Transporting renewable energy to where it’s needed lies at the heart of the human endeavour to get rid of the need for fossil fuels. Superconductors can do so without loosing any of the precious electricity on the way, seemingly defying physical intuition. Find out in this article why many body physics is needed to understand their counter-intuitive behaviour, what role quantum entanglement plays and how quantum computation might lead to the discovery of materials which may give us the tools for a greener future.
Dealing with climate change and the shortening fossil resources of our planet is one of the most pressing problems of our generation. Physically, both issues arise from the fact that fossil fuels are incredibly convenient for solving the two most important human tasks: Producing energy and transporting it to where it’s needed. With oil, the former task has been done by nature in the last couple of million years. We just have to pump the ready-made product out of the earth. Transportation is also easy due to its incredible energy density. Just 50kg of oil can carry a car weighing 2 metric tonnes for a thousand kilometres!
The curse of Ohm
At first sight, both problems are not that hard to solve. We know how to harvest the sun’s energy with solar panels, so why don’t we just put a lot of them in the deserts of the earth and then transport the electricity to cities with long cables? The main reason is probably of political nature (deserts close to Europe for example have been war zones recently), but there is also a physical aspect: With current technology, transporting energy comes with a price in the form of Ohm’s law, which holds in all normal metals like copper and iron which we use to transport electricity.
Because of Ohm’s law, we inevitably lose energy when we transport it. And there is also another problem: Because the loss of energy happens in the form of heat, cables have to be thick enough (at a given energy throughput) so they don’t melt. Most current energy transport also happens at high voltage (U), because then the energy loss (P) due to heating is less. But a high voltage also means high electric fields and those fields can be damaging to electronics and humans and we need to make sure that there is no lightning jumping from the cable to the ground. All of these reasons justify why you see all these ugly masts everywhere in today’s civilized world.
While you may say that aesthetics is maybe not the most important thing when it comes to an issue endangering millions of people, reality is that most people would not like to have one of these masts in their front yard. In Germany, this fact has led to the stalling of the “Energiewende” because important electricity transport lines from the windy north (where most renewable energy is produced) to the population and industry centres in the south (where all those shiny cars are built) can’t be set up due to resistance of the population living along the planned route.
But there actually are materials with which you can transport the same amount of electricity as those huge masts in a single cable of just a few cms diameter under any old road! In superconductors, Ohm’s curse doesn’t hold and so they can conduct electricity without any energy loss (and with that I literally mean zero loss). How is that possible you may ask? Doesn’t this sound like a perpetuum mobile, something like a car that keeps on rolling when you just set it moving once?
Every time something counter-intuitive happens in physics, chances are that it’s quantum mechanics that lies at the base of it and it is no different in superconductors. In fact, you can describe a cable of superconducting material with a single wave function, as if it was just one huge quantum particle moving. Superconductors are one of the few examples where quantum effects become truly macroscopic; the kilometres of coherence length reached surmount the wavefunction extent of the electron in a hydrogen atom by a factor of 10’000’000’000’000! Put differently, if an electron wavefunction would be the size of a human then the wavefunction in a superconductor would be as large as the distance between Earth and Pluto!
Electron couple dance
How does this happen exactly and why does this lead to frictionless flow of electricity? While the exact explanation of this is quite involved and resulted in multiple (!) nobel prizes being awarded to the theory’s discoverers, I want to give a simple picture of analogy here. In a normal conductor, electrons are lone wolfs, they fight themselves through the mace of atoms and get pushed around by them, loosing energy to the crystal lattice every time they bump into something.
In a superconductor, something beautiful happens: As the temperature is lowered, electrons suddenly realize that they are note alone, and start to assemble in pairs (called “Cooper pairs” after their discoverer Leon Cooper, Nobel prize ’72). These pairs can then be regarded as one entity, just like a married couple often assumes one name. In the superconductor, this means that the “particles” with which we can base our theoretical description upon, are note the electrons any more, but the new “quasiparticle” (check out our article about those!) which we just called Cooper pair.
But there is something weird in this picture. Everyone knows that all electrons are negatively charged and equal charges repel each other. So how can they suddenly do the opposite? Overcoming this difficulty was the insight of Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer who jointly got awarded the nobel prize for this. They showed that what happens is that when an electron flies through the lattice it also distorts the regularly ordered arrays of atoms. If the relaxation of this distortion is much slower than the time between two electrons passing the same place, then a second electron will feel the effect of this distortion and gets attracted by it. Effectively, blending out the lattice, the first electron has therefore exerted an attractive force on the second. It’s also clear from this picture, that this attraction will be a quite long ranged force between the electrons. In fact, in typical superconductors, the distance between the two constituents of a cooper pair is hundreds of times larger than the distance between atoms in the crystal. This means that I should have drawn the arms on above picture much much longer!
The dancing couples merge
How does superconductivity arise from the cooper pairs? To understand that, we must first understand what’s so special about this pairs. They differ in one substantial property from the electrons: while two electrons can’t be in the same place at the same time (a purely quantum mechanical effect also termed “Pauli exclusion principle”), two,three, four, even hundreds of Cooper pairs can! And at very low temperatures, they also do. In fact, they get so close to each other that their quantum mechanical wave functions start to overlap, so strongly that all of them can in fact be descriped by one, macroscopically large wavefunction. A Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC) has been born, one of the only macroscopic quantum effects known so far.
One of the most counter-intuitive properties of this BEC is that it is also a superfluid, a fluid which can flow without any friction! This means that if you set this fluid in motion, it will never stop! And this is exactly how superconductivity emerges: a superfluid of cooper pairs has the property we were trying to explain all along: It flows without friction through its host material, i.e. without any resistance.
Can this even be used?
Yes and it already is! Ever seen those high-speed Maglev trains in Japan? They are based on yet another weird effect of superconductors: They push magnetic fields out of themselves! Maglevs are using this by levitating on superconducting magnets.
But also the application discussed in the beginning is not in the too far future. First kilometer-long cables of superconducting material have already been built and the proof of principle been shown. The problem however remains that one has to cool these materials with liquid nitrogen for them to be superconducting. There is however a whole different class of materials in which superconductivity ocurrs at much higher temperatures. Somewhat uncreatively, they are called “High temperature superconductors”. And even 30 years after their discovery it still remains a secret how superconductivity emerges in them as the picture which I presented above can’t be used for understanding them. One thing is clear however: Quantum mechanics deeply has its mysterious fingers in their inner workings.
Exciting times are ahead as today’s and tomorrow’s quantum computers study quantum materials like superconductors and they might lead to even more counter-intuitive, exciting and useful phenomena in the future! Stay tuned for more!


Try a quick experiment: Take two flashlights into a dark room and shine them so that their light beams cross. Notice anything peculiar? The rather anticlimactic answer is, probably not. That’s because the individual photons that make up light do not interact. Instead, they simply pass each other by, like indifferent spirits in the night.
But what if light particles could be made to interact, attracting and repelling each other like atoms in ordinary matter? One tantalizing, albeit sci-fi possibility: light sabers — beams of light that can pull and push on each other, making for dazzling, epic confrontations. Or, in a more likely scenario, two beams of light could meet and merge into one single, luminous stream.
It may seem like such optical behavior would require bending the rules of physics, but in fact, scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and elsewhere have now demonstrated that photons can indeed be made to interact — an accomplishment that could open a path toward using photons in quantum computing, if not in lightsabers.
In a paper published today in the journal Science, the team, led by Vladan Vuletic, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics at MIT, and Professor Mikhail Lukin from Harvard University, reports that it has observed groups of three photons interacting and, in effect, sticking together to form a completely new kind of photonic matter.
In controlled experiments, the researchers found that when they shone a very weak laser beam through a dense cloud of ultracold rubidium atoms, rather than exiting the cloud as single, randomly spaced photons, the photons bound together in pairs or triplets, suggesting some kind of interaction — in this case, attraction — taking place among them.
While photons normally have no mass and travel at 300,000 kilometers per second (the speed of light), the researchers found that the bound photons actually acquired a fraction of an electron’s mass. These newly weighed-down light particles were also relatively sluggish, traveling about 100,000 times slower than normal noninteracting photons.
Vuletic says the results demonstrate that photons can indeed attract, or entangle each other. If they can be made to interact in other ways, photons may be harnessed to perform extremely fast, incredibly complex quantum computations.
“The interaction of individual photons has been a very long dream for decades,” Vuletic says.
Vuletic’s co-authors include Qi-Yung Liang, Sergio Cantu, and Travis Nicholson from MIT, Lukin and Aditya Venkatramani of Harvard, Michael Gullans and Alexey Gorshkov of the University of Maryland, Jeff Thompson from Princeton University, and Cheng Ching of the University of Chicago.
Biggering and biggering
Vuletic and Lukin lead the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, and together they have been looking for ways, both theoretical and experimental, to encourage interactions between photons. In 2013, the effort paid off, as the team observed pairs of photons interacting and binding together for the first time, creating an entirely new state of matter.
In their new work, the researchers wondered whether interactions could take place between not only two photons, but more.
“For example, you can combine oxygen molecules to form O2 and O3 (ozone), but not O4, and for some molecules you can’t form even a three-particle molecule,” Vuletic says. “So it was an open question: Can you add more photons to a molecule to make bigger and bigger things?”
To find out, the team used the same experimental approach they used to observe two-photon interactions. The process begins with cooling a cloud of rubidium atoms to ultracold temperatures, just a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Cooling the atoms slows them to a near standstill. Through this cloud of immobilized atoms, the researchers then shine a very weak laser beam — so weak, in fact, that only a handful of photons travel through the cloud at any one time.
The researchers then measure the photons as they come out the other side of the atom cloud. In the new experiment, they found that the photons streamed out as pairs and triplets, rather than exiting the cloud at random intervals, as single photons having nothing to do with each other.
In addition to tracking the number and rate of photons, the team measured the phase of photons, before and after traveling through the atom cloud. A photon’s phase indicates its frequency of oscillation.
“The phase tells you how strongly they’re interacting, and the larger the phase, the stronger they are bound together,” Venkatramani explains. The team observed that as three-photon particles exited the atom cloud simultaneously, their phase was shifted compared to what it was when the photons didn’t interact at all, and was three times larger than the phase shift of two-photon molecules. “This means these photons are not just each of them independently interacting, but they’re all together interacting strongly.”
The researchers then developed a hypothesis to explain what might have caused the photons to interact in the first place. Their model, based on physical principles, puts forth the following scenario: As a single photon moves through the cloud of rubidium atoms, it briefly lands on a nearby atom before skipping to another atom, like a bee flitting between flowers, until it reaches the other end.
If another photon is simultaneously traveling through the cloud, it can also spend some time on a rubidium atom, forming a polariton — a hybrid that is part photon, part atom. Then two polaritons can interact with each other via their atomic component. At the edge of the cloud, the atoms remain where they are, while the photons exit, still bound together. The researchers found that this same phenomenon can occur with three photons, forming an even stronger bond than the interactions between two photons.
“What was interesting was that these triplets formed at all,” Vuletic says. “It was also not known whether they would be equally, less, or more strongly bound compared with photon pairs.”
The entire interaction within the atom cloud occurs over a millionth of a second. And it is this interaction that triggers photons to remain bound together, even after they’ve left the cloud.
“What’s neat about this is, when photons go through the medium, anything that happens in the medium, they ‘remember’ when they get out,” Cantu says.
This means that photons that have interacted with each other, in this case through an attraction between them, can be thought of as strongly correlated, or entangled — a key property for any quantum computing bit.
“Photons can travel very fast over long distances, and people have been using light to transmit information, such as in optical fibers,” Vuletic says. “If photons can influence one another, then if you can entangle these photons, and we’ve done that, you can use them to distribute quantum information in an interesting and useful way.”
Going forward, the team will look for ways to coerce other interactions such as repulsion, where photons may scatter off each other like billiard balls.
“It’s completely novel in the sense that we don’t even know sometimes qualitatively what to expect,” Vuletic says. “With repulsion of photons, can they be such that they form a regular pattern, like a crystal of light? Or will something else happen? It’s very uncharted territory.”
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
Publication: Qi-Yu Liang, et al., “Observation of three-photon bound states in a quantum nonlinear medium,” Science, 16 Feb 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6377, pp. 783-786; DOI: 10.1126/science.aao7293


Entanglement is at the heart of quantum physics and future quantum technologies. Like other aspects of quantum science, the phenomenon of entanglement reveals itself at very tiny, subatomic scales. When two particles, such as a pair of photons or electrons, become entangled, they remain connected even when separated by vast distances. In the same way that a ballet or tango emerges from individual dancers, entanglement arises from the connection between particles. It is what scientists call an emergent property.
How do scientists explain quantum entanglement?
In the video below, Caltech faculty members take a stab at explaining entanglement. Featured: Rana Adhikari, professor of physics; Xie Chen, professor of theoretical physics; Manuel Endres, professor of physics and Rosenberg Scholar; and John Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, and director of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.
When researchers study entanglement, they often use a special kind of crystal to generate two entangled particles from one. The entangled particles are then sent off to different locations. For this example, let's say the researchers want to measure the direction the particles are spinning, which can be either up or down along a given axis. Before the particles are measured, each will be in a state of superposition, or both "spin up" and "spin down" at the same time.
If the researcher measures the direction of one particle's spin and then repeats the measurement on its distant, entangled partner, that researcher will always find that the pair are correlated: if one particle's spin is up, the other's will be down (the spins may instead both be up or both be down, depending on how the experiment is designed, but there will always be a correlation). Returning to our dancer metaphor, this would be like observing one dancer and finding them in a pirouette, and then automatically knowing the other dancer must also be performing a pirouette. The beauty of entanglement is that just knowing the state of one particle automatically tells you something about its companion, even when they are far apart.
Are particles really connected across space?
But are the particles really somehow tethered to each other across space, or is something else going on? Some scientists, including Albert Einstein in the 1930s, pointed out that the entangled particles might have always been spin up or spin down, but that this information was hidden from us until the measurements were made. Such "local hidden variable theories" argued against the mind-boggling aspect of entanglement, instead proposing that something more mundane, yet unseen, is going on.
Thanks to theoretical work by John Stewart Bell in the 1960s, and experimental work done by Caltech alumnus John Clauser (BS '64) and others beginning in the 1970s, scientists have ruled out these local hidden-variable theories. A key to the researchers' success involved observing entangled particles from different angles. In the experiment mentioned above, this means that a researcher would measure their first particle as spin up, but then use a different viewing angle (or a different spin axis direction) to measure the second particle. Rather than the two particles matching up as before, the second particle would have gone back into a state of superposition and, once observed, could be either spin up or down. The choice of the viewing angle changed the outcome of the experiment, which means that there cannot be any hidden information buried inside a particle that determines its spin before it is observed. The dance of entanglement materializes not from any one particle but from the connections between them.
Relativity Remains Intact
A common misconception about entanglement is that the particles are communicating with each other faster than the speed of light, which would go against Einstein's special theory of relativity. Experiments have shown that this is not true, nor can quantum physics be used to send faster-than-light communications. Though scientists still debate how the seemingly bizarre phenomenon of entanglement arises, they know it is a real principle that passes test after test. In fact, while Einstein famously described entanglement as "spooky action at a distance," today's quantum scientists say there is nothing spooky about it.
"It may be tempting to think that the particles are somehow communicating with each other across these great distances, but that is not the case," says Thomas Vidick, a professor of computing and mathematical sciences at Caltech. "There can be correlation without communication," and the particles "can be thought of as one object."
Entanglement can also occur among hundreds, millions, and even more particles. The phenomenon is thought to take place throughout nature, among the atoms and molecules in living species and within metals and other materials. When hundreds of particles become entangled, they still act as one unified object. Like a flock of birds, the particles become a whole entity unto itself without being in direct contact with one another. Caltech scientists focus on the study of these so-called many-body entangled systems, both to understand the fundamental physics and to create and develop new quantum technologies. As John Preskill, Caltech's Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, and director of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, says, "We are making investments in and betting on entanglement being one of the most important themes of 21st-century science."
How Bell's Theorem Proved ‘Spooky Action at a Distance' Is Real


Harvard University researchers have demonstrated the first material that can have both strongly correlated electron interactions and topological properties. It’s a discovery that not only paves the way for more stable quantum computing, but also an entirely new platform to explore the wild world of exotic physics.
The research was published in Nature Physics.
Topological insulators are materials that can conduct electricity on their surface or edge but not in the middle. The strange thing about these materials is that no matter how you cut them, the surface will always be conducting and the middle always insulating. These materials offer a playground for fundamental physics but are also promising for a number of applications in special types of electronics and quantum computing.
Since the discovery of topological insulators, researchers around the world have been working to identify materials with these powerful properties.
“A recent boom in condensed matter physics has come from discovering materials with topologically protected properties,” said Harris Pirie, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and first author of the paper.
One potential material, samarium hexaboride, has been at the center of a fierce debate among condensed matter physicists for more than a decade. The central question: is it or isn’t it a topological insulator?
“Over the last ten years, a bunch of papers have come out saying yes and a bunch of papers have come out saying no,” said Pirie. “The crux of the issue is that most topological materials don’t have strongly interacting electrons, meaning the electrons move too quickly to feel each other. But samarium hexaboride does, meaning that electrons inside this material slow down enough to interact strongly. In this realm, the theory gets fairly speculative and it’s been unclear whether or not it’s possible for materials with strongly interacting properties to also be topological. As experimentalists, we’ve been largely operating blind with materials like this.”
In order to settle the debate and figure out, once and for all, whether or not it’s possible to have both strongly interacting and topological properties, the researchers first needed to find a well-ordered patch of samarium hexaboride surface on which to perform the experiment.
It was no easy task, considering the majority of the material surface is a craggy, disordered mess. The researchers used ultra-high precision measurement tools developed in the lab of Jenny Hoffman, the Clowes Professor of Science and senior author of the paper, to find a suitable, atomic-scale patch of samarium hexaboride.
Next, the team set out to determine if the material was topologically insulating by sending waves of electrons through the material and scattering them off of atomic defects — like dropping a pebble into a pond. By observing the waves, the researchers could figure out the momentum of the electrons in relation to their energy.
“We found that the momentum of the electrons is directly proportional to their energy, which is the smoking gun of a topological insulator,” said Pirie. “It’s really exciting to be finally moving into this intersection of interacting physics and topological physics. We don’t know what we’ll find here.”
As it relates to quantum computing, strongly interacting topological materials may be able to protect qubits from forgetting their quantum state, a process called decoherence.
“If we could encode the quantum information in a topologically protected state, it is less susceptible to external noise that can accidentally switch the qubit,” said Hoffman. “Microsoft already has a large team pursuing topological quantum computation in composite materials and nanostructures. Our work demonstrates a first in a single topological material that harnesses strong electron interactions that might eventually be used for topological quantum computing.”
The researchers are working on next steps for this research.
“The next step will be to use the combination of topologically protected quantum states and strong interactions to engineer novel quantum states of matter, such as topological superconductors,” said Dirk Morr, Professor of Physics at University of Illinois at Chicago and the senior theorist on the paper. “Their extraordinary properties could open unprecedented possibilities for the implementation of topological quantum bits.”
Yu Liu, Anjan Soumyanarayanan, Pengcheng Chen, Yang He, M. M. Yee, P. F. S. Rosa, J. D. Thompson, Dae-Jeong Kim, Z. Fisk, Xiangfeng Wang, Johnpierre Paglione, and M. H. Hamidian also worked on the study.
The electronic measurements at Harvard and the samarium hexaboride crystal growth at UC Irvine were supported by the National Science Foundation. The crystal growth at University of Maryland was supported by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation. Magnetic measurements at Los Alamos National Lab and theoretical work at University of Illinois were supported by the Department of Energy.


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Fuel such as petrol is made up of hydrocarbons – a family of molecules consisting entirely of carbon and hydrogen. Pigment and dye, coal and tar are made up of hydrocarbons too.
These common, abundant materials, sometimes even associated with waste, are not often thought of as being electronically or magnetically interesting.
But an international research team led by Professor Matthew J. Rosseinsky in the University’s Department of Chemistry and Professor Kosmas Prassides of Tohoku University in Japan has made a significant find.
The team have discovered how to take such hydrocarbon molecular components, dress them with electrons, each of which carries a small compass – an unpaired spin – and pack them together like cookies in a box to create a quantum spin liquid – a long-sought hypothetical state of matter.
The existence of quantum spin liquids was first theoretically proposed in 1973. In conventional magnets, the motion of the electron spins – the tiny magnets – freezes on cooling as they align parallel or antiparallel to each other. In contrast, the spins in a quantum spin liquid never stop fluctuating, randomly and strongly, even at the lowest temperature of absolute zero.
Each individual spin points simultaneously along an infinite number of directions and is highly entangled with other spins, even those far away. As such, this sea of electron spins is predicted to be host to many exotic phenomena of both fundamental and technological interest.
However, experimental realization of this unique fully-entangled state of matter has remained to date unfulfilled. Despite a four-decade-long search, there are very few quantum spin liquid candidates. Current options include certain copper inorganic minerals and some organic salts, which contain rare, heavy or toxic elements.
In results published in two consecutive papers in the journal `Nature Chemistry’, the team came up with the new chemistry needed to make high-purity crystalline materials from the reaction of polyaromatic hydrocarbons with alkali metals for the first time.
Materials obtained from polyaromatic hydrocarbons (molecules with many aromatic rings) were proposed in the past as candidates of new superconductors – materials with no electrical resistance and able to carry electricity without losing energy – devoid of toxic or rare elements. However, destruction of the molecular components in the synthetic treatments employed had inhibited any progress in this field.
Professor Matthew Rosseinsky said: “It took us many years of work to achieve our breakthrough. But in the end, we succeeded in developing not one, but two complementary chemistry routes, which open the way to a rich variety of new materials with as-yet unknown properties.”
Professor Kosmas Prassides said: “Removing the existing synthetic roadblock has led to very exciting developments. We have already discovered that some of the structures of the new materials – made entirely of carbon and hydrogen, the simplest possible combination – show unprecedented magnetic properties – spin liquid behaviour – with potential applications in superconductivity and quantum computing.”
The Liverpool and Tohoku groups worked with teams led by Dr Ryotaro Arita at RIKEN, Japan and Professor Denis Arcon at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
The research was supported by the Mitsubishi Foundation, JSPS KAKENHI, JST-ERATO Isobe Degenerate p-Integration Project, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the European Union.
Part of the research was carried out at the synchrotron X-ray facilities at the ESRF (France) and Diamond Light Source.
The papers `π-electron S = ½ quantum-spin-liquid state in an ionic polyaromatic hydrocarbon’ (DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.2764) and `Redox-controlled potassium intercalation into two polyaromatic hydrocarbon solids` (DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.2765) are both published in Nature Chemistry.
Image: Diagrammatic representation of the structure of the ionic hydrocarbon discovered in this work as host of a quantum spin liquid. The left panel shows the molecular ions, which arrange in triangular vertex-sharing chains. The right panel depicts the co-existing spiral magnetic tubes. The two structural motifs interlink to give a complex packing architecture, as shown in projection in the middle panel. Each molecular ion has one spin (shown as grey arrow). The spins perpetually fluctuate down to low temperatures. The figure shows one of an infinite number of entangled spin arrangements. © 2017 Kosmas Prassides
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On May 30, 2020, a SpaceX rocket carrying two American astronauts was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first for a commercial spacecraft, the launch marked the start of a new era of human spaceflight, one in which traveling to space is becoming more accessible. It has reignited the conversation around sending humans back to the Moon and to Mars.
But exploring this new frontier comes with many new challenges, including concerns for astronaut safety. And while to some it might seem like the most dangerous part of the trip would be getting blasted off the planet on a tiny capsule driven by an enormous explosion, there is also risk once you get to space from the constant bombardment of tiny particles from outer space called cosmic rays.
Cosmic rays are highly energetic charged particles—mostly protons—that are accelerated by some of the most violent objects in the universe. They are harmless to us here on Earth’s surface because we are protected by Earth’s magnetosphere, the region of space around our planet that is dominated by a system of magnetic fields; the protection even extends far enough to reach astronauts on the International Space Station. But once humans embark on interplanetary trips, Earth’s magnetosphere can no longer shield them, which means humans are exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.
That’s a problem that Dr. Paolo Desiati of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), a research center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is trying to solve. In collaboration with UW astronomy professor Elena D’Onghia and Kieran Furlong, a senior fellow at UW–Madison’s COWS thinktank, Desiati is developing a magnetic shield that will divert space and cosmic ray radiation away from a volume—functioning kind of like Earth’s magnetosphere. In addition to protecting astronauts and instrumentation from space radiation during interplanetary travel, the technology has another application: protecting quantum computers from the harmful decoherence effects induced by cosmic ray muon radiation on Earth’s surface.
The second application was recently patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), and the team has been awarded support from the Draper Technology Innovation Fund (TIF) for the work necessary to finalize and commercialize the concept. The innovation has also attracted the attention of private companies and was discussed at the highest government levels of the US and Italy.
Desiati, who has been at UW since 2001, is mostly responsible for the technical aspects of the project; for example, he performs all the calculations for the magnetic shield’s feasibility study. As the principal investigator on the Draper TIF award, he is also completing all the detailed studies of the magnetic shield for the quantum computing application.
He and D’Onghia have been working on a magnetic shield for a few years now; the idea was hatched during the pair’s weekly brainstorming sessions at a Madison coffee shop. “Although the idea of protecting astronauts from space radiation is not new, we thought that this would soon be a major issue at this dawn of a new space age,” says Desiati.
In 2019, they sought help from Discovery to Product (D2P), a UW–Madison research center that partners with a range of campus entities to advance entrepreneurial efforts. There, they were matched with a mentor, Kieran Furlong, and participated in innovator programs where they learned how to turn their idea into a marketable product. Furlong, a co-inventor on the WARF patent, is now helping them drive their technology toward a potential commercial application.
“Connecting with D2P was the best thing we could have done, as it gave us a business and commercial perspective on the idea we were starting to work on,” says Desiati. “D2P programs, with the invaluable mentorship of Kieran, expanded our horizons to a wide spectrum of possible applications for our magnetic shielding innovation. Never would I have imagined that the fast-growing quantum computing technology would eventually need to be isolated from the cosmic ray muons to prevent them from disrupting the quantum coherence required for real world operations—and that WARF would have accepted to file a patent on this.”
They have also gotten help from UW–Madison students. In fall 2020, Desiati and D’Onghia were “clients” for College of Engineering students in a freshman design course. As described in an article from the college, Desiati met weekly with the classes to teach them about cosmic rays and magnetic fields so they could prototype magnetic shielding system designs in groups and present their ideas to Desiati and D’Onghia.
Throughout 2021, the two collaborators also workshopped the magnetic shield’s advanced preliminary design with mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering undergraduate seniors. Desiati says that connecting with the “talented UW engineering students” was another boost in the development of their project.
Now, he and D’Onghia are seeking funding for the magnetic shield from NASA and other funding agencies.
“The pandemic has given Elena and me the energy to take our idea and transform it into useful possible applications,” says Desiati. “At our academic jobs, we work on pure scientific research. This new adventure has made it possible to apply some of this knowledge to the service of humanity and technology. Let’s see how far we get. So far it has been a real blast.”
Read more about the project:
- UW–Madison Astronomy Department article
- D2P Innovator Profile
- UW–Madison College of Engineering article


Electrical currents can be now be switched on and off at the smallest conceivable scale enabling a new generation of ‘green electronics’ with the potential for great impact on the digital economy
Robert Wolkow is no stranger to mastering the ultra-small and the ultra-fast. A pioneer in atomic-scale science with a Guinness World Record to boot (for a needle with a single atom at the point), Wolkow’s team, together with collaborators at the Max Plank Institute in Hamburg, have just released findings that detail how to create atomic switches for electricity, many times smaller than what is currently used.
What does it all mean? With applications for practical systems like silicon semi-conductor electronics, it means smaller, more efficient, more energy-conserving computers, as just one example of the technology revolution that is unfolding right before our very eyes (if you can squint that hard).
“This is the first time anyone’s seen a switching of a single-atom channel,” explains Wolkow, a physics professor at the University of Alberta and the Principal Research Officer at Canada’s National Institute for Nanotechnology. “You’ve heard of a transistor–a switch for electricity–well, our switches are almost a hundred times smaller than the smallest on the market today.”
Today’s tiniest transistors operate at the 14 nanometer level, which still represents thousands of atoms. Wolkow’s and his team at the University of Alberta, NINT, and his spinoff QSi, have worked the technology down to just a few atoms. Since computers are simply a composition of many on/off switches, the findings point the way not only to ultra-efficient general purpose computing but also to a new path to quantum computing.
“We’re using this technology to make ultra-green, energy-conserving general purpose computers but also to further the development of quantum computers. We are building the most energy conserving electronics ever, consuming about a thousand times less power than today’s electronics.”
While the new tech is small, the potential societal, economic, and environmental impact of Wolkow’s discovery is very large. Today, our electronics consume several percent of the world’s electricity. As the size of the energy footprint of the digital economy increases, material and energy conservation is becoming increasingly important.
Wolkow says there are surprising benefits to being smaller, both for normal computers, and, for quantum computers too. “Quantum systems are characterized by their delicate hold on information. They’re ever so easily perturbed. Interestingly though, the smaller the system gets, the fewer upsets.” Therefore, Wolkow explains, you can create a system that is simultaneously amazingly small, using less material and churning through less energy, while holding onto information just right.
When the new technology is fully developed, it will lead to not only a smaller energy footprint but also more affordable systems for consumers. “It’s kind of amazing when everything comes together,” says Wolkow.
Wolkow is one of the few people in the world talking about atom-scale manufacturing and believes we are witnessing the beginning of the revolution to come. He and his team have been working with large-scale industry leader Lockheed Martin as the entry point to the market.
“It’s something you don’t even hear about yet, but atom-scale manufacturing is going to be world-changing. People think it’s not quite doable but, but we’re already making things out of atoms routinely. We aren’t doing it just because. We are doing it because the things we can make have ever more desirable properties. They’re not just smaller. They’re different and better. This is just the beginning of what will be at least a century of developments in atom-scale manufacturing, and it will be transformational.”
The Latest on: Atomic-scale manufacturing
via Google News
The Latest on: Atomic-scale manufacturing
- Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) Market 2022, Worth USD 561 Mn by 2028 at CAGR of 8.6% – Report Spread across 74 Pageson August 3, 2022 at 9:20 pm
The Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) market report provides a detailed analysis of global market size, regional and country-level market size, segmentation market growth, market share, competitive ...
- New materials research sees transformations at an atomic levelon August 3, 2022 at 7:31 am
When manufacturing techniques turn metals, ceramics or composites into a technologically useful form, understanding the mechanism of the phase transformation process is essential to shape the behavior ...
- Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) Market In 2022 : Research Insights with Upcoming Trends, Opportunities, Competitive Analysis, Forecast to 2022-2028on July 31, 2022 at 5:01 pm
What are the upstream raw materials and manufacturing equipment of Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) along with the manufacturing process of Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC)? What are the key ...
- Stabenow, Peters urge passage of CHIPS Acton July 26, 2022 at 6:46 pm
The CHIPS Act is one of President Joe Biden’s legislative priorities, and is also championed by both Michigan senators. The bill would invest billions of dollars in boosting domestic semiconductor ...
- Fundamentals underpinning future atomic and close-to-atomic scale manufacturingon July 24, 2022 at 5:00 pm
Atomic and close-to-atomic scale manufacturing (ACSM) represents the processing techniques for high-end products, which requires not only the atomic-level manufacturing precision and functional ...
- Researchers develop novel 3D atomic force microscopy probeson July 21, 2022 at 5:00 pm
A team of researchers has developed new kind of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) probes in true three-dimensional shapes they call 3DTIPs. AFM technology allows scientists to observe, measure, and ...
- Atomically Precise Manufacturing Nanotech Meets The Semi Worldon July 21, 2022 at 5:00 pm
One new area where atomically precise manufacturing (APM ... that by the nature of things has to be the future is one with atomic precision. Down at the nanometer scale, structures are only a few or a ...
- Atomic level deposition to extend Moore’s law and beyondon July 13, 2022 at 5:00 pm
Finally, atomic scale resolution can be achieved by inherently ... an increasingly important role in the field of micro-nano manufacturing. The chip makers have shown strong interest in this ...
- Senior ministers to retire before Victoria’s election – as it happenedon June 23, 2022 at 2:13 am
Simmons said the atomic-scale circuit technology would allow ... The “exquisite precision of the device” also proved their atomic manufacturing capabilities, she said. To build the processor ...
via Bing News


Google researchers are figuring out how to study some of the weirdest theorized physics phenomena, like wormholes that link pairs of black holes, using experiments in a lab.
One central question driving theoretical physics today is how to use the same theory to explain both gravity and the rules that atoms follow, called quantum mechanics. The two haven’t played nicely yet, since gravity is an incredibly weak force, so probing it at the smallest scales is effectively impossible with today’s technology. But theoretical work has demonstrated that hints of this “quantum gravity” might emerge in certain quantum systems, ones that would one day be possible to create in the lab. One such experiment proposed by Google physicists posits that a quantum state reproducible in the physics lab can be explained as information traveling through a wormhole between two black holes.
“The experimental study of such situations therefore offers a path toward a deeper understanding of quantum gravity,” the authors write in the paper published on the arXiv.
It seems that gravity simply refuses to cooperate with quantum mechanics, and theorists have worked hard to string the two together—yet there are places where both concepts must exist simultaneously, such as on the surface of or inside black holes and at the moment of the Big Bang. One of the most popular theories linking the two is string theory, which replaces subatomic particles with tiny strings vibrating in a higher-dimensional space. String theory exists on scales far smaller than can be probed with particle accelerators, making it hard to test. However, a two-decade-old conjecture called the AdS/CFT correspondence essentially says that you can understand the higher-dimensional gravity in this higher-dimensional world as if it were a hologram produced by quantum mechanical particles. So a team of physicists at Google, as well as CalTech, the University of Maryland, and the University of Amsterdam, think that studying extreme quantum behaviors might provide stronger evidence of string theory’s existence. Maybe quantum computers could produce string theory-probing behaviors—or wormhole-like phenomena.
Among this decades’ most important physical advances has been the development of machines that control and manipulate quantum states, what we call quantum computers and quantum simulators. The smallest objects, like electrons orbiting atoms, can only take on certain values of properties, but when you’re not looking at them, they can have different values simultaneously (until you measure them, at least, when they go back to only having one value). Two or more particles can also entangle, meaning they and their properties must be described as a single mathematical object, even if you separate the atoms across space.
Google’s proposal suggests creating a circuit with two sets of connected qubits, the artificial “atoms” of the quantum computer, and dividing it into a left and right group. Pulses of inputted energy do the mathematical equivalent of evolving the qubits’ state backward in time, while another pulse is used to encode a “message” by altering the lefthand atoms’ quantum states in a specific way. Another pulse then plays the role of speeding up the qubits’ behavior. Crucial to the black hole analogy, this scrambles the message among the qubits in a mathematically similar way to how information about a particle’s properties is scrambled and potentially lost upon entering a black hole. Once the information is scrambled, each qubit on the left is entangled with its mirror-image qubit on the right. Finally, after some amount of time, the message mysteriously should reappear in the righthand qubits, without requiring any decoding.
“It is not at all obvious how the message made it [to the other side of the system], and the most surprising fact of all is that the simplest explanation lies in the physics of black holes,” the authors write in the paper. Essentially, the researchers think that the information traveling between groups of qubits in the system is analogous to a message entering a black hole, traveling through a wormhole, and emerging outside of a second black hole. The researchers then go on to introduce a mathematical framework for understanding what’s going on and how it serves as an analogy to a traversable wormhole that doesn’t collapse.
According to the paper, there are potential setups where this system can be realized. One setup consists of arrays of atoms’ electrons are either in the lowest-energy or a very-high “Rydberg” state, controlled by laser pulses. Another is made from arrays of trapped charged ions. Either might one day be able to realize the experiment proposed by Google.
Basically, scientists think they can make a quantum computer act mathematically similar to information passing between two black holes via a wormhole. No wormholes will actually be created here on Earth. This is just a model, and like other analog systems, just because the mathematical description of a lab experiment looks like someone’s theory describing space doesn’t mean that the theory is automatically correct. These models are just a way to produce stronger mathematical evidence that a theory might be correct. None of the researchers nor Google have responded to Gizmodo’s request for comment; I’ll update the post if I hear back.
This work builds on research into quantum information scrambling over time, as well as connections between this scrambling and black holes. But it has physicists buzzing with excitement nonetheless. Last week, dozens of physicists met at a Google X conference to discuss how quantum technology could be useful for quantum gravity researchers. “That was quite a moment, hearing about this experiment,” Guillaume Verdon, quantum resident at the Google-founded X who was not involved in this work, told Gizmodo. Studying quantum gravity “was the dream that brought me into quantum computing.”
Quantum computers that can create these wormhole-mimicking “thermofield-double” qubit states described in the paper are on the horizon, Christopher Monroe, a University of Maryland physics professor who consulted on this research, told Gizmodo. He hopes that the trapped-ion quantum computer that his group is working on could soon serve as a platform upon which to create the quantum states required to test these ideas. “Papers like this are motivating us, and giving us a push in university, company, and government labs to build these things.”


If computers only do what we tell them, how do they create random numbers?
Random numbers are all around us, particuarly when we look at computers. Our “auto-generated” passwords, the amount of coins you win for logging in daily to your favorite game, and, of course, the =RAND() Excel function – all random. So where do these random numbers come from? Is there some magical random place within your computer?
Like all things in computer (quantum computers excluded), things just don’t happen on their own. Computers do what they’re programmed to do. The same applies to random numbers. Not to burst your bubble, but those “random” numbers aren’t actually random, as we’ll see. In fact they’re made with simple algorithms you can quickly create yourself.
Origins of Random Numbers
To create random numbers, we typically use a Random Number Generator (RNG) (but of course we do…). The first RNG was devised by John von Neumann in the 1940’s. Many current methods still piggyback off of his initial work. Von Neumann suspected that he could start with any number he could think of (known as a seed), square it, and slice out the middle numbers. So if we started with 675248, we’d then square it to get 455959861504, we’d then slice out the middle numbers (959861) to arrive at our “random number” . From there, we could then use 959861 as our seed to repeat the process, getting 51 as our second “random” number.
|Scrape out Middle as our Random Number||959861|
|Set new Seed||959861|
As you can see, there’s really nothing random about this method. It’s computed using a simple equation, yet it does produce values that appear random to us. Because of these two properties, we’ll call these number pseudo-random numbers (PRN). Today’s algorithms commonly utilize the same foundation, but of course have advanced significantly. Most continue to start with an initial number (seed), perform a computation, and reiterate that computation with the last result. Von Neumann’s work isn’t used today because people noticed the “random numbers” quickly start to repeat themselves in this cycle. Today’s algorithms are commonly optimized to repeat only after billions or trillions of runs.
Create Your Own Random Number Generator
A simple, but pretty useful random number generator is called the Linear Congruent Generator (LCG) – and yes, it sounds much worse than it really is. Like Von Neumann, you start with a seed. We then multiply the seed by a special prime number, and the perform a modulo with it and another prime number. (These prime numbers are selected to ensure they cycle repeats only after very long runs). We then plug our random number back into the system as the new seed.
#Simple Linear Congruential Generator (LCG) import numpy as np def generator(seed, n,): #create an empty list to store our n random numbers array_of_rn = np.empty(n) for i,_ in enumerate(array_of_rn): random_number = np.mod((58598 * seed), 233280) #save the random number array_of_rn[i] = random_number #reset the seed to the last random number seed = random_number return array_of_rn generator(1438786,10) ## array([ 23948., 125704., 186992., 195616., 27008., 43264., 130112., 12736., 41408., 80704.])
What Happens with Bad Random Number Generators?
Remember those “special prime numbers” we talked about in the last section? Yes, those really are needed. Let’s see why. Below is a plot of 100 randomly generated numbers using our algorithm above (I generated random x’s and random y’s and plotted).
As you can see, everything really does look random. Now, let’s use the exact same algorithm, same seeds, same everything, except change those special prime numbers to 2 and 8. Again, we’ll generate 100 points using two lists of random numbers.
No, it’s not a mistake. You only see 3 points. Why? Because without those special primes, our algorithm continually repeats itself. In this case, each cycle is 3 points and the same 3 “random numbers” appear over and over again.
Hopefully you’ve learned a little about how those random-numbers you see are made. If you look close, you’ll start to see them everywhere – especially with all of those new two-factor authentication apps. Of course today’s top-of-the-line RNGs are much more complex than the simple ones we’ve covered – and will likely get even more complex with the rise of quantum computing. But for now, the underlying mechanics are the same. They’re not truly random, but they’re the best we can do for now and they generally do the trick.


By using optical equipment in a totally unexpected way, MIT researchers have created an imaging system that makes light look slow.
MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second. Thats fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottles bottom.
Media Lab postdoc Andreas Velten, one of the systems developers, calls it the ultimate in slow motion: Theres nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera, he says.
The system relies on a recent technology called a streak camera, deployed in a totally unexpected way. The aperture of the streak camera is a narrow slit. Particles of light photons enter the camera through the slit and pass through an electric field that deflects them in a direction perpendicular to the slit. Because the electric field is changing very rapidly, it deflects late-arriving photons more than it does early-arriving ones.
The image produced by the camera is thus two-dimensional, but only one of the dimensions the one corresponding to the direction of the slit is spatial. The other dimension, corresponding to the degree of deflection, is time. The image thus represents the time of arrival of photons passing through a one-dimensional slice of space.
The camera was intended for use in experiments where light passes through or is emitted by a chemical sample. Since chemists are chiefly interested in the wavelengths of light that a sample absorbs, or in how the intensity of the emitted light changes over time, the fact that the camera registers only one spatial dimension is irrelevant.
But its a serious drawback in a video camera. To produce their super-slow-mo videos, Velten, Media Lab Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar and Moungi Bawendi, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry, must perform the same experiment such as passing a light pulse through a bottle over and over, continually repositioning the streak camera to gradually build up a two-dimensional image. Synchronizing the camera and the laser that generates the pulse, so that the timing of every exposure is the same, requires a battery of sophisticated optical equipment and exquisite mechanical control. It takes only a nanosecond a billionth of a second for light to scatter through a bottle, but it takes about an hour to collect all the data necessary for the final video. For that reason, Raskar calls the new system the worlds slowest fastest camera.
Doing the math
After an hour, the researchers accumulate hundreds of thousands of data sets, each of which plots the one-dimensional positions of photons against their times of arrival. Raskar, Velten and other members of Raskars Camera Culture group at the Media Lab developed algorithms that can stitch that raw data into a set of sequential two-dimensional images.
The streak camera and the laser that generates the light pulses both cutting-edge devices with a cumulative price tag of $250,000 were provided by Bawendi, a pioneer in research on quantum dots: tiny, light-emitting clusters of semiconductor particles that have potential applications in quantum computing, video-display technology, biological imaging, solar cells and a host of other areas.
The trillion-frame-per-second imaging system, which the researchers have presented both at the Optical Society's Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging conference and at Siggraph, is a spinoff of another Camera Culture project, a camera that can see around corners. That camera works by bouncing light off a reflective surface say, the wall opposite a doorway and measuring the time it takes different photons to return. But while both systems use ultrashort bursts of laser light and streak cameras, the arrangement of their other optical components and their reconstruction algorithms are tailored to their disparate tasks.
Because the ultrafast-imaging system requires multiple passes to produce its videos, it cant record events that arent exactly repeatable. Any practical applications will probably involve cases where the way in which light scatters or bounces around as it strikes different surfaces is itself a source of useful information. Those cases may, however, include analyses of the physical structure of both manufactured materials and biological tissues like ultrasound with light, as Raskar puts it.
As a longtime camera researcher, Raskar also sees a potential application in the development of better camera flashes. An ultimate dream is, how do you create studio-like lighting from a compact flash? How can I take a portable camera that has a tiny flash and create the illusion that I have all these umbrellas, and sport lights, and so on? asks Raskar, the NEC Career Development Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences. With our ultrafast imaging, we can actually analyze how the photons are traveling through the world. And then we can recreate a new photo by creating the illusion that the photons started somewhere else.
Its very interesting work. I am very impressed, says Nils Abramson, a professor of applied holography at Swedens Royal Institute of Technology. In the late 1970s, Abramson pioneered a technique called light-in-flight holography, which ultimately proved able to capture images of light waves at a rate of 100 billion frames per second.
But as Abramson points out, his technique requires so-called coherent light, meaning that the troughs and crests of the light waves that produce the image have to line up with each other. If you happen to destroy the coherence when the light is passing through different objects, then it doesnt work, Abramson says. So I think its much better if you can use ordinary light, which Ramesh does.
Indeed, Velten says, As photons bounce around in the scene or inside objects, they lose coherence. Only an incoherent detection method like ours can see those photons. And those photons, Velten says, could let researchers learn more about the material properties of the objects, about what is under their surface and about the layout of the scene. Because we can see those photons, we could use them to look inside objects for example, for medical imaging, or to identify materials.
Im surprised that the method Ive been using has not been more popular, Abramson adds. Ive felt rather alone. Im very glad that someone else is doing something similar. Because I think there are many interesting things to find when you can do this sort of study of the light itself.
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.


It is interesting to note that there are not only 5 generations of programming languages. There are also 5 generations of computers or computer technology in other words. In this article we shall be going through history to see how computers have evolved. In case you are wondering let us briefly look at what defines a computer generation in these contexts. The thing with technology is that is it ever-changing and new advancements are always being made. What differentiates one computer generation from another is some huge leap forward. In simple terms, when a huge and significant technological advancement is made, that is what ushers in the next computer generation.
Table of Contents
First Generation of Computers
You probably have heard before that the first computers were extremely big. Well, you heard right because that was exactly the case with the first generation computer. Typically one computer could fill an entire room. Just to put things into perspective, one of the first generation computers had 20000 vacuum tubes, 70000 resistors and 10000 capacitors. All in all, that computer weighed 30 million kilograms.
The working mechanism was comprised of two major components i.e. vacuum tubes and magnetic drums. The former were meant for the electric circuits that would drive the computer. The latter was the driver of the memory component of the computer. JP Eckert and JW Mauchy built the first ever computer titled the ENIAC. The acronym stood for Electronic Numeric Integrated And Calculator.
Despite being very big they had very little in terms of functionality. Memory capacity was very low and overheating was a huge problem. First generation computers employed the use of low level programming languages (i.e. machine language). The first generation of computers covered a period spanning from 1940 to 1956. Example of a first generation computer is the UNIVAC, EDVAC and IBM-701.
Second Generation of Computers
1956 to 1963 was the period that saw the era of second generation computers. When it comes to the second generation computer there was one huge improvement. We earlier mentioned that circuits for the first generation computer were driven by vacuum tubes. In this era the transistor came in to take the role of the vacuum tubes. This led to improvements in energy consumption and also performance in terms of speed.
Overheating was still an issue here despite the improvements. Second generation computers employed the use of what was called assembly languages. In short, programming them was no longer just strictly based on binary. The use of mnemonics in programming was beginning to pick up momentum here. Examples of second generation computers are the IBM 7094, CDC 1604, and UNIVAC 1108.
Third Generation of Computers
This generation was from 1964 to 1971. With third generation computers came in some interesting changes. One of the key changes was the coming in of integrated circuits. It was Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby who came up with the innovation of integrated circuits during the 1950s. This was all thanks to the fact that transistors had been engineered in such a way that they could be very small. Integrated circuits are still at the core of what computers are in this day and age. Just as speed was stepped in for the second generation computers, it was further stepped up here. Size was markedly improved here because computers became way smaller in size and footprint. The present setup of the computer as it is today started taking shape during this third generation. The idea of having input and output devices along with an operating system was not available for the previous generations. This all came along for the third generation computer. Examples of third generations of computers are the IBM-360 series, IBM-370/168 and TDC-316.
Fourth Generation of Computers
The fourth generation entailed further advancements to the computer. Layers and layers of new innovations were being added to the previous ones to come up with a consummate computer. One of the key highlights of this generation was the coming in of the microprocessor. This played an instrumental role in further reducing the size of the computer. It is also at this time that the idea of ‘personal computer’ came to life. Earlier, computers were still expensive and out of reach of the general public. It is also during this same generation that IBM and Apple started making a name for themselves in the PCs industry. The fourth generation of computers was from 1971 to 2010. Examples of fourth generation computers are STAR 1000, IBM 4341, PDP 11 and DEC 10.
Fifth Generation of Computers
Fifth generation are computers that are still evolving in many ways. Bear in mind that the major highlight of the fifth generation computer is artificial intelligence (AI). It is postulated that in the near future the computer will be able to understand natural language and also to learn on its own. This will be a huge leap forward from the computer understanding binary language and being told what to do by algorithms coded by humans.
Anyways, there are several highlights of the fifth generation computer. Some of them are AI (as stated earlier), advanced semiconductor technology and advanced parallel processing, more user friendly interfaces with multimedia features. This generation includes the fascinating field of quantum computing. Some of the things we just highlighted are strongly believed to be things that will be done by a quantum computer. Currently quantum computers are still evolving and also too expensive to be made available as personal computers. The fifth generation of computers spans from 1980 to present day and the future. Examples of fifth generation computers are laptop, desktop, notebook, chromebook, ultrabook etc.
That is the history of computers with respect to a generation by generation look. The journey is still on as we definitely will see more advancements being made in the evolution of computers. Technologies or fields such as quantum computing and nanotechnology will bring about some amazing computers in the near future.


Quantum entanglement is a process by which microscopic objects like electrons or atoms lose their individuality to become better coordinated with each other. Entanglement is at the heart of quantum technologies that promise large advances in computing, communications and sensing, for example detecting gravitational waves.
Entangled states are famously fragile: in most cases even a tiny disturbance will undo the entanglement. For this reason, current quantum technologies take great pains to isolate the microscopic systems they work with, and typically operate at temperatures close to absolute zero. The ICFO team, in contrast, heated a collection of atoms to 450 Kelvin, millions of times hotter than most atoms used for quantum technology. Moreover, the individual atoms were anything but isolated; they collided with each other every few microseconds, and each collision set their electrons spinning in random directions.
The researchers used a laser to monitor the magnetization of this hot, chaotic gas. The magnetization is caused by the spinning electrons in the atoms, and provides a way to study the effect of the collisions and to detect entanglement. What the researchers observed was an enormous number of entangled atoms - about 100 times more than ever before observed. They also saw that the entanglement is non-local - it involves atoms that are not close to each other. Between any two entangled atoms there are thousands of other atoms, many of which are entangled with still other atoms, in a giant, hot and messy entangled state.
What they also saw, as Jia Kong, first author of the study, recalls, "is that if we stop the measurement, the entanglement remains for about 1 millisecond, which means that 1000 times per second a new batch of 15 trillion atoms is being entangled. And you must think that 1 ms is a very long time for the atoms, long enough for about fifty random collisions to occur. This clearly shows that the entanglement is not destroyed by these random events. This is maybe the most surprising result of the work".
The observation of this hot and messy entangled state paves the way for ultra-sensitive magnetic field detection. For example, in magnetoencephalography (magnetic brain imaging), a new generation of sensors uses these same hot, high-density atomic gases to detect the magnetic fields produced by brain activity. The new results show that entanglement can improve the sensitivity of this technique, which has applications in fundamental brain science and neurosurgery.
As ICREA Prof. at ICFO Morgan Mitchell states, "this result is surprising, a real departure from what everyone expects of entanglement." He adds "we hope that this kind of giant entangled state will lead to better sensor performance in applications ranging from brain imaging to self-driving cars to searches for dark matter."
A Spin Singlet and QND
A spin singlet is one form of entanglement where the multiple particles' spins--their intrinsic angular momentum--add up to 0, meaning the system has zero total angular momentum. In this study, the researchers applied quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement to extract the information of the spin of trillions of atoms. The technique passes laser photons with a specific energy through the gas of atoms. These photons with this precise energy do not excite the atoms but they themselves are affected by the encounter. The atoms' spins act as magnets to rotate the polarization of the light. By measuring how much the photons' polarization has changed after passing through the cloud, the researchers are able to determine the total spin of the gas of atoms.
The SERF regime
Current magnetometers operate in a regime that is called SERF, far away from the near absolute zero temperatures that researchers typically employ to study entangled atoms. In this regime, any atom experiences many random collisions with other neighbouring atoms, making collisions the most important effect on the state of the atom. In addition, because they are in a hot medium rather than an ultracold one, the collisions rapidly randomize the spin of the electrons in any given atom. The experiment shows, surprisingly, that this kind of disturbance does not break the entangled states, it merely passes the entanglement from one atom to another.
ICFO was founded by the Government of Catalonia and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), both of which are members of its board of trustees along with the Cellex and Mir-Puig Foundations, philanthropic entities that have played a critical role in the advancement of the institute. Located in the Mediterranean Technology Park in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, the institute currently hosts 400 people, organized in 25 research groups in 60 state-of-the-art research laboratories. Research lines encompass diverse areas in which photonics plays a decisive role, with an emphasis on basic and applied themes relevant to medicine and biology, advanced imaging techniques, information technologies, a range of environmental sensors, tunable and ultra-fast lasers, quantum science, photovoltaics and the properties and applications of nano-materials such as graphene, among others. In addition to two state awarded Severo Ochoa accreditations of excellence, ICFOnians have secured 15 ICREA Professorships and 37 European Research Council grants. ICFO is proactive in fostering entrepreneurial activities, spin-off creation, and creating collaborations and links between industry and ICFO researchers. To date, ICFO has helped create 7 start-up companies.
Hangzhou Dianzi University is located in Hangzhou, one of the most dynamic cities in the Yang-tse River Delta area and the capital city of Zhejiang Province, one of the most prosperous provinces in China with strong economic growth, vitality and potential. Hangzhou Dianzi University (HDU) was founded in 1956. It is a comprehensive university and one of the best top 5 universities with its own distinctive features in the field of electronic science and technology, engineering and information technology as well as management and accounting,etc. HDU has over 25000 students and more than 2300 staff members. It has 21 schools and research institutes which offers 59 undergraduate programs, 93 postgraduate programs and 6 PhD programs in science, engineering, management, economics, literature, law, education and art, along with multiple interactive disciplines and specialties. HDU has successfully established partner relationships and developed many kinds of international cooperative programs with more than 90 universities and institutes all over the world, including USA, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Belarus, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Japan, etc.


One of the first electronic, programmable computers in the world is remembered today mostly by its nickname: Colossus. The fact that this moniker evokes one of the seven wonders of the ancient world is fitting both physically and conceptually. Colossus, which filled an entire room and included dinner-plate-sized pulleys that had to be loaded with tape, was built in World War II to help crack Nazi codes. Ten versions of the mammoth computer would decrypt tens of millions of characters of German messages before the war ended.
Colossus was a marvel at a time when “computers” still referred to people—women, usually—rather than machines. And it is practically unrecognizable by today's computing standards, made up of thousands of vacuum tubes that contained glowing hot filaments. The machine was programmable, but not based on stored memory. Operators used switches and plugs to modify wires when they wanted to run different programs. Colossus was a beast and a capricious one at that.
In the early days of computing, this was to be expected. Vacuum tubes worked in computers, but they didn’t always work very well. They took up tons of space, overheated, and burned out. The switch to transistor technology in the 1960s was revolutionary for this reason. It was the transistor that led to the creation of the integrated circuit. And it was the steady growth of transistors per unit area—doubling every two years or so for three decades—that came to be known as Moore’s Law. The switch from tubes to transistors represented a turning point in computing that—despite the huge strides since—hasn’t had a contemporary parallel until now.
We are at an analogous crossroads today, a moment in which seemingly incremental and highly technical changes to computing architecture could usher in a new way of thinking about what a computer is. This particular inflection point comes as quantum computing crosses a threshold from the theoretical to the physical.
Quantum computing promises processing speeds and heft that seem unimaginable by today’s standards. A working quantum computer—linked up to surveillance technology, let's say—might be able to instantly identify a single individual in real-time by combing through a database that includes billions of faces. Such a computer might also be able to simulate a complex chemical reaction, or crack through the toughest encryption tools in existence. (There’s an entire field of study dedicated to post-quantum cryptography. It’s based on writing algorithms that could withstand an attack by a quantum computer. People still aren't sure if such security is even possible, which means quantum computing could wreak havoc on global financial systems, governments, and other institutions.)
It’s often said that a working quantum computer would take days to solve a problem that a classical computer would take millions of years to sort through. Now, theoretical ideas about the development of such machines—long relegated to the realm of mathematical formula—are being turned into computer chips.
“As we started making these better controlled, engineered systems that do the physics as written down in the textbook, we start to engage more theorists and people who are more interested in these systems actually existing,” said Jerry Chow, the manager of the experimental quantum computing group at IBM. “It's definitely exciting because we're starting to really make systems which are of interest in terms of not only potential applications but also underlying physics.”
IBM announced in April that it had figured out a critical kind of error detection by building a square lattice of four superconducting qubits—units of quantum information—on a chip roughly one-quarter-inch square. The advances the company announced represent a key step toward actually building a large-scale quantum computer, Chow told me, because it represents a physical structure that could be rebuilt bigger while keeping quantum properties in tact—one of the core challenges in quantum computing. “It's basically a primitive for this scabale architecture,” Chow said. “The idea is to continue to grow this lattice to reach the point where you can encode a perfect qubit—a pefect, logical qubit in a sea of these faulty physical qubits.”
The error detection component is critical to advances in quantum computing. As Chow and his colleagues wrote of their findings in Nature, qubits are “susceptible to a much larger spectrum of errors” than classical bits.
“So any way to speed this up with a protocol that can deal with errors simultaneously is likely to be a significant improvement,” said Steve Rolston, the co-director of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. “Almost all of the qubits in a real quantum computer are going to be there for error detection. It seems kind of crazy but it could be the case that 99 percent of the qubits that are there in a quantum computer are there for error detection and correction.”
The race to build a large-scale working quantum computer has intensified in recent years—and recent months, in particular. In 2013, Google bought what it says is a quantum computer from the company D-Wave, a Canadian company which has also sold its machine to the defense contractor Lockheed Martin. (Google is also letting NASA use the D-Wave system as part of a public-private partnership.) In March of this year, Google said it had built a nine-qubit device that successfully detected one (but not both) of the key kinds of errors typical in quantum computing. After IBM's announcement that followed in April, D-Wave announced in June it had broken the 1,000-qubit barrier, a processing milestone that it said would allow “significantly more complex computational problems to be solved than was possible on any previous quantum computer.”
D-Wave has a somewhat controversial history, with critics saying its claims about what its computers can do are often overstated. And yet there's no question that much has happened in the two decades since Shor's algorithm, named for the mathemetician Peter Shor, first offered a framework for quantum computing. “Peter shor came up with his algorithm in 1994,” Rolston told me. “It's been a long time now, a surprisingly long time in some ways. If you look at what's really happened in those last 20 years, mainly what people have been doing is really trying to perfect qubits and interactions with one or a handful of qubits—keeping the idea of scability in the back of their minds. There's no pont in me making a perfect qubit if I can't make hundreds, but there's also no point in desinging a hundred if I can't get one or two to behave properly.”
Up until about five years ago, most quantum computing work was still being done on single-qubit level. That's rapidly changing. “The real challenge,” Chow, of IBM, said, “is how we're going to controllably put more and more of these together so we can still control what we need to but the quantum information can be protected. People say we're basically somewhere between the vacuum tube and transistor. We're still in the early days.”


If you have ever applied for a job before you’ve likely encountered this requirement: critical thinking skills.
Throughout our day-to-day lives, we are constantly presented with choices that we need to make. Should I hit the snooze button? Should I wear a tie or not? Should I ask for a raise at work?
All these choices make us stop for a moment to evaluate our options. If I hit the snooze button, then I’ll get more sleep but might be late for work. If I don’t hit the snooze button I might be tired for work, but at least I’ll show up on time. This deconstruction of weighing the pros and cons is what critical thinking is all about.
According to the University of Toronto, critical thinking is the practice of using a number of different advanced thinking techniques in a variety of complex ways.
Obviously, this can sound like a fairly vague definition. In its most basic sense, critical thinking involves gathering massive amounts of information, systematically analyzing that information, and making rational and informed conclusions.
To go into more detail, we split critical thinking skills into three general components:
- it focuses on how things are proven or presented,
- it involves reflection on our decisions and the process,
- and it is discipline specific.
How is critical thinking different than regular thinking?
To examine the difference between these two thinking techniques, we need to look at three things:
- what we are focusing on,
- how do we do it,
- and what’s the ultimate goal.
With regular thinking, we focus on the facts at hand. For example, it’s 7:30 am, I’m going to be late for work.
Next, we attempt to construct relationships between different ideas and develop inferences based on those relationships.
Finally, we form a plan of action for what we are thinking about.
When it comes to critical thinking skills, the main idea is that the regular thinking process is undertaken in much more detail. We focus on different points of views or opinions and the merits of each.
Next, we examine the relationships in depth. We must evaluate not only other people’s methods of thinking, but also our own.
Finally, we use the material we have assessed to make an informed decision about what we have been thinking about, and how we thought about it.
In a sense, we are thinking about thinking.
Simple enough right?
Well, without further ado, here are 10 sure-fire ways to improve your critical thinking skills.
1. Know what question you want to ask
Before thinking about any idea critically, you want to know what question you are trying to ask.
You must approach the question with an open mind and understand the reason why you want this particular problem solved. To improve your critical thinking skills, you must examine the question from a logical standpoint, not an emotional one.
2. Be self-aware
One of the most important characteristics of people who think critically is that they are self-aware. They know that they aren’t always right.
Critical thinkers are open to the views and opinions of others and will take their input into consideration with the same weight as their own.
3. Act with integrity
Again, we are trying to improve our thinking skills, not our ability to always be right.
To be a productive thinker, one must act honestly and with integrity. It’s only by acting with integrity that eventually we can come to a rational and logical conclusion.
4. Ask simple questions
Going back to tip #1, the question you want to ask doesn’t need to be profoundly difficult. Does every earthly problem require a drawn out and elaborate thinking process?
Sometimes when we overthink things, the original question gets lost in the quagmire.
To combat this, break the overall question into smaller ones: what do I currently know about the problem? How did I come to know this information? What am I trying to solve?
5. Don’t assume things
Assuming makes an *** out of you and me. You know the old saying. Even if something is globally assumed, you should question it.
Way back in the day people assumed the Earth was flat. However, because critical thinkers don’t assume things, they analyzed the data and came to know that the Earth was a sphere.
6. Swap relationships
For example, let’s just say that excessive video game use causes us to smoke. Instead of looking at relationships from one point of view, try swapping them. Does smoking cause excessive video game use?
Although this example is merely hypothetical, switching variables in relationships allows to deconstruct these relationships and make more informed decisions.
7. Gather the information you’re presented with and evaluate it without bias
Tip #2 tells us that to be a critical thinker we must be self-aware. Aware that other people’s opinions are just as important as our own. Therefore, we need to take the information they present to us and evaluate it in the same way that we evaluate our own.
For example, if someone told you about the relationship between video games and smoking, you should ask yourself how they got this information and why.
This is the main concept behind the media reporting on a new scientific study. Every day the media tells us that some new study shows how X causes Y. But, as all scientists know, correlation does not prove causation. We need to examine who conducted the study, how they conducted it, and why they conducted it.
8. Don’t solely rely on others
Although critical thinking requires intense levels of research and analysis, don’t sell yourself short. Even if you are not an expert in the question you want answered, you should never discount your own views and ideas. Sure, you might not be an expert on Quantum Entanglement, but always include your own thoughts (however limited they may be) in the thinking process.
9. Combine all the information gathered from tips #1-#8
You’ve been open-minded, you sought others advice, you were unbiased, and you didn’t make assumptions. Now you need to combine all of this information to make a conclusion.
You have all your deconstructed ideas and opinions and now need to weigh the implications of each decision. In other words, you’re examining the pros and cons of one decision vs. the other.
You’ve done your research on Quantum Entanglement so now it’s time to decide if you are for it, or against it. Weigh the pros and the cons, examine the implications of your choice, and arrive at a logical conclusion.
10. Don’t try and think critically exclusively
Critical thinking involves massive amounts of research, information processing, and analysis. Obviously, you can’t think this way all the time. You would never get anything done!
Should you hit the snooze button? “Well, let’s examine my own rationale and the views of my co-workers, and then conduct extensive literature research on the relationship between sleeping and work productivity”.
By the time you thought about this decision critically, you already missed a full day of work and the point is moot. Save your critical thinking skills for the important decisions in life. Like that honors thesis or your investment strategy.
There you have it, 10 sure-fire ways to improve your critical thinking skills.
When it comes to improving thinking skills, the jargon can get fairly wordy and complicated. If this all seems confusing, the best course of action would be to think critically about critical thinking!
Okay, maybe that didn’t lessen the confusion.
Regardless, if you want to make informed and sound decisions in life, critical thinking is your friend. It is in your best interests to learn these tips, apply them, and get thinking about thinking!


Scientists have uncovered a mathematical shortcut for calculating an all-important feature of quantum devices.
Having crunched the numbers on the quantum properties of 12,000 elements and compounds, researchers have published a new equation for approximating the length of time the materials can maintain quantum information, called “coherence time.”
The elegant formula allows scientists to estimate the materials’ coherence times in an instant — versus the hours or weeks it would take to calculate an exact value.
“People have had to rely on complicated codes and calculations to predict spin qubit coherence times. But now people can compute the prediction by themselves instantaneously. This opens opportunities for researchers to find the next generation of qubit materials by themselves.” — Shun Kanai, Tohoku University
The team, comprising scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, Tohoku University in Japan and Ajou University in Korea, published their result in April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Their work is supported the Center for Novel Pathways to Quantum Coherence in Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, and by Q-NEXT, a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Argonne.
The team’s equation applies to a particular class of materials — those that can be used in devices called spin qubits.
“People have had to rely on complicated codes and calculations to predict spin qubit coherence times. But now people can compute the prediction by themselves instantaneously,” said study co-author Shun Kanai of Tohoku University. “This opens opportunities for researchers to find the next generation of qubit materials by themselves.”
Qubits are the fundamental unit of quantum information, the quantum version of classical computer bits. They come in different forms and varieties, including a type called the spin qubit. A spin qubit stores data in a material’s spin — a quantum property inherent in all atomic and subatomic matter, such as electrons, atoms and groups of atoms.
Scientists expect that quantum technologies will be able to help improve our everyday lives. We may be able to send information over quantum communication networks that are impenetrable to hackers, or we could use quantum simulations to speed up drug delivery.
The realization of this potential will depend on having qubits that are stable enough — that have long enough coherence times — to store, process and send the information.
While the research team’s equation gives only a rough prediction of a material’s coherence time, it gets pretty close to the true value. And what the equation lacks in precision, it makes up for in convenience. It requires only five numbers — the values of five particular properties of the material in question — to get a solution. Plug them in, and voila! You have your coherence time.
Diamond and silicon carbide are currently the best-established materials for hosting spin qubits. Now scientists can explore other candidates without having to spend days calculating whether a material is worth a deeper dive.
“The equation is like a lens. It tells you, ‘Look here, look at this material — it looks promising,’” said University of Chicago Professor and Argonne senior scientist Giulia Galli, a co-author of the study and Q-NEXT collaborator. “We are after new qubit platforms, new materials. Identifying mathematical relationships like this one points out new materials to try, to combine.”
With this equation in hand, the researchers plan to boost the accuracy of their model.
They’ll also connect with researchers who can create the materials with the most promising coherence times, testing whether they perform as well as the equation predicts. (The team has marked one success already: A scientist outside the team reported that the relatively long coherence time of a material called calcium tungstate performed as predicted by the team’s formula.)
“Our results help us with advancing current quantum information technology, but that’s not all,” said Tohoku University Professor Hideo Ohno, who is currently president of the university and paper co-author. “It will unlock new possibilities by bridging the quantum technology with a variety of conventional systems, allowing us to make even greater progress with the materials we’re already familiar with. We’re pushing more than one scientific frontier.”
The other authors of the paper are F. Joseph Heremans, Argonne and UChicago; Hosung Seo, Ajou University; Gary Wolfowicz, Argonne and UChicago; Christopher P. Anderson, UChicago; Sean E. Sullivan, Argonne; Mykyta Onizhuk, UChicago; and David D. Awschalom, Argonne and UChicago.
This work was supported by the Center for Novel Pathways to Quantum Coherence in Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science National Quantum Information Science Research Centers.
Q-NEXT is a U.S. Department of Energy National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Argonne National Laboratory. Q-NEXT brings together world-class researchers from national laboratories, universities and U.S. technology companies with the single goal of developing the science and technology to control and distribute quantum information. Q-NEXT collaborators and institutions will create two national foundries for quantum materials and devices, develop networks of sensors and secure communications systems, establish simulation and network testbeds, and train a next-generation quantum-ready workforce to ensure continued U.S. scientific and economic leadership in this rapidly advancing field. For more information, visit https://www.q-next.org.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.