequency (RF) modules that mix signals to improve the reliability of control systems for superconducting quantum processors. Their tests proved that using modular design methods reduces the cost and size of traditional RF control systems while still delivering superior or comparable performance levels to those commercially available.

Their research, featured as noteworthy in the Review of Scientific Instruments and selected as a Scilight by the American Institute of Physics, is and has been adopted by other quantum information science (QIS) groups. The team expects the RF modules’ compact design is suitable for adaptation to the other qubit technologies as well. The research was conducted at the Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at Berkeley Lab, a collaborative research program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

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A new analytical technique is able to provide hitherto unattainable insights into the extremely rapid dynamics of biomolecules. The team of developers, led by Abbas Ourmazd from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Robin Santra from DESY

Commonly abbreviated as DESY, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English German Electron Synchrotron) is a national research center in Germany that operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure of matter. It is a member of the Helmholtz Association and operates at sites in Hamburg and Zeuthen.

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UC Berkeley physicist Norman Yao first described five years ago how to make a time crystal—a new form of matter whose patterns repeat in time instead of space. Unlike crystals of emerald or ruby, however, those time crystals existed for only a fraction of a second.

But the time has arrived for time crystals. Since Yao’s original proposal, new insights have led to the discovery that time crystals come in many different forms, each stabilized by its own distinct mechanism.

Using new quantum computing architectures, several labs have come close to creating a many-body localized version of a time crystal, which uses disorder to keep periodically-driven quantum qubits in a continual state of subharmonic jiggling—the qubits oscillate, but only every other period of the drive.

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Signup for your FREE trial to Wondrium here: http://ow.ly/NwIS30rNQ5m — Be sure to check out Sean Carroll’s series called, “Mysteries of modern physics: Time” — I highly recommend it!

A good definition of information in physics: “information contained in a physical system = the number of yes/no questions you need to get answered to fully specify the system.”

References:
Lee Smolin’s paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.09945
Prior video on entropy: https://youtu.be/T6CxT4AESCQ
Wave function collapse and time: https://youtu.be/wXJ9eQ7qTQk.

Chapters:
0:00 — Why is time one way but physical laws are not?
2:19 — What is Entropy? Disorder and information.
5:29 — Does entropy cause time?
7:12 — What is time? Recorded past vs future possibilities.
8:07 — Lee Smolin’s theory of time.
10:31 — Will time always flow forward? heat death & big freeze.
12:33 — Best online course on time.

Summary:
In quantum mechanics, it’s just as natural to go forward in time as going backwards. And if you look at a typical Feynman diagram, you can turn the diagram either way. Where does this transition from time symmetry at the quantum level, to time asymmetry at the macro level occur?

To understand its irreversibility, we have to look for other irreversible processes in nature to see if there is any correlation — such as in thermodynamics, Entropy.

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

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

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

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Circa 2015 what if we didn’t need computers we only needed our minds upgraded? Quantum cognition talks about a theory of an upgraded mind.

What type of probability theory best describes the way humans make judgments under uncertainty and decisions under conflict? Although rational models of cognition have become prominent and have achieved much success, they adhere to the laws of classical probability theory despite the fact that human reasoning does not always conform to these laws. For this reason we have seen the recent emergence of models based on an alternative probabilistic framework drawn from quantum theory. These quantum models show promise in addressing cognitive phenomena that have proven recalcitrant to modeling by means of classical probability theory. This review compares and contrasts probabilistic models based on Bayesian or classical versus quantum principles, and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

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The only experiential time is NOW. Our phenomenal minds spring into existence at increments of conscious instants. The sequence of these Nows constitutes our “stream” of consciousness. D-Theory of Time, or Digital Presentism, is predicated on reversible quantum computing at large and gives us a coherent theoretical framework on the nature of time. In the absence of observers, the arrow of time doesn’t exist — there’s no cosmic flow of time. Instead, each conscious observer is a digital pattern flowing within a multidimensional matrix.

Based on the Cybernetic Theory of Mind by evolutionary cyberneticist Alex Vikoulov that he defends in his magnum opus The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution, comes a newly-released documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind.

This film, hosted by the author of the book from which the narrative is derived, is now available for viewing on demand on Vimeo, Plex, Tubi, Xumo, Social Club TV and other global networks with its worldwide premiere aired on June 8 2021. This is a futurist’s take on the nature of consciousness and reverse engineering of our thinking in order to implement it in cybernetics and advanced AI systems.

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According to Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the 4-IR follows the first, second, and third Industrial Revolutions—the mechanical, electrical, and digital, respectively. The 4-IR builds on the digital revolution, but Schwab sees the 4-IR as an exponential takeoff and convergence of existing and emerging fields, including Big Data; artificial intelligence; machine learning; quantum computing; and genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. The consequence is the merging of the physical, digital, and biological worlds. The blurring of these categories ultimately challenges the very ontologies by which we understand ourselves and the world, including “what it means to be human.”

The specific applications that make up the 4-R are too numerous and sundry to treat in full, but they include a ubiquitous internet, the internet of things, the internet of bodies, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and more.

While Schwab and the WEF promote a particular vision for the 4-IR, the developments he announces are not his brainchildren, and there is nothing original about his formulations. Transhumanists and Singularitarians (or prophets of the technological singularity), such as Ray Kurzweil and many others, forecasted these and more revolutionary developments,. long before Schwab heralded them. The significance of Schwab and the WEF’s take on the new technological revolution is the attempt to harness it to a particular end, presumably “a fairer, greener future.”

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Lightspeed is the fastest velocity in the universe. Except when it isn’t. Anyone who’s seen a prism split white light into a rainbow has witnessed how material properties can influence the behavior of quantum objects: in this case, the speed at which light propagates.

Electrons also behave differently in materials than they do in , and understanding how is critical for scientists studying and engineers looking to develop new technologies. “An electron’s wave nature is very particular. And if you want to design devices in the future that take advantage of this quantum mechanical nature, you need to know those wavefunctions really well,” explained co-author Joe Costello, a UC Santa Barbara graduate student in condensed matter physics.

In a new paper, co-lead authors Costello, Seamus O’Hara and Qile Wu and their collaborators developed a method to calculate this wave nature, called a Bloch wavefunction, from physical measurements. “This is the first time that there’s been experimental reconstruction of a Bloch wavefunction,” said senior author Mark Sherwin, a professor of condensed matter physics at UC Santa Barbara. The team’s findings appear in the journal Nature, coming out more than 90 years after Felix Bloch first described the behavior of electrons in crystalline solids.

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