Category Archives: Quantum Computer
Perspective: End Of An Era | WNIJ and WNIU – WNIJ and WNIU
David Gunkel's "Perspective" (January 8, 2020).
The holiday shopping is over and everyone is busy playing with their new toys. But what was remarkable about Christmas 2019 might have been the conspicuous absence of such toys.
Previous holiday seasons saw the introduction of impressive technological wonders -- tablet computers, the iPhone, Nintendo Wii and the X-box. But this year, there was no stand-out, got-to-have technological object.
On the one hand, this may actually be a good thing. The amount of waste generated by discarded consumer electronics is a massive global problem that we are not even close to managing responsibly. On the other hand however, this may be an indication of the beginning of the end of an era -- the era of Moores Law.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, then CEO of Intel, predicted that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years, meaning that computer chip performance would develop at an almost exponential rate. But even Moore knew there was a physical limit to this dramatic escalation in computer power, and we are beginning to see it top out. That may be one reason why there were no new, got-to-have technological gizmos and gadgets this holiday season.
Sure, quantum computing is already being positioned as the next big thing. But it will be years, if not decades, before it finds its way into consumer products. So for now, do not ask Santa to fill your stocking with a brand-new quantum device. It will, for now at least, continue to be lumps of increasingly disappointing silicon.
Im David Gunkel, and thats my perspective.
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Perspective: End Of An Era | WNIJ and WNIU - WNIJ and WNIU
Volkswagen carried out the world’s first pilot project for traffic optimization with a quantum computer – Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source
In Lisbon, Volkswagen carried out the world's first pilot project for traffic optimization with a quantum computer. MAN buses of the public transport provider CARRIS were equipped with a system developed in-house. This system uses a quantum computer and calculates the individually fastest route for each of the participating buses in almost real time. In this way, traffic jams could be detected and avoided.
In the future, Volkswagen plans to develop its traffic optimization system to market maturity. For this reason, the Volkswagen developers have designed the system so that it can generally be applied to any city and to vehicle fleets of any size. Further pilot projects for cities in Germany and other European countries are already being considered. Volkswagen believes that such a traffic optimization system could be offered to public transport companies, taxi companies or fleet operators.
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Volkswagen carried out the world's first pilot project for traffic optimization with a quantum computer - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source
The 12 Most Important and Stunning Quantum Experiments of 2019 – Livescience.com
The smallest scale events have giant consequences. And no field of science demonstrates that better than quantum physics, which explores the strange behaviors of mostly very small things. In 2019, quantum experiments went to new and even stranger places and practical quantum computing inched ever closer to reality, despite some controversies. These were the most important and surprising quantum events of 2019.
If one quantum news item from 2019 makes the history books, it will probably be a big announcement that came from Google: The tech company announced that it had achieved "quantum supremacy." That's a fancy way of saying that Google had built a computer that could perform certain tasks faster than any classical computer could. (The category of classical computers includes any machine that relies on regular old 1s and 0s, such as the device you're using to read this article.)
Google's quantum supremacy claim, if borne out, would mark an inflection point in the history of computing. Quantum computers rely on strange small-scale physical effects like entanglement, as well as certain basic uncertainties in the nano-universe, to perform their calculations. In theory, that quality gives these machines certain advantages over classical computers. They can easily break classical encryption schemes, send perfectly encrypted messages, run some simulations faster than classical computers can and generally solve hard problems very easily. The difficulty is that no one's ever made a quantum computer fast enough to take advantage of those theoretical advantages or at least no one had, until Google's feat this year.
Not everyone buys the tech company's supremacy claim though. Subhash Kak, a quantum skeptic and researcher at Oklahoma State University, laid out several of the reasons in this article for Live Science.
Read more about Google's achievement of quantum supremacy.
Another 2019 quantum inflection point came from the world of weights and measures. The standard kilogram, the physical object that defined the unit of mass for all measurements, had long been a 130-year-old, platinum-iridium cylinder weighing 2.2 lbs. and sitting in a room in France. That changed this year.
The old kilo was pretty good, barely changing mass over the decades. But the new kilo is perfect: Based on the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, as well as a quirk in the behavior of energy at quantum scales, physicists were able to arrive at a definition of the kilogram that won't change at all between this year and the end of the universe.
Read more about the perfect kilogram.
A team of physicists designed a quantum experiment that showed that facts actually change depending on your perspective on the situation. Physicists performed a sort of "coin toss" using photons in a tiny quantum computer, finding that the results were different at different detectors, depending on their perspectives.
"We show that, in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts," the experimentalists wrote in an article for Live Science. "In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective."
Read more about the lack of objective reality.
For the first time, physicists made a photograph of the phenomenon Albert Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance," in which two particles remain physically linked despite being separated across distances. This feature of the quantum world had long been experimentally verified, but this was the first time anyone got to see it.
Read more about the unforgettable image of entanglement.
In some ways the conceptual opposite of entanglement, quantum superposition is enables a single object to be in two (or more) places at once, a consequence of matter existing as both particles and waves. Typically, this is achieved with tiny particles like electrons.
But in a 2019 experiment, physicists managed to pull off superposition at the largest scale ever: using hulking, 2,000-atom molecules from the world of medical science known as "oligo-tetraphenylporphyrins enriched with fluoroalkylsulfanyl chains."
Read about the macro-scale achievement of superposition.
Under normal circumstances, heat can cross a vacuum in only one manner: in the form of radiation. (That's what you're feeling when the sun's rays cross space to beat on your face on a summer day.) Otherwise, in standard physical models, heat moves in two manners: First, energized particles can knock into other particles and transfer their energy. (Wrap your hands around a warm cup of tea to feel this effect.) Second, a warm fluid can displace a colder fluid. (That's what happens when you turn the heater on in your car, flooding the interior with warm air.) So without radiation, heat can't cross a vacuum.
But quantum physics, as usual, breaks the rules. In a 2019 experiment, physicists took advantage of the fact that at the quantum scale, vacuums aren't truly empty. Instead, they're full of tiny, random fluctuations that pop into and out of existence. At a small enough scale, the researchers found, heat can cross a vacuum by jumping from one fluctuation to the next across the apparently empty space.
Read more about heat leaping across the quantum vacuum of space.
This next finding is far from an experimentally verified discovery, and it's even well outside the realm of traditional quantum physics. But researchers working with quantum gravity a theoretical construct designed to unify the worlds of quantum mechanics and Einstein's general relativity showed that under certain circumstances an event might cause an effect that occurred earlier in time.
Certain very heavy objects can influence the flow of time in their immediate vicinity due to general relativity. We know this is true. And quantum superposition dictates that objects can be in multiple places at once. Put a very heavy object (like a big planet) in a state of quantum superposition, the researchers wrote, and you can design oddball scenarios where cause and effect take place in the wrong order.
Read more about cause and effect reversing.
Physicists have long known about a strange effect known as "quantum tunneling," in which particles seem to pass through seemingly impassable barriers. It's not because they're so small that they find holes, though. In 2019, an experiment showed how this really happens.
Quantum physics says that particles are also waves, and you can think of those waves as probability projections for the location of the particle. But they're still waves. Smash a wave against a barrier in the ocean, and it will lose some energy, but a smaller wave will appear on the other side. A similar effect occurs in the quantum world, the researchers found. And as long as there's a bit of probability wave left on the far side of the barrier, the particle has a chance of making it through the obstruction, tunneling through a space where it seems it should not fit.
Read more about the amazing quantum tunneling effect.
This was a big year for ultra-high-pressure physics. And one of the boldest claims came from a French laboratory, which announced that it had created a holy grail substance for materials science: metallic hydrogen. Under high enough pressures, such as those thought to exist at the core of Jupiter, single-proton hydrogen atoms are thought to act as an alkali metal. But no one had ever managed to generate pressures high enough to demonstrate the effect in a lab before. This year, the team said they'd seen it at 425 gigapascals (4.2 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level). Not everyone buys that claim, however.
Read more about metallic hydrogen.
Zap a mass of supercooled atoms with a magnetic field, and you'll see "quantum fireworks": jets of atoms firing off in apparently random directions. Researchers suspected there might be a pattern in the fireworks, but it wasn't obvious just from looking. With the aid of a computer, though, researchers discovered a shape to the fireworks effect: a quantum turtle. No one's yet sure why it takes that shape, however.
Read more about the quantum turtle.
Time's supposed to move in only one direction: forward. Spill some milk on the ground, and there's no way to perfectly dry out the dirt and return that same clean milk back into the cup. A spreading quantum wave function doesn't unspread.
Except in this case, it did. Using a tiny, two-qubit quantum computer, physicists were able to write an algorithm that could return every ripple of a wave to the particle that created it unwinding the event and effectively turning back the arrow of time.
Read more about reversing time's arrow.
A nice feature of quantum computers, which rely on superpositions rather than 1s and 0s, is their ability to play out multiple calculations at once. That advantage is on full display in a new quantum prediction engine developed in 2019. Simulating a series of connected events, the researchers behind the engine were able to encode 16 possible futures into a single photon in their engine. Now that's multitasking!
Read more about the 16 possible futures.
Originally published on Live Science.
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The 12 Most Important and Stunning Quantum Experiments of 2019 - Livescience.com
Physicists Just Achieved The First-Ever Quantum Teleportation Between Computer Chips – ScienceAlert
As 2019 winds to a close, the journey towards fully realised quantum computing continues: physicists have been able to demonstrate quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time.
Put simply, this breakthrough means that information was passed between the chips not by physical electronic connections, but through quantum entanglement by linking two particles across a gap using the principles of quantum physics.
We don't yet understand everything about quantum entanglement (it's the same phenomenon Albert Einstein famously called "spooky action"), but being able to use it to send information between computer chips is significant, even if so far we're confined to a tightly controlled lab environment.
"We were able to demonstrate a high-quality entanglement link across two chips in the lab, where photons on either chip share a single quantum state," explains quantum physicist Dan Llewellynfrom the University of Bristol in the UK.
"Each chip was then fully programmed to perform a range of demonstrations which utilise the entanglement."
Hypothetically, quantum entanglement can work over any distance. Two particles get inextricably linked together, which means looking at one tells us something about the other, wherever it is (in this case, on a separate computer chip).
To achieve their result, the team generated pairs of entangled photons, encoding quantum information in a way that ensured low levels of interference and high levels of accuracy. Up to four qubits the quantum equivalent of classical computing bits were linked together.
"The flagship demonstration was a two-chip teleportation experiment, whereby the individual quantum state of a particle is transmitted across the two chips after a quantum measurement is performed," says Llewellyn.
"This measurement utilises the strange behaviour of quantum physics, which simultaneously collapses the entanglement link and transfers the particle state to another particle already on the receiver chip."
The researchers were then able to run experiments in which the fidelity reached 91 percent as in, almost all the information was accurately transmitted and logged.
Scientists are learning more and more about how quantum entanglement works, but for now it's very hard to control. It's not something you can install inside a laptop: you need a lot of bulky, expensive scientific equipment to get it working.
But the hope is that advances in the lab, such as this one, might one day lead to advances in computing that everyone can take advantage of super-powerful processing power and a next-level internet with built-in hacking protections.
The low data loss and high stability of the teleportation, as well as the high level of control that the scientists were able to get over their experiments, are all promising signs in terms of follow-up research.
It's also a useful study for efforts to get quantum physics working with the silicon chip (Si-chip) tech used in today's computers, and the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) techniques used to make those chips.
"In the future, a single Si-chip integration of quantum photonic devices and classical electronic controls will open the door for fully chip-based CMOS-compatible quantum communication and information processing networks," says quantum physicist Jianwei Wang, from Peking University in China.
The research has been published in Nature Physics.
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Physicists Just Achieved The First-Ever Quantum Teleportation Between Computer Chips - ScienceAlert
Quantum Supremacy and the Regulation of Quantum Technologies – The Regulatory Review
Advancing technology requires regulators to act quickly to develop standards and defenses against cyberattacks.
After a false-start in September, Google provided the first peer-reviewed evidence of quantum supremacy a month later in the prestigious journal Nature. The announcement was the latest crescendo in the development of quantum computersemerging technologies that can efficiently solve complicated computational problems with hardware that takes advantage of quantum mechanics.
With data privacy and national security at stake, agile and adaptive regulatory strategies are needed to manage the risks of fast-approaching quantum computers without thwarting their potential benefits.
Although classical computers use binary bits to perform calculations, devices under development, like Googles, use qubits that are not limited to 1s and 0s when they process information. Instead, through phenomena like superposition and entanglement, groups of qubits can have exponentially more power by not merely being on or off, but also being some blend of on and off at the same time. With the right programming and hardware design, quantum computers should be able to work smarter than classical computers when making sense of large datasets.
Demonstrating that a quantum computer can actually solve problems even supercomputers cannot handleso called quantum supremacy (or, preferably, the less violent quantum advantage)has long been an envied goal in the quantum engineering field. But, as the CEO of leading quantum technology firm Rigetti noted, practical quantum devices will create new risks and could lead to unanticipated policy challenges.
Setting risks aside, quantum technologies do promise exciting near-term benefits. Quantum advantage highlights the raw power of these devices to work with big datasets and could be used to advance drug discovery, business analytics, artificial intelligence, traffic control, and more. Although IBM has moved to cast doubt on the achievement, Googles publication claims the team is only one creative algorithm away from valuable near-term applications. The world could almost be at the dawn of an era of quantum computers with day-to-day applications.
But practical quantum computers could also rip through current cybersecurity infrastructure. The abilities of these emerging technologies create significant national security concerns, both in the United States and for other countries investing heavily in quantum technologies, such as China.
Quantum cyberattacks could also put private or sensitive information at risk or expose corporate intellectual property and trade secrets.
To be sure, one developer showing quantum advantage for a single task does not mean the quantum cyberattacks will start tomorrow, so panic should be avoided. But, despite the hype, attaining quantum advantage does signal an approaching time when these attacks could become possible.
Achieving quantum advantage or supremacy is bittersweet, then, given the potential for both benefit and harm. Even though this is the first report of the achievement in the United States, it is not impossible that this goal has been reached elsewhere or will be soon. With this understanding, what should the regulatory and policy responses look like to manage novel risks while still encouraging benefits?
Three strategies can help prepare for the coming wave of quantum computers without undermining innovation, drawing on technical standards and codes of conduct as regulatory tools.
First, private standards will be useful for responding to quantum concerns. These voluntary, technical standards can give government and industry a common language to speak by creating agreed-upon definitions and ways of measuring quantum computers performance capabilities. Technical standards can therefore facilitate policy conversations about how powerful quantum computers really are and what types of risks are realistic and deserve policymakers attention.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE) is currently working on setting standards for terminology and performance metrics in quantum computing. Given the global authority and reputation of IEEE, these standards could become quite influential when adopted and even be helpful for industry. To get ahead of potential quantum cyberattacks, experts from government, industry, academia, and NGOs should participate in standardization efforts to accelerate this work and add different perspectives to make standards more comprehensive and inclusive.
Second, the quantum computing industry itself can be proactive even without government taking the lead. I argue in a recent paper that, to guide responsible development of these powerful new technologies, quantum computing companies could create codes of conduct todetail best practices and principles for the responsible deployment of quantum computing.
Codes of conduct can show that an emerging industry is trying to be responsible and transparent while publicly setting expectations for good behavior. With concerns that quantum computers might be used for nefarious purposes or fall into the wrong hands, the industry should respond by committing to act responsibly through quantum codesand have a chance to help define what responsibility means in this new area as an added benefit.
Finally, the industry should work to support the development of standards for another technology intended to defend from quantum cyberattacks, called post-quantum cryptography. Quantum computers excel at solving problems that require factoring large numbers, which gets right to the heart of current cybersecurity methods. Post-quantum cryptography tries to counter this strength by creating new types of encryption that quantum computers will be less adept at cracking.
Post-quantum methods still must be fully developed, standardized, and then implemented in critical networkscreating a need for policy and governance efforts to facilitate the transition to a post-quantum world. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has begun to work on post-quantum standards, but these efforts will not finish overnight. The potential urgency of practical quantum computers means that work to standardize and advance post-quantum cryptographic methods deserves greater attention and resources from both the public and private sectors, as well as expert groups and non-governmental organizations.
Googles announcement that it has reached quantum advantage or supremacy is a great achievement in the long push to develop pragmatic quantum computers that can benefit society. But even though this announcement does not mean cybersecurity ends tomorrow, the security and privacy risks of quantum computers deserve policymakers prompt attention.
Responding to these challenges with public and private standards and codes of conduct should promote responsibility, security, and growth in the development of emerging quantum technologies.
Walter G. Johnson, a J.D. candidate and research assistant at the Sandra Day OConnor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he also holds a masters degree in science and technology policy.
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Quantum Supremacy and the Regulation of Quantum Technologies - The Regulatory Review
The Best of Science in 2019 – Research Matters
As Newtons famous quote, standing on the shoulders of giants, this year, science has made considerable advances, building on many feats achieved in the past years. New discoveries, insights and inventions in the areas of astronomy, biology, medicine, paleontology and physics marked the year. Here is a selected pick of ten such breakthroughs in science witnessed in 2019.
1. Detailing the Denisovans
An early sketch of a Denisovan teen [Image Credits: Maayen Harel]
This year revealed some fantastic facts about our ancient ancestors, the Denisovans, who lived about 100,000 years ago. So far, we knew about them through scrap fossils from the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia. This year, researchers found a fossilised jawbone in the Tibetian plateau, which on DNA analysis showed that it belonged to the Denisovans, who were the regions first hominin inhabitants. It was also believed earlier that Denisovans were closely related to Neanderthals than to present-day humans. On the contrary, genomic analysis of the fossils from the Denisova Cave showed that they were closer to humans than to Neanderthals. But, how did our ancestors look like? Based on patterns of chemical changes in their DNA, researchers have reconstructed the anatomy of Denisovans. The findings reveal that some traits, like a sloping forehead, long face and large pelvis resemble Neanderthals, while others, like a large dental arch and very wide skull, are unique. Based on these findings, they even reconstructed the face of a teenage Denisovan girl.
2. An elusive cure to Ebola
Electron micrograph of an Ebola virus virion [Image Credits: CDC/Cynthia Goldsmith]
Ebola, a deadly viral disease that shook the African continent, affects humans and other primates and a cure for this disease has eluded science so far. Although an experimental vaccine is being developed, without a therapeutic cure, those infected are doomed to die. This year, two drugs that were tested during an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may have hopes as they dramatically increased patients chances of survival. The two drugs, named REGN-EB3 and mAb-114, contain a cocktail of antibodies that are injected into the bloodstream of those infected. These drugs have shown a success rate of about 90% , bringing hopes to those battered by the disease.
3. The first image of a blackhole
The first captured image of a black hole [Image Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration]
Black holes, the most dense objects of our Universe, have been awe-inspiring for a century. However, we did not even know how they lookedbut all that changed this year. Scientists used a combination of telescope observations around the globe to reveal the first ever photograph of a supermassive black hole present at the heart of the distant galaxy Messier 87 in the Virgo constellation. The image, which captures the shadow of the black hole, shows a black hole that is 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass of 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. Researchers believe that this epic photograph opens a new window into the study of black holes, their event horizons, and gravity.
4. Conquering Quantum Computing
Photograph of the Sycamore processor. [Image Credits: Erik Lucero, Research Scientist and Lead Production Quantum Hardware, Google]
Although physicists have been working on realising the concept of quantum computing for over three decades, it wasnt until this year that there was something tangible. Physicists and Engineers at Google claim to have developed the first functional quantum computer that can perform a set of computations in 200 seconds, which would have otherwise taken the worlds fastest supercomputer 10,000 years! This quantum computer has a 54-qubit processor, named Sycamore, which is comprised of quantum logic gates.
5. Beating malnutrition in the gut
Escherichia coli, a common bacteria found in the human gut [Image Credits: Photo by Eric Erbe, digital colorization by Christopher Pooley, both of USDA, ARS, EMU]
While it was long known that microbes in our gut played a vital role in our health and well-being, two studies published during the year showed how they could be used to address malnutritiona condition that affects millions of children around the world. The researchers analysed the types of microbes present in the gut of healthy and malnourished children and focused on boosting crucial gut microbes in the children using affordable, culturally acceptable foods.
6. Pushing the limits of gene editing
The DNA Double Helix [Image Credits: Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay]
After tasting success and controversies last year for genetically editing babies, researchers in China this year reported to have cloned five genetically edited macaques for research purposes for the first time. These monkeys have reduced sleep, increased movements in the night, increased anxiety and depression, and schizophrenia-like behaviors. Although it raises ethical questions, the researchers believe that cloned monkeys could replace the wild monkeys used in laboratories today. In the UK, scientists used gene therapy to arrest a form of age-related blindness and in the US, CRISPR, the gene editing software, was used to treat cancer.
7. The rampant loss of worlds ice
Meltwater on the ice shelf next to McMurdo Station, Antarctica.[Image Credit: Nicholas Bayou, UNAVCO]
With the rising global temperature, ice on the Earths surface is melting at a rapid rate. In Greenland, the ice sheets are melting seven times faster than they did in the 90s. Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992, a quantity - enough to push global sea levels up by 10.6 millimetres. In Antartica, studies have detected significant changes in the thickness of the floating ice shelves, which hold the land-based ice in place. As a result, there could be more ice moving from the land into the sea. Similar loss of ice has been reported in the Alps and the Himalayas. The rising sea levels are estimated to displace 300 million people all over the world, affecting coastal cities and their livelihoods.
8. Taking a closer look at the Moon
The far side of the moon that is invisible to Earth [ Image Credits: NASA Apollo 16 photograph AS16-3021]
This year, China's National Space Administration (CNSA) achieved the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon with its Chang'e 4 mission. This mission will attempt to determine the age and composition of an unexplored region of the Moon. India also launched its second lunar mission, Chandrayaan 2, to map and study the variations in the lunar surface composition, and the location and abundance of water. The mission consisted of an orbiter, the Vikram lunar lander and the Pragyan rover. However, Vikram crashed during landing, in its attempt to land closer to the lunar south pole.
9. Biodiversity on the brink of extinction
A frog from the Western Ghats
This year, an extensive report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that of the estimated 8 million species of animals and plants on the planet, about a million face the threat of extinction, many within decades. About 40% of amphibians, a third of marine life and about 10% of the insects are at the brink of extinction. The report mentions that changes in land and sea use, exploitation of organisms; climate change, pollution and invasive alien species as primary reasons behind this situation.
10. Chronicling the final moments of dinosaurs
Image by enriquelopezgarre from Pixabay
It is well known that the dinosaurs, giant reptiles that once ruled the planet, went extinct about 66 million years ago when an asteroid crashed into Earth at the Chicxulub crater in Mexico. This year, scientists detailed fallouts of the impact that resulted in a mass extinction by examining the topography of the centre of the crater. When the asteroid struck, the melt rocks and breccia deposited at the bottom of the crater within minutes and over a few hours, another 90 metres were deposited. There was also a tsunami and a wildfire that followed the impact, which emitted sulphur aerosols that cooled the earth and blocked much of the sunlight.
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The Best of Science in 2019 - Research Matters
Technology And Society: Can Marketing Save The World? – Forbes
In 1991, Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta worked to develop uncrackable encrypted stacks of blocks, creating a database nobody could tamper with. At that time, they likely could not have imagined this technology would become the foundation of blockchain. Blockchain was born after Satoshi Nakamotos paper in 2008 about cryptocurrency that unraveled the many more applications this technology could have.
The foremost practical benefit of blockchain, in any application, is that of taking away reliability from humans and putting it into machines. It is the ultimate automated trust it generates through an uncrackable system of collaborating computers that creates encrypted blocks that guarantee the security and authenticity of any transaction or interaction, avoiding data bridges and human intermediation
In the last 10 years, weve seen the birth of several initiatives and organizations that are attempting to make the most out of this technology. It seems we are on the verge of a revolution that will change our lives in much the same way personal computers did throughout the last 30 years.
While it seems clear the value this technology may bring, we tend to forget that most technologies used today are data-driven, running over binary systems. Blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), industry 4.0, autonomous vehicles and most of the amazing achievements of the last 50 years are based on this type of computing. What would happen if these types of binary systems became obsolete?
Change Is The Only Constant
With the technology we have today, cracking current encryptions that guarantee cryptocurrency security through blockchain is not an easy feat. That is what makes blockchain a safe place to authenticate transactions. But what if a new type of computer could do it in just minutes? Whats known as a quantum computer is already used by companies like Google and IBM.
Suddenly, blockchain, the technology that was supposed to change the future, becomes obsolete, and with it, most attempts to be its early adopters. Few administrations and a handful of companies are charting the road of post-quantum encryption. The U.S. is one of those. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already identified 26 algorithms that could become the standard to protect information today and tomorrow.
But there is no reason for panic. As Ian Kahn mentions in his acclaimed Blockchain City documentary, Tomorrow is not here yet, and it seems, as he also reminds, that our tomorrow is made of the only constant there is: change. Through constant change, evolution is happening at an accelerating pace, giving us little time to adapt and transforming governments, organizations, companies and consumers all into forced early adopters.
While quantum computers may seem a giant bridge, it is no different than all the other technologies we are benefiting from and do not realize we are using. As consumers, we do not understand internet protocols, and yet, we buy online every day. With quantum technology, it will happen the same: We may not understand it, but we will still run applications that will reap the benefits of this giant disruption that will boost innovation in a way we cannot even imagine.
I believe quantum computers are the new giant leap by humankind that will boost our capacity to understand, learn and build. With them, we will be able to open the doors to unimaginable discoveries and possibilities that will likely make us look like aliens on our own planet. This is the power that is being unleashed for which we will have to work on defining a purpose beyond profits and power, securing its use for the benefit of all. Dreamers will no longer exist the way we know them today.
Innovation Must Have A Greater Purpose
After many years doing marketing for companies of all sorts and sizes on three different continents, I came to the conclusion that focusing on technological innovation only could be a fatal or at least dangerous mistake. Marketing is one of the industries that has embraced and adapted to these new technologies at a really fast pace. However, having the power unleashed through technology is not enough if you dont have a clear aim, and that aim cannot be only profits.
Technology, in most cases, increases efficiency. In essence, we achieve the same results, but faster, safer, in a cleaner way, with fewer resources. Take marketing, for instance: Social media, digital environments and IoT are all techniques marketing is using to the benefit of businesses profit and loss. Yet, these technological innovations are obtaining the very same results, though more efficiently, than our old, traditional, nondigital media: reach and segmentation.
I believe society is clamoring for a different impact. Innovation in technology is not enough. We need to innovate in management models that can guarantee, through the use and development of new technologies, that the impacts we generate are different. We need a broader base of prosperity that generates larger social equity and improves our environment.
Richard Branson has stated, The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit. The future is now, and companies need to use technologies, products and services that allow them to go beyond, but never forgetting, profits.
Looking To Marketing As A Model To Follow
Marketing is the leverage that can serve as a bridge between corporations and society at large, launching profitable projects that also have social and environmental impacts. Marketing can also make consumers understand that they have the collective power, fostered by individual behavior, to demand those kinds of projects while accepting that companies make money along the way. Its not bad to make money while helping others and the environment, and it is necessary to make those improvements sustainable.
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Technology And Society: Can Marketing Save The World? - Forbes
From the image of a black hole to ‘artificial embryos’, 2019 was the year of many firsts in science – Economic Times
NEW DELHI: An image of the black hole, the stuff of science fiction down the decades, was at the centre of a year that saw science breaching new frontiers with exciting firsts such as the development of a quantum computer that can outperform its classical counterparts and artificial embryos.
Cutting edge innovations in research and technology celebrated science and forwarded humankind's understanding of complex realities of the universe. The year will also be remembered as the year of testing biological and ethical limits in the laboratory, helping researchers find new avenues in the treatment of critical diseases.
In April, the International Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, consisting of a global network of radio telescopes, unveiled the first actual image of a black hole, a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot escape.
To produce the image, the researchers combined data from a network of radio telescopes to take simultaneous readings from around the world.
Science magazine named the image of the supermassive black hole situated at the centre of the Messier 87 galaxy, 54 million light years away, as the 2019 Breakthrough of the Year.
The imaging of the black hole is a fantastic revelation that is simultaneously a validation and a celebration of science, Ayan Banerjee, from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Kolkata, told PTI.
Although it does not uncover something that we did not know earlier, it does convert science fiction into science -- which is crucial for the acceptance of science in the daily lives of human beings, and the generation of future scientists, Banerjee said.
In a year that marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings, lunar exploration was high on the agendas of space agencies.
In January, China's Chang'e-4 probe became the first spacecraft to land safely on the far side of the Moon. Its rover Yutu-2 continues to roll across the dusty soils of Von Karman crater on the lunar body.
Other attempts to explore the Earth's natural satellite were not so successful.
To produce the image, the researchers combined data from a network of radio telescopes to take simultaneous readings from around the world. In April, an Israeli-led effort to put the first private spacecraft on the Moon's surface ended in a crash landing. The same fate was met by India's ambitious Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander in September.
The ongoing Mars missions returned a host of results. In April, NASA announced that its robotic Mars InSight lander had recorded a marsquake for the first time ever.
The marsquake' is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by the forces above the surface, such as wind.
There were many firsts in the micro world of laboratories too.
US researchers restored cellular function in 32 pig brains that had been dead for hours, opening up a new avenue in treating brain disease -- and shaking our definition of brain death to its core.
Announced in April in the journal Nature, the researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine devised a system roughly analogous to a dialysis machine, called BrainEx, that restores circulation and oxygen flow to a dead brain.
In another out-of-body experiment, scientists grew monkey embryos in a dish for nearly three weeks -- longer than primate embryos have ever been grown in the laboratory before.
The advance raised ethical concerns of whether lab-grown human embryos should be allowed to develop beyond 14 days, a restriction imposed in most countries.
In September, researchers at the University of Michigan in the US provided a possible circumvention of the 14-day limit by using human stem cells to make artificial embryos' that mimic the early development of a real human embryo.
Our stem cell structures that mimic embryos can help fill critical gaps in knowledge about early human development, and that could lead to a lot of good, Jianping Fu, an associate professor at Michigan, who led the study, said in a statement.
In October, Google took a quantum leap in computer science. Using its state-of-the-art quantum computer, called Sycamore, the tech giant claimed "quantum supremacy" over the most powerful supercomputers in the world by solving a problem considered virtually impossible for normal machines.
The quantum computer completed the complex computation in 200 seconds. That same calculation would take even the most powerful supercomputer approximately 10,000 years to finish, according to researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who published their results in the journal Nature.
A fantastic discovery has been that of Google's 53 qubit quantum computer ('quantum supremacy), Banerjee said.
And for the first time in July, an artificial intelligence (AI) bot beat human champions at multiplayer poker.
The AI programme developed by Carnegie Mellon University in the US in collaboration with Facebook AI defeated leading professionals in six-player no-limit Texas hold'em poker, the world's most popular form of poker.
The AI, called Pluribus, defeated poker professional Darren Elias, who holds the record for most World Poker Tour titles, and Chris Ferguson, winner of six World Series of Poker events.
In August, researchers from Oxford University and IBM Research made the first-ever ring-shaped molecule of pure carbon in the lab by using an atomic-force microscope to manipulate individual molecules.
Carbon can be arranged in a number of configurations. For example when each of its atoms is bonded to three other carbon atoms, it's relatively soft graphite.
A ring of carbon atoms, where each atom is bonded to just two others, and nothing else has eluded scientists for 50 years. Their best attempts have resulted in a gaseous carbon ring that quickly dissipated.
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From the image of a black hole to 'artificial embryos', 2019 was the year of many firsts in science - Economic Times
Information teleported between two computer chips for the first time – New Atlas
Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet.
This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can communicate over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no matter how much space separates the two of them. In essence, information is being teleported between them.
Hypothetically, theres no limit to the distance over which quantum teleportation can operate and that raises some strange implications that puzzled even Einstein himself. Our current understanding of physics says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and yet, with quantum teleportation, information appears to break that speed limit. Einstein dubbed it spooky action at a distance.
Harnessing this phenomenon could clearly be beneficial, and the new study helps bring that closer to reality. The team generated pairs of entangled photons on the chips, and then made a quantum measurement of one. This observation changes the state of the photon, and those changes are then instantly applied to the partner photon in the other chip.
We were able to demonstrate a high-quality entanglement link across two chips in the lab, where photons on either chip share a single quantum state, says Dan Llewellyn, co-author of the study. Each chip was then fully programmed to perform a range of demonstrations which utilize the entanglement. The flagship demonstration was a two-chip teleportation experiment, whereby the individual quantum state of a particle is transmitted across the two chips after a quantum measurement is performed. This measurement utilizes the strange behavior of quantum physics, which simultaneously collapses the entanglement link and transfers the particle state to another particle already on the receiver chip.
The team reported a teleportation success rate of 91 percent, and managed to perform some other functions that will be important for quantum computing. That includes entanglement swapping (where states can be passed between particles that have never directly interacted via a mediator), and entangling as many as four photons together.
Information has been teleported over much longer distances before first across a room, then 25 km (15.5 mi), then 100 km (62 mi), and eventually over 1,200 km (746 mi) via satellite. Its also been done between different parts of a single computer chip before, but teleporting between two different chips is a major breakthrough for quantum computing.
The research was published in the journal Nature Physics.
Source: University of Bristol
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Information teleported between two computer chips for the first time - New Atlas
Quanta’s Year in Math and Computer Science (2019) – Quanta Magazine
For mathematicians and computer scientists, this was often a year of double takes and closer looks. Some reexamined foundational principles, while others found shockingly simple proofs, new techniques or unexpected insights in long-standing problems. Some of these advances have broad applications in physics and other scientific disciplines. Others are purely for the sake of gaining new knowledge (or just having fun), with little to no known practical use at this time.
Quanta covered the decade-long effort to rid mathematics of the rigid equal sign and replace it with the more flexible concept of equivalence. We also wrote about emerging ideas for a general theory of neural networks, which could give computer scientists a coveted theoretical basis to understand why deep learning algorithms have been so wildly successful.
Meanwhile, ordinary mathematical objects like matrices and networks yielded unexpected new insights in short, elegant proofs, and decades-old problems in number theory suddenly gave way to new solutions. Mathematicians also learned more about how regularity and order arise from chaotic systems, random numbers and other seemingly messy arenas. And, like a steady drumbeat, machine learning continued to grow more powerful, altering the approach and scope of scientific research, while quantum computers (probably) hit a critical milestone.
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Quanta's Year in Math and Computer Science (2019) - Quanta Magazine