This article is an exploration of how quantum computing enhances machine learning and artificial intelligence systems.
The difference between classical computing and quantum computing is that classical computing is exclusively binary, with data stored in physical bits of “zeros” or “ones” but never both concurrently; while in quantum computing, there is an allowance for linearity such that a combination of both states simultaneously is possible giving room for significantly more data to be stored in a unit (quantum bit) than in a regular one.
An illustration of the importance of quantum computing is in spotting relationships between very large datasets. A conventional system would consider each item in a parallel manner and would take a long time; in some cases, due to the size of the datasets, it might never arrive at a solution. A quantum computer on the other hand would resolve the problem in a matter of seconds.
Impact of Quantum Computing
The application of quantum algorithms in techniques involving artificial intelligence will enhance the learning abilities of machines. This will result in the development of prediction systems like those of the financial industry being improved. There is, however, a waiting period before these improvements will be evident.
The processing power needed to derive value from the numerous streams of data being collected, particularly for the application of artificial intelligence techniques like machine learning continually increases. Researchers have been putting efforts into expediting these processes by the application of quantum computing algorithms to AI techniques; this has resulted in a previously non-existent discipline referred to as Quantum Machine Learning being formed.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are two main aspects of research in quantum computing algorithm application. A characteristic of this system of calculation is its allowance for the representation of multiple states simultaneously; this is especially suitable for AI techniques.
Intel notes that voice assistants would be beneficiaries of the implementation with quantum computing increasing accuracy in folds, enhancing the quantity of data they are capable of handling as well as their processing power. Machines can process a higher amount of calculation variables when quantum computing is used, leading to answers being arrived at more speedily than if a person does it.
Increased Algorithm Accuracy
Quantum computing is applicable in many fields for the solution of problems because it is capable of representing and handling numerous states. Intel has made several forays into researching quantum algorithms owing to the sheer number of opportunities it presents.
An example would be material science which is a field where the initial applications will yield results; where small molecule modeling is a task heavily reliant on computing. Bigger, more complex machines will give room for medicine design and logistics optimizations to discern the route with the greatest efficiency.
Supervised learning forms the bulk of industrial application of AI in such areas as recognition of images and prediction of consumption trends.
Fernandez Lorenzo expounds that going on various QML proposals put forward, this aspect will very likely experience potentially exponential growth. In the aspect of reinforcement learning, there is still plenty of ground to cover; as well as specified application to the solution of practical issues plaguing the industry.
Another promising, but less explored aspect is that of non-supervised learning. A researcher considers the case of dimensionality reduction algorithms, used for the representation of data in a space more limited than that occupied by the original but still retains the most vital characteristics of the parent dataset.
He states that quantum computing will be useful in identifying more general properties than the ones specific to the dataset.
The capability of reinforcement learning to manage complicated scenarios is evident in its video gaming application.
The most difficult task with regards to time consumed and computing workload is the training received by the algorithm. Fernandez Lorenzo highlights that theoretical proposals have been put forward to hasten this training by engaging quantum computers which may instigate a significantly more advanced artificial intelligence than is currently obtainable.
Use in the Banking Sector
The unification of quantum computing and artificial intelligence in the sector of finance may aid the fight against fraud and improve its detection. Models trained to utilize a quantum computer would be able to identify patterns that would likely elude more mainstream instruments.
Models are also being developed whereby numerical calculations can be used in conjunction with professional advice to arrive at financial resolutions. An NBD researcher from BBVA identifies a key benefit of these models as their ease of interpretation when compared to neural network algorithms, increasing the chances of them being approved by a regulatory board.
Provision of customized products and services to customers is the learning of the banking sector currently. This is done by utilizing developed systems of recommendation. Several quantum models have been suggested for the improvement of the performance of these systems. Fernandez believes that in the not-so-distant future, the sector would be able to project favorable strategies for investment inspired by quantum algorithms. To arrive at this destination, research is being done into investigating the links between machine learning and quantum supremacy concerning what existing quantum processors are capable of.
The breakthrough will be dependent on how possible it would be to build models that regular computers would be almost incapable of implementing. Studies are yet to be done on how these models would be applicable in the industry from a practical viewpoint.
The limitations on machine language algorithms due to classical computers’ computational power will be far less in quantum computers.
Sycamore, a quantum processor Google claims to have developed, solved in 200 seconds a task that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer at least 10,000 years to solve. A potential problem that could have arisen from quantum computing would be sensitivity to environmental alterations potentially leading to errors, but a research team at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light showed that artificial intelligence neural networks are capable of correcting quantum errors.


An international team led by Princeton University scientists has discovered an elusive massless particle theorized 85 years ago. The particle could give rise to faster and more efficient electronics because of its unusual ability to behave as matter and antimatter inside a crystal, according to new research.
The researchers report in the journal Science July 16 the first observation of Weyl fermions, which, if applied to next-generation electronics, could allow for a nearly free and efficient flow of electricity in electronics, and thus greater power, especially for computers, the researchers suggest.
Proposed by the mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl in 1929, Weyl fermions have been long sought by scientists because they have been regarded as possible building blocks of other subatomic particles, and are even more basic than the ubiquitous, negative-charge carrying electron (when electrons are moving inside a crystal). Their basic nature means that Weyl fermions could provide a much more stable and efficient transport of particles than electrons, which are the principle particle behind modern electronics. Unlike electrons, Weyl fermions are massless and possess a high degree of mobility; the particle’s spin is both in the same direction as its motion — which is known as being right-handed — and in the opposite direction in which it moves, or left-handed.
“The physics of the Weyl fermion are so strange, there could be many things that arise from this particle that we’re just not capable of imagining now,” said corresponding author M. Zahid Hasan, a Princeton professor of physics who led the research team.
The researchers’ find differs from the other particle discoveries in that the Weyl fermion can be reproduced and potentially applied, Hasan said. Typically, particles such as the famous Higgs boson are detected in the fleeting aftermath of particle collisions, he said. The Weyl fermion, however, was discovered inside a synthetic metallic crystal called tantalum arsenide that the Princeton researchers designed in collaboration with researchers at the Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter in Beijing and at National Taiwan University.
The Weyl fermion possesses two characteristics that could make its discovery a boon for future electronics, including the development of the highly prized field of efficient quantum computing, Hasan explained.
For a physicist, the Weyl fermions are most notable for behaving like a composite of monopole- and antimonopole-like particles when inside a crystal, Hasan said. This means that Weyl particles that have opposite magnetic-like charges can nonetheless move independently of one another with a high degree of mobility.
The researchers also found that Weyl fermions can be used to create massless electrons that move very quickly with no backscattering, wherein electrons are lost when they collide with an obstruction. In electronics, backscattering hinders efficiency and generates heat. Weyl electrons simply move through and around roadblocks, Hasan said.
“It’s like they have their own GPS and steer themselves without scattering,” Hasan said. “They will move and move only in one direction since they are either right-handed or left-handed and never come to an end because they just tunnel through. These are very fast electrons that behave like unidirectional light beams and can be used for new types of quantum computing.”
The Latest on: Weyl fermions
via Google News
The Latest on: Weyl fermions
- Weyl loops link upon July 11, 2022 at 5:01 pm
These studies brought them to Weyl loops, which are structures involving Weyl fermions – massless particles first predicted in 1929 by the theoretical physicist Herman Weyl as a solution to the Dirac ...
- Advanced Quantum Condensed Matter Physicson June 21, 2022 at 10:48 pm
Applications as manifest in the quantum Hall effect, topological insulators and Weyl semimetal are presented ... and ending with modern aspects … such as Dirac materials and Dirac fermions. The ...
- At the SLS (IMAGE)on July 31, 2021 at 8:05 am
The 3 PSI researchers Junzhang Ma, Ming Shi and Jasmin Jandke (from left to right) at the Swiss Light Source SLS, where they succeeded in proving the existence of Weyl fermions in paramagnetic ...
- Christopher Weberon August 17, 2020 at 3:06 am
His current work focuses on the newly-discovered Dirac and Weyl semimetals, materials in which electrons behave as though massless.
- Evidence for Weyl fermions by the local nuclear magnetic resonance techniqueson June 25, 2019 at 5:09 am
Tantalum has one of the largest quadrupole moments among all elements which makes it a rather useful local probe for excitations of Weyl fermions in the new Weyl semimetal TaP. We found three NQR ...
- Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Scienceson July 18, 2018 at 11:38 am
IOP has made many breakthroughs in the fundamental research of physics, e.g. the discoveries of “Weyl fermions in condensed matter”, “three-component fermions in the topological semimetal ...
- The Physics of Neutrinoson June 21, 2018 at 12:47 pm
The Weyl equation governing the motion of Weyl fermions tells us that Weyl fields are eigenstates of helicity and are therefore massless. Massive neutrinos may be of the Dirac or Majorana type. The ...
- Berry Phases in Electronic Structure Theoryon March 28, 2018 at 1:20 pm
Teicher, S. M. L. Svenningsson, I. K. Schoop, L. M. and Seshadri, R. 2019. Weyl nodes and magnetostructural instability in antiperovskite Mn3ZnC. APL Materials, Vol ...
- Researchers Stumble Upon a New Type of Quantum Materialon December 27, 2017 at 12:35 pm
The researchers realized that the reduction of mass could be attributed to the presence of Weyl fermions. It's only recently that the existence of solid-state conducting materials capable of ...
- Physicists Predict The Existence of New Particle in the "Material Universe"on November 29, 2015 at 7:33 am
Three of these quasiparticles, the Dirac, Majorana, and Weyl fermions, were discovered in such materials, despite the fact that the latter two had long been elusive in experiments." A crystal of ...
via Bing News


JILA researchers make coldest quantum gas of molecules
As featured on the cover of the Feb. 22 issue of Science, the team produced a gas of potassium-rubidium (KRb) molecules at temperatures as low as 50 nanokelvin (nK). That's 50 billionths of a Kelvin, or just a smidge above absolute zero, the lowest theoretically possible temperature. The molecules are in the lowest-possible energy states, making up what is known as a degenerate Fermi gas.
In a quantum gas, all of the molecules' properties are restricted to specific values, or quantized, like rungs on a ladder or notes on a musical scale. Chilling the gas to the lowest temperatures gives researchers maximum control over the molecules.
The two atoms involved are in different classes: Potassium is a fermion (with an odd number of subatomic components called protons and neutrons) and rubidium is a boson (with an even number of subatomic components). The resulting molecules have a Fermi character.
JILA is jointly operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder. NIST researchers at JILA have been working for years to understand and control ultracold molecules, which are more complex than atoms because they not only have many internal energy levels but also rotate and vibrate. The JILA team made their first molecular gas 10 years ago.
“The basic techniques for making the gas are the same ones we've used before, but we have a few new tricks such as significantly improving the cooling of the atoms, creating more of them in the lowest-energy state,” NIST/JILA Fellow Jun Ye said. “This results in a higher conversion efficiency so we get more molecules.”
The JILA team produced 100,000 molecules at 250 nK and as many as 25,000 molecules at 50 nK.
Before now, the coldest two-atom molecules were produced in maximum numbers of tens of thousands and at temperatures no lower than a few hundred nanoKelvin. JILA's latest gas temperature record is much lower than (about one-third of) the level where quantum effects start to take over from classical effects, and the molecules last for a few seconds–remarkable longevity, Ye said.
The new gas is the first to get cold and dense enough for the matter waves of these molecules to be longer than distances between them, making them overlap with each other to create a new entity. Scientists call this quantum degeneracy. (Quantum matter can behave as either particles or matter waves, that is, waveform patterns of the probability of a particle's location).
Quantum degeneracy also means an increase in the repulsion among fermionic particles, which tend to be loners anyway, resulting in fewer chemical reactions and a more stable gas. This is the first experiment in which scientists have observed collective quantum effects directly affecting the chemistry of individual molecules, Ye said.
“This is the first quantum degenerate gas of stable molecules in bulk, and the chemical reactions are suppressed–a result that nobody had predicted,” Ye said.
The molecules created in this experiment are called polar molecules because they have a positive electric charge at the rubidium atom and a negative charge at the potassium atom. Their interactions vary by direction and can be controlled with electric fields. Polar molecules thus offer more tunable, stronger interactions and additional control “knobs” compared with neutral particles.
These new ultralow temperatures will enable researchers to compare chemical reactions in quantum versus classical environments and study how electric fields affect the polar interactions. Eventual practical benefits could include new chemical processes, new methods for quantum computing using charged molecules as quantum bits, and new precision measurement tools such as molecular clocks.
The process for making the molecules begins with a gas mixture of very cold potassium and rubidium atoms confined by a laser beam. By sweeping a precisely tuned magnetic field across the atoms, scientists create large, weakly bound molecules containing one atom of each type. This technique was pioneered by Ye's colleague, the late Deborah Jin, in her 2003 demonstration of the world's first Fermi condensate.
To convert these relatively fluffy molecules into tightly bound molecules without heating the gas, scientists use two lasers operating at different frequencies–each resonating with a different energy jump in the molecules–to convert the binding energy into light instead of heat. The molecules absorb near-infrared laser light and release red light. In the process, 90 percent of the molecules are converted through an intermediate energy state, to the lowest and most stable energy level.
The research is supported by NIST, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation.
Paper: L. De Marco, G. Valtolina, K. Matsuda, W.G. Tobias, J.P. Covey and J. Ye. 2018. A Fermi Degenerate Gas of Polar Molecules. Science. Feb 22, 2019 issue. DOI: 10.1126/science.aau7230
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Just to recall we discussed in my previous post that persistent current flows in a superconductor to cancel out the externally applied magnetic field and this current does not contain electrons instead it consists of cooper pairs . This effect is called Meissner Effect .
Now in my first blog we talked about tunneling ,means if conductors are extremely near to each other than barrier cannot control the flow of electrons or flow of current from one conductor to another
Josephson Junction is an amalgamation of all these concepts, If we will separate two superconductors (any conductor behaves like a superconductor only under a critical temperature) by a thin barrier and apply external magnetic field to it. A current consists of cooper pairs start flowing in these super conductors to oppose the external magnetic field as per Meissner Effect. Now because these superconductors are separated by a very thin barrier ,This current of copper pair tunnels through the barrier and reaches to other superconductor .
So, the net current in these superconductors is the coupling of these two currents one is the actual current which is flowing because of external magnetic field and one is flowing because of tunneling.
Copper Pairs are tunnelling through the barrier, this barrier is called Josephson junction
Now in my first blog, I talked about wavefunction of electron but in case of superconductors current is flown by copper pairs and this current is also tunneled from one superconductor to another .So in these two superconductors currents are flowing in both directions simultaneously and this dual current is changing corresponding to external magnetic field ,wavefunctions of these cooper pair looks like as below
Here Ψ1 represents the wave function of copper pairs present in persistent current flowing in super conductor and Ψ2 represents the wave function of copper pairs tunnel to this super conductor and K represents the coefficient of tunneled current . µ1 and µ2 represents the energy levels of wave functions.
Here Ψ1 and Ψ2 can be represented as below
Where n1 and n2 are copper pairs density and θ1 and θ2 are phases. Here phases basically define the direction of current or copper pair movement.
Now these wave functions can be represented in terms of current as well because current is nothing but measurement of number of electrons pass in one second or in some time unit
Current is measured in ampere and below is definition of ampere
“The SI unit of electric current is the ampere, which is the flow of electric charge across a surface at the rate of one coulomb per second”
And Electric charge is measured in terms of coulomb which is basically defines the charge carried by one electron. Electric charge on an electron is approximately 1.6021773310−19 coulomb. So, if this value is 2 coulombs per second it means 2 electrons passed in one second
Now intensity of this current is represented by µ1 and µ2 in Equation 1 .In much simpler way We can understand that current is flow of electrons from negative to positive ,now if we want to increase the speed of this flow, we apply voltage to this flow. Voltage pushes electrons and electrons moves with greater speed and this change in speed changes the overall energy of wave function. Please note in case of superconductor voltage pushes copper pairs, as current consists of cooper pairs not electrons.
Full derivation on this is as below
Till now, hopefully we understood that current flows in both direction in these Josephson junction based superconductors ,in presence of external magnetic field and Intensity of these current or wave function of current can be controlled by voltage or by changing the external magnetic field
Now let us understand how to measure this coupled current
As you can see above JJ2 and JJ1 are Josephson junctions, H is the external magnetic field and IB is the net persistent current which is flowing in this superconductor to expel the magnetic field H.
Now in JJ1 junction I1 current is coming in anti-clockwise direction while I2 current is coming from clockwise direction, so net current which is flowing in this junction is the coupled effect of both these currents. Now current IB is the current, which is expelling the magnetic field, so this current will not change until external magnetic field will not change. But currents at junctions can be controlled by application of voltage or in simple words let us say if
IB= I1+ I2
Let us say we apply some voltage on junction 1 and I1 is increased to I1´ then I2 will decrease to I2´ to maintain the same persistent current IB ,because external magnetic field is not changed ,so current IB also can’t be changed, but I1 and I2 can change on application of voltage.
IB= I1´+ I2´
Now overall magnetic field of this entire system which is created by current IB will not change. But because current is changing at junctions, magnetic field at junctions will change and this change in magnetic field can be measured using magnetic flux. This effect is called AC Josephson Effect .
We can change the current at junction by changing the external magnetic field as well. This effect is called DC Josephson Effect.
This magnetic flux is indirectly proportional to current and voltage on junctions and we have mentioned in equation 5 and 6 above that wave function of copper pairs can be represented in terms of current and voltage. So if we can measure this magnetic flux ,we can measure this wavefunction from outside .This magnetic flux can be measured by a device called SQUID.
Now after all this explanation you might be thinking where is the qubit in all this
To understand it let us see what a bit is
Bit is 0 when current does not flow and Bit is 1 when current does flow right?
Now in case of qubit ,current is always flowing ,its never 0. But qubit means ,there are two currents flowing instead of one and wave function of this qubit is the combination of these two currents. What is changing is the intensities of these two current , if current I2 is extremely high then current I1 will be low to maintain the net persistent current IB, and when these currents changes ,wave function changes ,and because magnetic flux is proportional to these currents ,so when we measure this magnetic flux ,we are measuring different values of this wavefunction, or different states of qubit.
This magnetic flux can be measured using SQUID, so we can measure the qubit as well without collapsing the wave function.
I hope you all have better understanding of qubit Now. In next blog we will read about how to identify different states of qubits from different values of flux.


Emulating impossible “unipolar” laser pulses paves the way for processing quantum information
A laser pulse that sidesteps the inherent symmetry of light waves could manipulate quantum information, potentially bringing us closer to room temperature quantum computing. The study, led by researchers at the University of Regensburg and the University of Michigan, could also accelerate conventional computing.
Quantum computing has the potential to accelerate solutions to problems that need to explore many variables at the same time, including drug discovery, weather prediction and encryption for cybersecurity. Conventional computer bits encode either a 1 or 0, but quantum bits, or qubits, can encode both at the same time. This essentially enables quantum computers to work through multiple scenarios simultaneously, rather than exploring them one after the other. However, these mixed states don’t last long, so the information processing must be faster than electronic circuits can muster.
While laser pulses can be used to manipulate the energy states of qubits, different ways of computing are possible if charge carriers used to encode quantum information could be moved around—including a room-temperature approach. Terahertz light, which sits between infrared and microwave radiation, oscillates fast enough to provide the speed, but the shape of the wave is also a problem. Namely, electromagnetic waves are obliged to produce oscillations that are both positive and negative, which sum to zero.
The positive cycle may move charge carriers, such as electrons. But then the negative cycle pulls the charges back to where they started. To reliably control the quantum information, an asymmetric light wave is needed.
“The optimum would be a completely directional, unipolar ‘wave’, so there would be only the central peak, no oscillations. That would be the dream. But the reality is that light fields that propagate have to oscillate, so we try to make the oscillations as small as we can,” said Mackillo Kira, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at U-M and leader of the theory aspects of the study in Light: Science & Applications.
Since waves that are only positive or only negative are physically impossible, the international team came up with a way to do the next best thing. They created an effectively unipolar wave with a very sharp, high-amplitude positive peak flanked by two long, low-amplitude negative peaks. This makes the positive peak forceful enough to move charge carriers while the negative peaks are too small to have much effect.
They did this by carefully engineering nanosheets of a gallium arsenide semiconductor to design the terahertz emission through the motion of electrons and holes, which are essentially the spaces left behind when electrons move in semiconductors. The nanosheets, each about as thick as one thousandth of a hair, were made in the lab of Dominique Bougeard, a professor of physics at the University of Regensburg.
Then, the group of Rupert Huber, also a professor of physics at the University of Regensburg, stacked the semiconductor nanosheets in front of a laser. When the near-infrared pulse hit the nanosheet, it generated electrons. Due to the design of the nanosheets, the electrons welcomed separation from the holes, so they shot forward. Then, the pull from the holes drew the electrons back. As the electrons rejoined the holes, they released the energy they’d picked up from the laser pulse as a strong positive terahertz half-cycle preceded and followed by a weak, long negative half-cycle.
“The resulting terahertz emission is stunningly unipolar, with the single positive half-cycle peaking about four times higher than the two negative ones,” said Huber.
“We have been working for many years on light pulses with fewer and fewer oscillation cycles. The possibility of generating terahertz pulses so short that they effectively comprise less than a single half-oscillation cycle was beyond our bold dreams,” he added.
Next, the team intends to use these pulses to manipulate electrons in room temperature quantum materials, exploring mechanisms for quantum information processing. The pulses could also be used for ultrafast processing of conventional information.
“Now that we know the key factor of unipolar pulses, we may be able to shape terahertz pulses to be even more asymmetric and tailored for controlling semiconductor qubits,” said Qiannan Wen, a PhD student in applied physics at U-M and a co-first-author of the paper, along with Christian Meineke and Michael Prager, PhD students in physics at the University of Regensburg.
Collaborators at Justus Liebig University Giessen and Helmut Schmidt University, both in Germany, contributed to the experiment and the characterization of the nanosheets.
Kira, Huber and Bougeard conceived the study along with Markus Stein, a postdoctoral researcher in physics at Justus Liebig University Giessen. Huber and his PhD students Meineke, Johannes Hayes and Lukas Kastner along with Bougeard, Prager and staff scientist Dieter Schuh, designed the setup and the terahertz pulse emitter.
Prager, Schuh and Bougeard then grew the semiconductor nanosheets and tested the sample quality, and Stein and colleagues from Giessen tested optical properties.
Kira and Wen developed the quantum theory and carried out numerical simulations to interpret the results. Meineke, Hayes, Kastner and Huber, with support from Kilian Fritsch and Oleg Pronin, a PhD student and professor of laser technology and spectroscopy at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany, carried out the experiments and analyzed the data.
This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through Project ID 422 314695032-SFB 1277 (Subprojects A01 and B02), W. M. Keck Foundation, and the National Science Foundation program Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (2118809).


Scientists from the University of Queensland, Australia, have used single particles of light (photons) to simulate quantum particles traveling through time. They showed that one photon can pass through a wormhole and then interact with its older self. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.
The source of this time travel conundrum comes from what are called “closed time-like curves” (CTC). CTCs are used to simulate extremely powerful gravitational fields, like the ones produced by a spinning black hole, and could, theoretically (based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity), warp the fabric of existence so that spacetime bends back on itself – thus creating a CTC, almost like a path that could be used to travel back in time.
According to Scientific American, many physicists find CTCs “abhorrent, because any macroscopic object traveling through one would inevitably create paradoxes where cause and effect break down.” Others disagree with this assessment, however; in 1991, physicist David Deutsch showed that these paradoxes (created by CTCs) could be avoided at the quantum scale because of the weird behavior of these fundamental particles that make up what we call matter.
It’s well known that at the quantum scale, these particles do not follow the rules that govern classical mechanics, but behave in strange and unexpected ways that really shouldn’t even be possible.
Welcome to the world of Quantum physics, where pioneering Physicist Niels Bohr once said, “if quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.”
“We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery.” – Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate of the twentieth century (Radin, Dean. Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. New York, Paraview Pocket Books, 2006.)
In the quantum world, paradoxes that we don’t understand are common findings, but this should not deter people from taking this science seriously. Even Einstein didn’t believe a lot of quantum theory, but I’d like to think that if he were alive today, he would definitely be having some fun, given all of the recent breakthroughs.
“It’s intriguing that you’ve got general relativity predicting these paradoxes, but then you consider them in quantum mechanical terms and the paradoxes go away.” –University of Queensland physicist Tim Ralph (source)
Tim Ralph (quoted above) and his PhD student Martin Ringbauer simulated a Deutsch’s model of CTCs, according to Scientific American, “testing and confirming many aspects of the two-decades-old theory.” Although it’s just a mathematical simulation, the researchers (and their team/colleagues) emphasize that their model is mathematically equivalent to a single photon traveling through a CTC. Nothing has actually been sent back through time though; to do that, scientists would have to find a real CTC, which has yet to happen as far as we know. Of course, there always remains the possibility that black budget science has.
Think in terms of the ‘grandfather paradox,’ a hypothetical scenario where someone uses a CTC to travel back through time to cause harm to their grandfather, thus preventing their later birth. Now imagine a particle going back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it – this is a possibility that these physicists say they have shown through their simulation.
You can read the specifics of the experiment here.
Why This Is A High Probability
In my opinion, there is no doubt time travel is possible. Why do I believe this? Well, it’s because we know one hundred percent that superposition is real on a quantum scale.
“The maddening part of that problem is that the ability of particles to exist in two places at once is not a mere theoretical abstraction. It is a very real aspect of how the subatomic world works, and it has been experimentally confirmed many times over.”(source)
“One of the supreme mysteries of nature… is the ability, according to the quantum mechanic laws that govern subatomic affairs, of a particle like an electron to exist in a murky state of possibility — to be anywhere, everywhere or nowhere at all — until clicked into substantiality by a laboratory detector or an eyeball.” (New York Times)
This means that one particle can exist in multiple states at one time. This is best demonstrated by the quantum double slit experiment. Recent experiments have also confirmed quantum entanglement, showing that space is really just a construct that gives the illusion of separation. One thing that suggests there is a high probably of time travel, in conjunction with the experiment mentioned in this article, is the fact that there are experiments showing that particles can actually be entangled through time.
This is illustrated by what is called the ‘delayed choice experiment.’
Like the quantum double slit experiment, the delayed choice/quantum eraser has been demonstrated and repeated time and time again. For example, physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have successfully conducted John Wheeler’s delayed-choice thought experiment. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Physics. (source)
In 2007 (Science 315, 966, 2007), scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus and showed that their actions could retroactively change something which had already happened.
This particular experiment illustrates how what happens in the present can change what happened in the past. It also shows how time can go backwards, how cause and effect can be reversed, and how the future caused the past.
“If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance, but also, as seen here, influence of future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded.” – Asher Peres, pioneer in quantum information theory (source)(source)(source)
Although we do not have access to a CTC quite yet, there are good reasons to believe that this type of time travel is possible at the quantum mechanical level, and that is why I chose to mention these other experiments, to show that ‘time’ doesn’t even really exist as we think it does.
You can access an excellent description of the delayed choice experiment using a cosmic scale explanation here, which makes it easier to understand.
Why these same quantum mechanical laws have not been observed on the macroscopic level is yet to be understood, but physicists are working on the problem. For example, in 2012 physicists David Wineland and Serge Haroche received the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating how “quantum weirdness” could not only exist at the subatomic micro-world level, but also show itself in the macro-world. At one time, superposition was only thought to exist in the inaccessible quantum world, but not anymore. We know it’s possible, we just haven’t figured out how. We do, however, seem to be getting closer to finding out. (source) (source)
Perhaps one day, we will have determined the key to this puzzle and be able to observe large objects like cars, humans, apples, and oranges behave in the ways that matter does on a subatomic level, and perhaps one day we will find a wormhole, or a CTC in space, to conduct actual experiments that go beyond theory. That being said, a lot of what used to be considered theoretical in quantum physics is no longer theoretical, like quantum entanglement.


A team of researchers from the University of California, Davis and the University of Washington have demonstrated that the conductance of DNA can be modulated by controlling its structure, thus opening up the possibility of DNA’s future use as an electromechanical switch for nanoscale computing. Although DNA is commonly known for its biological role as the molecule of life, it has recently garnered significant interest for use as a nanoscale material for a wide-variety of applications.
In their paper published in Nature Communications, the team demonstrated that changing the structure of the DNA double helix by modifying its environment allows the conductance (the ease with which an electric current passes) to be reversibly controlled. This ability to structurally modulate the charge transport properties may enable the design of unique nanodevices based on DNA. These devices would operate using a completely different paradigm than today’s conventional electronics.
“As electronics get smaller they are becoming more difficult and expensive to manufacture, but DNA-based devices could be designed from the bottom-up using directed self-assembly techniques such as ‘DNA origami’,” said Josh Hihath, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis and senior author on the paper. DNA origami is the folding of DNA to create two- and three-dimensional shapes at the nanoscale level.
“Considerable progress has been made in understanding DNA’s mechanical, structural, and self-assembly properties and the use of these properties to design structures at the nanoscale. The electrical properties, however, have generally been difficult to control,” said Hihath.
New Twist on DNA? Possible Paradigms for Computing
In addition to potential advantages in fabrication at the nanoscale level, such DNA-based devices may also improve the energy efficiency of electronic circuits. The size of devices has been significantly reduced over the last 40 years, but as the size has decreased, the power density on-chip has increased. Scientists and engineers have been exploring novel solutions to improve the efficiency.
“There’s no reason that computation must be done with traditional transistors. Early computers were fully mechanical and later worked on relays and vacuum tubes,” said Hihath. “Moving to an electromechanical platform may eventually allow us to improve the energy efficiency of electronic devices at the nanoscale.”
This work demonstrates that DNA is capable of operating as an electromechanical switch and could lead to new paradigms for computing.
To develop DNA into a reversible switch, the scientists focused on switching between two stable conformations of DNA, known as the A-form and the B-form. In DNA, the B-form is the conventional DNA duplex that is commonly associated with these molecules. The A-form is a more compact version with different spacing and tilting between the base pairs. Exposure to ethanol forces the DNA into the A-form conformation resulting in an increased conductance. Similarly, by removing the ethanol, the DNA can switch back to the B-form and return to its original reduced conductance value.
One Step Toward Molecular Computing
In order to develop this finding into a technologically viable platform for electronics, the authors also noted that there is still a great deal of work to be done. Although this discovery provides a proof-of-principle demonstration of electromechanical switching in DNA, there are generally two major hurdles yet to be overcome in the field of molecular electronics. First, billions of active molecular devices must be integrated into the same circuit as is done currently in conventional electronics. Next, scientists must be able to gate specific devices individually in such a large system.
The Latest on: Molecular computing
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The Latest on: Molecular computing
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Importance of computers in the present day is well known to all. These machines have almost taken over manpower and mostly for the betterment (with the exception of creating unemployment). Still, people expect computers to be more useful and powerful in times to come, and different computing technologies of the future are always on constant watch. Where a classical computer works with 0s and 1s, a quantum computer will have the advantage of using 1s, 0s and superpositions of 1s and 0s. The future of computing and the new fields of computer sciences paving the way for the next digital revolution are common topics of discussion. In this direction, quantum computing technologies and their emergence in the near future are discussed. It is expected that quantum computing technologies will reach the masses by 2020. This article presents how quantum computing will change lives, society, the economy and the entire working system.
Computing technologies, in general, are based on a series of assumptions, which are:
•A technological society could eventually achieve the capability of creating a computer simulation that is indistinguishable from reality to the inhabitants of the simulation.
•Such a society would not do this once or twice. These would create many such simulations.
•Left to run long enough, the societies within the simulations would eventually be able to create their own simulations, also indistinguishable from reality to the sub-simulations inhabitants.
Certain tasks, which have long been thought impossible (or intractable) for classical computers, will be achieved quickly and efficiently by quantum computers. These computers will be millions of times more powerful than conventional computers, and quantum computing could lead to huge improvements in machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer simulations and cryptography. All of this could fundamentally alter the way our society operates.
Quantum computers will be able to outperform conventional computers in the fields of machine learning (training computers to use data to, effectively, make decisions without additional human input, to run search engines, spam email filters, voice- or facial-recognition technologies or self-driving cars, for example) and simulation technologies.
What quantum computing is
Quantum computing is essentially harnessing and exploiting the amazing laws of quantum mechanics to process information. A traditional computer uses long strings of bits, which encode either 0 or 1. A quantum computer, on the other hand, uses quantum bits, or qubits.
A qubit is a quantum system that encodes 0 and 1 into two distinguishable quantum states.
Qubits represent atoms, ions, photons or electrons and their respective control devices that work together to act as computer memory and a processor. But, because qubits behave quantum mechanically, we can capitalise on the phenomena of superposition and entanglement.
Superposition is the ability of a quantum system to be in multiple states at the same time, that is, something can be here and there, or up and down at the same time.
Entanglement is an extremely strong correlation that exists between quantum particles—so strong that two or more quantum particles can be inextricably linked in perfect unison, even if separated by great distances. The particles remain perfectly correlated even if separated by great distances. These are so intrinsically connected that these can be said to dance in instantaneous, perfect unison, even when placed at opposite ends of the universe.
Such quantum effects are extremely useful to the future of computing and communications technology. Thanks to superposition and entanglement, a quantum computer can process a vast number of calculations simultaneously. Where a classical computer works with 0s and 1s, a quantum computer will have the advantage of using 1s, 0s and superpositions of 1s and 0s.
Qubits could be made of photons, atoms, electrons, molecules or perhaps something else. But these are notoriously tricky to manipulate, since any disturbance causes these to fall out of their quantum state (or decohere).
Decoherence is the Achilles heel of quantum computing, but it is not insurmountable. The field of quantum error correction examines how to stave off decoherence and combat other errors. While quantum computers have been theoretically demonstrated to have incredible potential, and scientists are working around the world to realise that potential, there is much work to be done before these hit the market.
There are quantum computers already, but not of sufficient power to replace classical computers. While practical quantum technologies are already emerging—including highly-effective sensors, actuators and other devices—a true quantum computer that outperforms a classical computer is still years away.
Theorists are continually figuring out better ways to overcome decoherence, while experimentalists are gaining more and more control over the quantum world through various technologies and instruments. Pioneering work being done today is paving the way for the upcoming quantum era.
Quantum computers will be able to efficiently simulate quantum systems. This will allow to study, in remarkable detail, interactions between atoms and molecules. This could help design new drugs and materials, such as superconductors that work at room temperature.
Another of the many benefits of quantum computers over classical ones is searching through a space of potential solutions for the best solution. Researchers are constantly working on new quantum algorithms and applications. But the true potential of quantum computers likely has not even been imagined yet.
Future uses of quantum computers are bound only by imagination. Quantum technologies offer ultra-secure communications, sensors of unprecedented precision and computers that are exponentially more powerful than any supercomputer for a given task. These technologies are destined to fundamentally change our lives, and the first commercially-available quantum devices are only now beginning to emerge.
Quantum computing has the capability to unlock answers to some of humanity’s most pressing questions that are presently unsolvable with current computing technologies. It is expected that in less than ten years, quantum computers will begin to outperform everyday computers, leading to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, discovery of new pharmaceuticals and beyond.
The very fast computing power of quantum computers has the potential to disrupt traditional businesses and challenge cyber security. Businesses need to be ready for a quantum future because it is coming. The technology could herald radical changes for the following areas, to name a few:
•Safer airplanes. Lockheed Martin plans to use its D-Wave to test jet software that is currently too complex for classical computers.
•Discover distant planets. Quantum computers will be able to analyse the vast amount of data collected by telescopes and seek out Earth-like planets.
•Win elections. Campaigners will comb through reams of marketing information to best exploit individual voter preferences.
•Boost GDP. Hyper-personalised advertising, based on quantum computation, will stimulate consumer spending.
•Detect cancer earlier. Computational models will help determine how diseases develop.
•Help automobiles drive themselves. Google is already using a quantum computer to design software that can distinguish cars from landmarks.
•Reduce weather-related deaths. Precision forecasting will give people more time to take cover.
•Cut back on travel time. Sophisticated analysis of traffic patterns in the air and on the ground will forestall bottlenecks and snarls.
•Develop more effective drugs. By mapping amino acids, for example, or analysing DNA-sequencing data, doctors would be able to discover and design superior drug based treatments.
Developed countries are making huge investments for the development of quantum technologies in order to become the epicentres of this technology revolution in the near future. However, quantum computing might struggle to impact everyday life as it may be suppressed by those opposed to the changes it might bring.
Kanchan Verma is M.Tech from Department of Computer Science and Engineering PIT, Kapurthala (PTU campus), Jalandhar, Punjab


BOULDER, Colo.—An atomic clock that uses an aluminum atom to apply the logic of computers to the peculiarities of the quantum world now rivals the world's most accurate clock, based on a single mercury atom. Both clocks are at least 10 times more accurate than the current U.S. time standard.
The measurements were made in a yearlong comparison of the two next-generation clocks, both designed and built at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The clocks were compared with record precision, allowing scientists to measure the relative frequencies of the two clocks to 17 digits-the most accurate measurement of this type ever made. The comparison produced the most precise results yet in the worldwide quest to determine whether some of the fundamental constants that describe the universe are changing slightly over time, a hot research question that may alter basic models of the cosmos.
The research is described in the March 6 issue of Science Express.* The aluminum and mercury clocks are both based on natural vibrations in ions (electrically charged atoms) and would neither gain nor lose one second in over 1 billion years-if they could run for such a long time-compared to about 80 million years for NIST-F1, the U.S. time standard based on neutral cesium atoms.
The mercury clock was first demonstrated in 2000 and is now four times better than its last published evaluation in 2006, thanks to ongoing improvements in the clock design and operation. The mercury clock continues its reign as the world's most accurate for now, by a margin of 20 percent over the aluminum clock, but the designers say both experimental clocks could be improved further.
"The aluminum clock is very accurate because it is insensitive to background magnetic and electric fields, and also to temperature," says Till Rosenband, the NIST physicist who built the clock and is the first author of the new paper. "It has the lowest known sensitivity of any atomic clock to temperature, which is one of the most difficult uncertainties to calibrate."
Both the aluminum clock and the mercury clock are based on ions vibrating at optical frequencies, which are 100,000 times higher than microwave frequencies used in NIST-F1 and other similar time standards around the world. Because optical clocks divide time into smaller units, they can be far more precise than microwave standards. NIST scientists have several other optical atomic clocks in development, including one based on thousands of neutral strontium atoms. The strontium clock recently achieved twice the accuracy of NIST-F1, but still trails the mercury and aluminum clocks.
Highly accurate clocks are used to synchronize telecommunications networks and deep-space communications, and for satellite navigation and positioning. Next-generation clocks may also lead to new types of gravity sensors, which have potential applications in exploration for underground natural resources and fundamental studies of the Earth.
Laboratories around the world are developing optical clocks based on a variety of different designs and atoms; it is not yet clear which design will emerge as the best candidate for the next international standard.
The new paper provides the first published evaluation of the operational quantum logic clock, so-named because it is based on the logical reasoning process used in quantum computers (see sidebar below for details). The clock is a spin-off of NIST research on quantum computers, which grew out of earlier atomic clock research. Quantum computers, if they can be built, will be capable of solving certain types of complex problems that are impossible or prohibitively costly or time consuming to solve with today's technologies.
The NIST quantum logic clock uses two different kinds of ions, aluminum and beryllium, confined closely together in an electromagnetic trap and slowed by lasers to nearly "absolute zero" temperatures. Aluminum is a stable source of clock ticks, but its properties cannot be detected easily with lasers. The NIST scientists applied quantum computing methods to share information from the aluminum ion with the beryllium ion, a workhorse of their quantum computing research. The scientists can detect the aluminum clock's ticks by observing light signals from the beryllium ion.
NIST's tandem ion approach is unique among the world's atomic clocks and has a key advantage: "You can pick from a bigger selection of atoms," explains NIST physicist Jim Bergquist, who built the mercury clock. "And aluminum has a lot of good qualities-better than mercury's."
An optical clock can be evaluated precisely only by comparison to another clock of similar accuracy serving as a "ruler." NIST scientists used the quantum logic clock to measure the mercury clock, and vice versa. In addition, based on fluctuations in the frequencies of the two clocks relative to each other over time, NIST scientists were able to search for a possible change over time in a fundamental quantity called the fine-structure constant. This quantity measures the strength of electromagnetic interactions in many areas of physics, from studies of atoms and molecules to astronomy. Some evidence from astronomy has suggested the fine-structure constant may be changing very slowly over billions of years. If such changes are real, scientists would have to dramatically change their theories of the fundamental nature of the universe.
The NIST measurements indicate that the value of the fine-structure constant is not changing by more than 1.6 quadrillionths of 1 percent per year, with an uncertainty of 2.3 quadrillionths of 1 percent per year (a quadrillionth is a millionth of a billionth). The result is small enough to be "consistent with no change," according to the paper. However, it is still possible that the fine-structure constant is changing at a rate smaller than anyone can yet detect. The new NIST limit is approximately 10 times smaller than the best previous measurement of the possible present-day rate of change in the fine-structure constant. The mercury clock is an especially useful tool for such tests because its frequency fluctuations are magnified by any changes in this constant.
Background on the mercury clock is available at: www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/mercury_atomic_clock.htm.
Background on quantum computing is available at: www.nist.gov/public_affairs/quantum/quantum_info_index.html.
The work described in the new Science Express paper was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research and Disruptive Technology Office.
As a non-regulatory agency of the Commerce Department, NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
The NIST quantum logic clock is so named because it borrows techniques that are key to quantum computers, which would solve problems using quantum mechanics, nature's instruction book for the smallest particles of matter and light. Logic is reasoning that determines an action or result based on which one of different possible options is received as input. In the NIST clock, the input options are two different quantum states, or internal energy levels, of an aluminum ion. Information about this state is transferred to a beryllium ion, which, depending on the input, produces different signals that are easily detected.
NIST scientists use lasers to cool the two ions which are held 4 thousandths of a millimeter apart in an electromagnetic trap. Aluminum is the larger of the two ions, while the beryllium emits light under the conditions of this experiment. Scientists hit the ions with pulses from a "clock laser" within a narrow frequency range. If the laser frequency is at the center of the frequency range, the precise "resonance frequency" of aluminum, this ion jumps to a higher energy level, or 1 in the binary language of computers. Otherwise, the ion remains in the lower energy state, or 0.
If there is no change in the aluminum ion, then another laser pulse causes both ions to begin rocking side to side in unison because of their physical proximity and the interaction of their electrical charges. An additional laser pulse converts this motion into a change in the internal energy level of the beryllium ion. This pulse reverses the direction of the ion's magnetic "spin," and the beryllium goes dark, a signal that the aluminum remained in the 0 state.
On the other hand, if the aluminum ion jumps to the higher energy level, then the additional laser pulses fail to stimulate a shared rocking motion and have no effect on the beryllium ion, which keeps emitting light. Scientists detect this light as a signal that the aluminum ion jumped from 0 to 1.
The goal is to tune the clock laser to the exact frequency that prompts the aluminum to jump from 0 to 1. The actual measurement of the ticking of the clock is provided not by the ions but rather by the clock laser's precisely tuned center frequency, which is measured with a "frequency comb," a tool for measuring very high optical frequencies, or colors of light. See: www.nist.gov/public_affairs/newsfromnist_frequency_combs.htm.
*T. Rosenband, D.B. Hume, P.O. Schmidt, C.W. Chou, A. Brusch, L. Lorini, W.H. Oskay, R.E. Drullinger, T.M. Fortier, J.E. Stalnaker, S.A. Diddams, W.C. Swann, N.R. Newbury, W.M. Itano, D.J. Wineland, and J.C. Bergquist. 2008. Frequency ratio of Al+ and Hg+ single-ion optical clocks; metrology at the 17th decimal place. Science Express. Published online March 6.


Making 3-D nanosuperconductors with DNA
Three-dimensional (3-D) nanostructured materials—those with complex shapes at a size scale of billionths of a meter—that can conduct electricity without resistance could be used in a range of quantum devices. For example, such 3-D superconducting nanostructures could find application in signal amplifiers to enhance the speed and accuracy of quantum computers and ultrasensitive magnetic field sensors for medical imaging and subsurface geology mapping. However, traditional fabrication tools such as lithography have been limited to 1-D and 2-D nanostructures like superconducting wires and thin films.
Now, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel have developed a platform for making 3-D superconducting nano-architectures with a prescribed organization. As reported in the Nov. 10 issue of Nature Communications, this platform is based on the self-assembly of DNA into desired 3-D shapes at the nanoscale. In DNA self-assembly, a single long strand of DNA is folded by shorter complementary "staple" strands at specific locations—similar to origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.
"Because of its structural programmability, DNA can provide an assembly platform for building designed nanostructures," said co-corresponding author Oleg Gang, leader of the Soft and Bio Nanomaterials Group at Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and a professor of chemical engineering and of applied physics and materials science at Columbia Engineering. "However, the fragility of DNA makes it seem unsuitable for functional device fabrication and nanomanufacturing that requires inorganic materials. In this study, we showed how DNA can serve as a scaffold for building 3-D nanoscale architectures that can be fully "converted" into inorganic materials like superconductors."
To make the scaffold, the Brookhaven and Columbia Engineering scientists first designed octahedral-shaped DNA origami "frames." Aaron Michelson, Gang's graduate student, applied a DNA-programmable strategy so that these frames would assemble into desired lattices. Then, he used a chemistry technique to coat the DNA lattices with silicon dioxide (silica), solidifying the originally soft constructions, which required a liquid environment to preserve their structure. The team tailored the fabrication process so the structures were true to their design, as confirmed by imaging at the CFN Electron Microscopy Facility and small-angle X-ray scattering at the Complex Materials Scattering beamline of Brookhaven's National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II). These experiments demonstrated that the structural integrity was preserved after they coated the DNA lattices.
"In its original form, DNA is completely unusable for processing with conventional nanotechnology methods," said Gang. "But once we coat the DNA with silica, we have a mechanically robust 3-D architecture that we can deposit inorganic materials on using these methods. This is analogous to traditional nanomanufacturing, in which valuable materials are deposited onto flat substrates, typically silicon, to add functionality."
The team shipped the silica-coated DNA lattices from the CFN to Bar-Ilan's Institute of Superconductivity, which is headed by Yosi Yeshurun. Gang and Yeshurun became acquainted a couple years ago, when Gang delivered a seminar on his DNA assembly research. Yeshurun—who over the past decade has been studying the properties of superconductivity at the nanoscale—thought that Gang's DNA-based approach could provide a solution to a problem he was trying to solve: How can we fabricate superconducting nanoscale structures in three dimensions?
"Previously, making 3-D nanosuperconductors involved a very elaborate and difficult process using conventional fabrication techniques," said Yeshurun, co-corresponding author. "Here, we found a relatively simple way using Oleg's DNA structures."
At the Institute of Superconductivity, Yeshurun's graduate student Lior Shani evaporated a low-temperature superconductor (niobium) onto a silicon chip containing a small sample of the lattices. The evaporation rate and silicon substrate temperature had to be carefully controlled so that niobium coated the sample but did not penetrate all the way through. If that happened, a short could occur between the electrodes used for the electronic transport measurements.
"We cut a special channel in the substrate to ensure that the current would only go through the sample itself," explained Yeshurun.
The measurements revealed a 3-D array of Josephson junctions, or thin nonsuperconducting barriers through which superconducting current tunnels. Arrays of Josephson junctions are key to leveraging quantum phenomena in practical technologies, such as superconducting quantum interference devices for magnetic field sensing. In 3-D, more junctions can be packed into a small volume, increasing device power.
"DNA origami has been producing beautiful and ornate 3-D nanoscale structures for almost 15 years, but DNA itself is not necessarily a useful functional material," said Evan Runnerstrom, program manager for materials design at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory of the U.S. Army Research Office, which funded the work in part. "What Prof. Gang has shown here is that you can leverage DNA origami as a template to create useful 3-D nanostructures of functional materials, like superconducting niobium. This ability to arbitrarily design and fabricate complex 3-D-structured functional materials from the bottom-up will accelerate the Army's modernization efforts in areas like sensing, optics, and quantum computing."
"We demonstrated a pathway for how complex DNA organizations can be used to create highly nanostructured 3-D superconducting materials," said Gang. "This material conversion pathway gives us an ability to make a variety of systems with interesting properties—not only superconductivity but also other electronic, mechanical, optical, and catalytic properties. We can envision it as a "molecular lithography," where the power of DNA programmability is transferred to 3-D inorganic nanofabrication."


By: Arjun Walia, Collective-Evolution |
Quantum entanglement: a phenomenon that Einstein thought was so “spooky” that there was no way it could be valid, posits that the “space” between physical objects isn’t actually empty space as our senses perceive it to be, but rather, that either information is travelling faster than the speed of light, or even better, instantaneously with no “time” involved. It implies that everything is connected, that if there was a “big bang,” it happened when all physical matter was one, and then exploded out into little pieces that spread throughout the cosmos. The tricky part to understand is that all those little piece, those plants, those starts, and all the intelligent life that has most certainly formed, is still all connected in some sort of way we have yet to understand.
In the past couple of years alone, quantum entanglement has left the realm of theoretical physics due to several experiments conducted by physicists around the world. For example, an experiment devised by the Griffith University’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics, led by Professor Howard Wiseman and his team of researchers at the university of Tokyo, recently published a paper in the journal Nature Communications confirming what Einstein did not believe to be real: the non-local collapse of a particle’s wave function (source)(source), and this is just one example of many.
They did this by splitting a single photon between two laboratories, and testing whether measurement of it in one laboratory would actually cause a change in the local quantum state in the other laboratory. In doing so, researchers were able to verify the entanglement of the split single photon.
Researchers have since replicated this experiment over and over again, with results of entanglement seen at kilometres of distance.
“Space is just the construct that gives the illusion that there are separate objects.” — Dr. Quantum, from the 2004 film, What The Bleep Do We Know
Below you can see a visual demonstration from the documentary.
In an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, a past director of the Association for Humanistic Psychology Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher, a world-renowned physicist, researcher, and presenter who has done a lot of work for NASA, among several other organizations, admitted that quantum entanglement has been replicated in space with experiments that’ve been done with NASA astronauts, as well as replicated in a number of laboratories around the world.
You can watch that full interview here.
“What it really is, is that particles that are born together stay in connection with each other over even kilometres of distance.” —Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher
Now that this fact has hit the mainstream, a new study in the journal Science shows how scientists were able to produce entangled photons on a satellite orbiting 300 miles above the planet and beam the particles onto two different ground-based labs that were 750 miles apart, all without losing the particles’ strange linkage.
According to the Washington Post, “it is the first time anyone has ever generated entangled particles in space, and represents a 10-fold increase in the distance over which entanglement has been maintained.” But, according to the interview linked above with Dr. Rauscher, it’s clearly not the first time.
“It’s a really stunning achievement, and I think it’s going to be the first of possibly many such interesting and exciting studies that this particular satellite will open up,” said Shohini Ghose, a physicist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. “Who knows, maybe there’ll be a space entanglement race?”
The post goes on to emphasize that:
“There’s good a reason world governments may soon race to test out quantum theory in orbit, and it’s not just so they can claim the title of ‘spookiest.’ Entangled particles could one day be used for ‘quantum communication’ — a means of sending super secure messages that doesn’t rely on cables, wireless signals, or code. Because any interference with an entangled particle, even the mere act of observing it, automatically affects its partner, these missives can’t be hacked. To hear quantum physicists tell it, entangled particles could help build a ‘quantum internet,’ give rise to new kinds of coding, and allow for faster-than-light communication — possibilities that have powerful appeal in an era where hospitals, credit card companies, government agencies, even election systems are falling victim to cyber attacks.”
What About Black Budget Science?
As we’ve mentioned a number of times before, there are severe restrictions on science. And this is no secret. For example, Scientists working for the Canadian government have started to raise their voices, accusing the federal government of “muzzling” them and their findings on various issues. Apparently, the union representing this group of researchers will be taking “the unusual step of demanding Ottawa enshrine scientific independence in their collective agreement.” (source)
What’s even worse is the black budget world. We are talking about Special Access Programs (SAP). From these we have unacknowledged and waived SAPs. These programs do not exist publicly, but they do indeed exist. They are better known as ‘deep black programs.’ A 1997 U.S. Senate report described them as “so sensitive that they are exempt from standard reporting requirements to the Congress.” (source). Think about all of the
resources put into this world, into the military industrial complex, a term coined by president Eisenhower.
What about all of the science that’s going on within this system? All of it is classified, that deals with technology and concepts that are much more advanced and controversial than what we see in the mainstream. We know this from declassified material, like project STARGATE.
We don’t really hear about black budget programs, or about people who have actually looked into them. However, the topic was discussed in 2010 by Washington Post journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin. Their investigation lasted approximately two years and concluded that America’s classified world has:
“Become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employees, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” (source)
Another person was aviation journalist Bill Sweetman. Within the Pentagon, he estimated that approximately 150 special access programs existed that weren’t even acknowledged. These programs are not known about by the highest members of government and the highest ranking officials in the military. He determined that most of these programs were dominated by private contractors (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc.) and that he had no idea as to how these programs were funded. (source)
Another example was the U.S. air strike against Libya in 1986. The raid employed F-111 fighter aircraft. Left out of the mission, however, was the F-117A Nighthawk, better known as the stealth fighter. It had been operational since 1983, but was still classified in 1986. In a form of logic both perverse and rational, the F-117A was so radically advanced that keeping it secret was more important than using it for this military mission. Perhaps the Canadian Avro Arrow could be another.
It’s also noteworthy to mention that the U.S. has a history of government agencies existing in secret for years. The National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, its existence was hidden until the mid 1960s. Even more secretive is the National Reconnaissance Office, which was founded in 1960 but remained completely secret for 30 years.
Given the mixture of a treasure chest of government money, and private connections, the likelihood exists that six decades later there is a clandestine group that possesses:
- Technology that is vastly superior to that of the “mainstream” world.
- The ability to explore areas of our world and surroundings presently unavailable to the rest of us.
- Scientific and cosmological understandings that give them greater insights into the nature of our world.
Inouye was the highest ranking Asian-American politician in U.S. history, serving the democratic party from 1963 until his death in 2012.
There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself. — Senator Daniel Inouye, highest ranking Asian-American politician in United States history (source).


Quantum computers promise huge speedups on some computational problems because they harness a strange physical property called entanglement, in which the physical state of one tiny particle depends on measurements made of another. In quantum computers, entanglement is a computational resource, roughly like a chip’s clock cycles — kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz — and memory in a conventional computer.
In a recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at MIT and IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center show that simple systems of quantum particles exhibit exponentially more entanglement than was previously believed. That means that quantum computers — or other quantum information devices — powerful enough to be of practical use could be closer than we thought.
Where ordinary computers deal in bits of information, quantum computers deal in quantum bits, or qubits. Previously, researchers believed that in a certain class of simple quantum systems, the degree of entanglement was, at best, proportional to the logarithm of the number of qubits.
“For models that satisfy certain physical-reasonability criteria — i.e., they’re not too contrived; they’re something that you could in principle realize in the lab — people thought that a factor of the log of the system size was the best you can do,” says Ramis Movassagh, a researcher at Watson and one of the paper’s two co-authors. “What we proved is that the entanglement scales as the square root of the system size. Which is really exponentially more.”
That means that a 10,000-qubit quantum computer could exhibit about 10 times as much entanglement as previously thought. And that difference increases exponentially as more qubits are added.
Logical or physical?
This matters because of the distinction, in quantum computing, between logical qubits and physical qubits. A logical qubit is an abstraction used to formulate quantum algorithms; a physical qubit is a tiny bit of matter whose quantum states are both controllable and entangled with those of other physical qubits.
A computation involving, say, 100 logical qubits would already be beyond the capacity of all the conventional computers in the world. But with most of today’s theoretical designs for general-purpose quantum computers, realizing a single logical qubit requires somewhere around 100 physical qubits. Most of the physical qubits are used for quantum error correction and to encode operations between logical qubits.
Since preserving entanglement across large groups of qubits is the biggest obstacle to developing working quantum devices, extracting more entanglement from smaller clusters of qubits could make quantum computing devices more practical.
Qubits are analogous to bits in a conventional computer, but where a conventional bit can take on the values 0 or 1, a qubit can be in “superposition,” meaning that it takes on both values at once. If qubits are entangled, they can take on all their possible states simultaneously. One qubit can take on two states, two qubits four, three qubits eight, four qubits 16, and so on. It’s the ability to, in some sense, evaluate computational alternatives simultaneously that gives quantum computers their extraordinary power.
In the new paper, Peter Shor, the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, and Movassagh, who completed his PhD with Shor at MIT, analyze systems of qubits called spin chains. In quantum physics, “spin” describes the way a bit of matter — it could be an electron, or an atom, or a molecule — orients itself in a magnetic field. Shor and Movassagh consider bits of matter with five possible spin states: two up states, two corresponding down states, and a zero, or flat, state.
Previously, theorists had demonstrated strong entanglement in spin chains whose elements had 21 spin states and interacted with each other in complex ways. But such systems would be extremely difficult to build in the lab.
Chain, chain, chain
A spin chain can be envisioned as a sequence of particles lined up next to each other. Interactions between the spins of adjacent particles determine the total energy of the system.
Shor and Movassagh first considered the set of all possible orientations of their spin chain whose net energy was zero. That means that if somewhere there was a spin up, of either of the two types, somewhere there had to be a corresponding spin down.
Then they considered the superposition of all those possible states of the spin chain. But the major breakthrough of the paper was to convert that superposition into the lowest-energy state of a Hamiltonian.
A Hamiltonian is a matrix — a big grid of numbers — that figures in the standard equation for describing the evolution of a quantum system. For any given state of the particles in the system, the Hamiltonian provides the system’s total energy.
In the previous 30 years, Movassagh says, no one had found an example of a Hamiltonian whose lowest-energy state corresponded to a system with as much entanglement as his and Shor’s exhibits. And even for Shor and Movassagh, finding that Hamiltonian required a little bit of luck.
“Originally, we wanted to prove a different problem,” Movassagh says. “We tried to come up with a model that proved some other theorem on generic aspects of entanglement, and we kept failing. But by failing, our models became more and more interesting. At some point, these models started violating this log factor, and they took on a life of their own.”
Pros and cons
“It’s a beautiful result, a beautiful paper,” says Israel Klich, an associate professor of physics at the University of Virginia. “It certainly made for a lot of interest in some parts of the physics community. The result is in fact very, very succinct and simple. It’s a relatively simple Hamiltonian whose ground state one can understand by simple combinatorial means.”
“Inspired by this work, we recently introduced a new variation on this model that is even more entangled, which has, actually, linear scaling of entanglement,” Klich adds. “The reason this was possible is that if you look at the ground state wave function, it’s so easy to understand how entanglement builds up there, and that gave us the idea of how to string it on to be even more entangled.”
But John Cardy, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University and a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, doesn’t find the MIT researchers’ Hamiltonian so simple. “If you read the description of the Hamiltonian, it takes a lot of description,” he says. “When we have physically reasonable Hamiltonians, we can just write them down in one expression. They do have an equation that tells you what the Hamiltonian is. But to explain what all those ingredients are requires this whole formalism that is deliberately designed, as far as I can tell, to get the result that they want.”
“But I don’t want to sound unduly negative, because this is the way that science proceeds,” he adds. “You find one counterexample, then you might find others that are more reasonable.”


Findings by three teams may solve a 40-year-old mystery.
A compound whose odd electrical behaviour has puzzled physicists for decades could turn out to be a boon for quantum physics and electronic-device makers.
When theorists proposed in 2005 that it should be possible to find materials that conduct electricity at the surface while the rest of the sample behaves as an insulator, physicists were intrigued. They wanted to study the quantum effects that should emerge in such materials, and to explore applications in low-power electronics and quantum computing. But topological insulators, as the materials were called, proved fiendishly difficult to make. Some researchers have slaved to produce thin films using complex techniques that are unlikely ever to scale up to the levels needed for industrial purposes. Others have contented themselves with compounds that approximate topological insulators but still have a degree of internal conductivity.
Now, three papers1,2,3 suggest that samarium hexaboride, a poorly understood compound that was first found to gain conducting properties at very low temperatures4 in 1969 by researchers at Bell Labs in New Jersey, may in fact be a topological insulator in its bulk form.
In the most recent paper1in the trend, posted online on 28 November, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, report seeing remarkably fast-moving electrons on the surface of SmB6 crystals, which they take as a sign of a superb surface conductor. Five days earlier, researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park had reported measurements tracing the path of electrons injected into SmB6 samples as they were cooled2. Those results suggest that the material is insulating in its interior at temperatures below around 30 kelvin. And, in a paper posted on 21 November3, scientists from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and University of California, Irvine, describe their measurements of conductivity through the surface and bulk of the material, and find evidence that the surface conducting behaviour persists despite imperfections and impurities, as would be expected from a true topological insulator.
A spurt of interest in topological insulators over the past few years (see ‘Charging up’) led to a 2010 prediction that SmB6would be such a material5. “I’d say we’ve been tentatively vindicated,” says Piers Coleman of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, one of the four theoretical physicists who made the prediction. “We’re thrilled by these new results.”
The prediction grew, in part, from studies of materials known as Kondo insulators, which, unlike ordinary insulators, retain some of the small amount of conductivity they do have when they are cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero. SmB6, which is often categorized as a Kondo insulator, fits this description.
Coleman and other theorists realized that the material’s behaviour would make sense if it were a topological insulator. That would mean that the quantum properties of the material would be such that electrons cannot flow through it freely, as they would in an ordinary conductor, except at the material’s surface. If this proves correct, Coleman thinks that insights gleaned from SmB6 and other Kondo insulators could carry over to all topological insulators.
SmB6is an unusual topological insulator because the electrons in the outer shells of the samarium atoms interact with one another strongly, such that a coordinated motion emerges. This could make the material useful for creating some exotic quantum effects, including magnetic monopoles, or Majorana fermions — quasiparticles that might be useful for quantum computing, says Shoucheng Zhang, who has pioneered work on topological insulators at Stanford University in California. Zhang adds that the rush of interest in SmB6is part of a trend to study materials with electrons that interact strongly with each other. “Now we’re looking at a number of systems. It’s a very exciting development,” he says.
Peter Armitage, who has been working on topological insulating behaviour in bismuth-based compounds at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, says that in the field of condensed-matter physics, experiment usually leads theory, but this is a remarkable example of the opposite. He is now hoping to start experiments on SmB6in the next week or two to confirm and study the surface states. “These are beautiful effects that were hiding under our noses,” he says. “This is a very big advance.”
Botimer, J. et al. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6769 (2012).
Zhang, X. et al. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.5532 (2012).
Wolgast, S. 5 al. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.5104 (2012).
Menth, A., Buehler, E. & Geballe, T. H. Phys. Rev. Lett. 22, 295–297 (1969).
Dzero, M., Sun, K., Galitski, V. & Coleman, P. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 106408 (2010).
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Samuel Reich, E. Hopes surface for exotic insulator. Nature 492, 165 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/492165a


Last year, researchers at Fermilab received over $3.5 million for projects that delve into the burgeoning field of quantum information science. Research funded by the grant runs the gamut, from building and modeling devices for possible use in the development of quantum computers to using ultracold atoms to look for dark matter.
For their quantum computer project, Fermilab particle physicist Adam Lyon and computer scientist Jim Kowalkowski are collaborating with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, where they’ll be running simulations on high-performance computers. Their work will help determine whether instruments called superconducting radio-frequency cavities, also used in particle accelerators, can solve one of the biggest problems facing the successful development of a quantum computer: the decoherence of qubits.
“Fermilab has pioneered making superconducting cavities that can accelerate particles to an extremely high degree in a short amount of space,” said Lyon, one of the lead scientists on the project. “It turns out this is directly applicable to a qubit.”
Researchers in the field have worked on developing successful quantum computing devices for the last several decades; so far, it’s been difficult. This is primarily because quantum computers have to maintain very stable conditions to keep qubits in a quantum state called superposition.
Classical computers use a binary system of 0s and 1s – called bits – to store and analyze data. Eight bits combined make one byte of data, which can be strung together to encode even more information. (There are about 31.8 million bytes in the average three-minute digital song.) In contrast, quantum computers aren’t constrained by a strict binary system. Rather, they operate on a system of qubits, each of which can take on a continuous range of states during computation. Just as an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus doesn’t have a discrete location but rather occupies all positions in its orbit at once in an electron cloud, a qubit can be maintained in a superposition of both 0 and 1.
Since there are two possible states for any given qubit, a pair doubles the amount of information that can be manipulated: 22 = 4. Use four qubits, and that amount of information grows to 24 = 16. With this exponential increase, it would take only 300 entangled qubits to encode more information than there is matter in the universe.
Qubits don’t represent data in the same way as bits. Because qubits in superposition are both 0 and 1 at the same time, they can similarly represent all possible answers to a given problem simultaneously. This is called quantum parallelism, and it’s one of the properties that makes quantum computers so much faster than classical systems.
The difference between classical computers and their quantum counterparts could be compared to a situation in which there is a book with some pages randomly printed in blue ink instead of black. The two computers are given the task of determining how many pages were printed in each color.
“A classical computer would go through every page,” Lyon said. Each page would be marked, one at a time, as either being printed in black or in blue. “A quantum computer, instead of going through the pages sequentially, would go through them all at once.”
Once the computation was complete, a classical computer would give you a definite, discrete answer. If the book had three pages printed in blue, that’s the answer you’d get.
“But a quantum computer is inherently probabilistic,” Kowalkowski said.
This means the data you get back isn’t definite. In a book with 100 pages, the data from a quantum computer wouldn’t be just three. It also could give you, for example, a 1 percent chance of having three blue pages or a 1 percent chance of 50 blue pages.
An obvious problem arises when trying to interpret this data. A quantum computer can perform incredibly fast calculations using parallel qubits, but it spits out only probabilities, which, of course, isn’t very helpful – unless, that is, the right answer could somehow be given a higher probability.
Consider two water waves that approach each other. As they meet, they may constructively interfere, producing one wave with a higher crest. Or they may destructively interfere, canceling each other so that there’s no longer any wave to speak of. Qubit states can also act as waves, exhibiting the same patterns of interference, a property researchers can exploit to identify the most likely answer to the problem they’re given.
“If you can set up interference between the right answers and the wrong answers, you can increase the likelihood that the right answers pop up more than the wrong answers,” Lyon said. “You’re trying to find a quantum way to make the correct answers constructively interfere and the wrong answers destructively interfere.”
When a calculation is run on a quantum computer, the same calculation is run multiple times, and the qubits are allowed to interfere with one another. The result is a distribution curve in which the correct answer is the most frequent response.
Listening for signals above the noise
In the last five years, researchers at universities, government facilities and large companies have made encouraging advancements toward the development of a useful quantum computer. Last year, Google announced that it had performed calculations on their quantum processor called Sycamore in a fraction of the time it would have taken the world’s largest supercomputer to complete the same task.
Yet the quantum devices that we have today are still prototypes, akin to the first large vacuum tube computers of the 1940s.
“The machines we have now don’t scale up much at all,” Lyon said.
There’s still a few hurdles researchers have to overcome before quantum computers become viable and competitive. One of the largest is finding a way to keep delicate qubit states isolated long enough for them to perform calculations.
If a stray photon — a particle of light — from outside the system were to interact with a qubit, its wave would interfere with the qubit’s superposition, essentially turning the calculations into a jumbled mess – a process called decoherence. While the refrigerators do a moderately good job at keeping unwanted interactions to a minimum, they can do so only for a fraction of a second.
“Quantum systems like to be isolated,” Lyon said, “and there’s just no easy way to do that.”
Which is where Lyon and Kowalkowski’s simulation work comes in. If the qubits can’t be kept cold enough to maintain an entangled superposition of states, perhaps the devices themselves can be constructed in a way that makes them less susceptible to noise.
It turns out that superconducting cavities made of niobium, normally used to propel particle beams in accelerators, could be the solution. These cavities need to be constructed very precisely and operate at very low temperatures to efficiently propagate the radio waves that accelerate particle beams. Researchers theorize that by placing quantum processors in these cavities, the qubits will be able to interact undisturbed for seconds rather than the current record of milliseconds, giving them enough time to perform complex calculations.
Qubits come in several different varieties. They can be created by trapping ions within a magnetic field or by using nitrogen atoms surrounded by the carbon lattice formed naturally in crystals. The research at Fermilab and Argonne will be focused on qubits made from photons.
Lyon and his team have taken on the job of simulating how well radio-frequency cavities are expected to perform. By carrying out their simulations on high-performance computers, known as HPCs, at Argonne National Laboratory, they can predict how long photon qubits can interact in this ultralow-noise environment and account for any unexpected interactions.
Researchers around the world have used open-source software for desktop computers to simulate different applications of quantum mechanics, providing developers with blueprints for how to incorporate the results into technology. The scope of these programs, however, is limited by the amount of memory available on personal computers. In order to simulate the exponential scaling of multiple qubits, researchers have to use HPCs.
“Going from one desktop to an HPC, you might be 10,000 times faster,” said Matthew Otten, a fellow at Argonne National Laboratory and collaborator on the project.
Once the team has completed their simulations, the results will be used by Fermilab researchers to help improve and test the cavities for acting as computational devices.
“If we set up a simulation framework, we can ask very targeted questions on the best way to store quantum information and the best way to manipulate it,” said Eric Holland, the deputy head of quantum technology at Fermilab. “We can use that to guide what we develop for quantum technologies.”
This work is supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science.