The wonder material graphene an array of interlinked carbon atoms arranged in a sheet just one atom thick promised a world of applications, including super-fast electronics, ultra-sensitive sensors and incredibly durable materials. After a few false starts, that promise is close to realization. And a suite of other extremely thin substances is following in its wake.

Graphene got its beginnings in 2003, when scientists at the University of Manchester found they could peel off a gossamer film of the material just by touching a piece of ordinary sticky tape to a block of purified graphite the solid form of carbon thats mixed with clay and used as the lead in most pencils. Graphene proved stronger than steel but extremely flexible, and electrons could zip through it at high speeds. It earned its discoverers the Nobel Prize in 2010, but researchers spent years struggling to manufacture it on larger scales and figuring out how its remarkable properties could best be used.

They didnt get it right straight out of the gate, says Todd Krauss, a chemist at the University of Rochester. Scientists are pretty bad at predicting whats going to be useful in applications, he says.

With its atom-thin sheets layered into tiny particles known as quantum dots, graphene was tried as a microscopic medical sensor, but it didnt perform as desired, Krauss says. With its sheets rolled up into straw-like nanotubes, graphene was built into items like hockey sticks and baseball bats in the hopes that its strength and durability could better existing carbon fiber. But Krauss notes that there has since been a trend away from using nanotubes in consumer products. (Some also worry that long carbon nanotubes could harm the lungs since they have been shown to have some chemical resemblance to asbestos.)

Today graphene is finding its way into different types of products. Graphene is here, says Mark Hersam of Northwestern University. Layered over zinc, graphene oxide is actively being developed as a replacement, with higher storage capacity, for the sometimes unreliable graphite now used in battery anodes. And nanotubes were recently used as transistors to build a microprocessor, replacing silicon (unlike flat graphene, nanotubes can be coaxed into acting like a semiconductor). Though the microprocessor was primitive by modern computing standards, akin to the processing level of a Sega Genesis, materials scientists think it could ultimately pave the way for more efficient, faster and smaller carbon components for computer processors.

At the same time, a new generation of two-dimensional materials is emerging. The success of graphene further fueled the ongoing effort to find useful atomically thin materials, working with a range of different chemicals, so as to exploit the physical properties that emerge in such super-thin substances. The newcomers include an insulator more efficient than conventional ones at stopping the movement of electrons, and another that allows electrons to glide across it at a good percent of the speed of light, with little friction. Researchers think some of these may one day replace silicon in computer chips, among other potential uses.

Other materials now in development have even higher aspirations, such as advancing scientists toward one of the most tantalizing goals in chemistry the creation of high-temperature superconductors.

In graphene, carbon atoms link up in an orderly honeycomb pattern, each atom sharing electrons with three neighboring carbon atoms. That structure allows any added electrons to move speedily across its surface. Ordinarily, a single electron might move through a conducting metal like copper at 1.2 inches per minute (given a 12-gauge wire with 10 amps of electricity). But in early experiments on graphene, electrons zipped along at 2.34 billion inches per minute which could make for electronics that charge in just a few minutes and eventually in a matter of seconds.

Graphenes physical properties have inspired many potential applications, including in medicine. A variant of graphene, graphene oxide, is being studied as an experimental drug delivery vehicle. Seen here through a microscope, this chunk of graphene oxide is about 80 nanometers high. A single sheet of graphene is just 0.34 nanometers thick.

CREDIT: SCIENCE SOURCE

Graphene conducts heat just as well as it conducts electricity. Its also one of the strongest materials ever studied stronger than steel, it can stop a bullet but oddly stretchy too, meaning its both flexible and tough.

Other 2D materials under exploration may have similar attributes as well as novel qualities all their own, but chemical impurities have until recently kept them hidden, says Angela Hight Walker, a project leader at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Were now getting to the point where we can see the new physics thats been covered up by poor sample quality, she says.

One of the newcomers is black phosphorus, explored by Hersam and his coauthor Vinod Sangwan in the 2018 Annual Review of Physical Chemistry. When white phosphorus a caustic, highly reactive chemical is super-heated under high pressure, it becomes a flaky, conductive material with graphite-like behavior. Peeling off an atom-thin layer of this black phosphorus with sticky tape produces a material called phosphorene. First fabricated in 2014, phosphorene rivals graphene in terms of strength and ability to efficiently move electrons. But at the atomic level, it isnt as perfectly flat as graphene and that has intriguing consequences.

Phosphorene interacts with electrons and photons in quirky ways, pointing to potential uses in future computer chips and fiber optics.

In graphene, carbon atoms lie side by side, hence its flatness. But phosphorenes 2D configuration looks a bit like a pleat, with two atoms at a lower level connected to two at a higher level, forming whats called a bandgap. This wavy structure, in turn, affects the flow of electrons in a way that makes phosphorene a semiconductor, meaning that its very easy to switch the flow of electrons on or off. Phosphorene, like silicon, could find application in computer chips, where the toggled electrons represent 1s or 0s.

Phosphorene also is especially good at emitting or absorbing photons at infrared wavelengths. This optical trick gives phosphorene huge potential for use in fiber-optic communication, Hersam says, because the bandgap matches the energy of infrared light near-exactly. It could also prove very useful in solar cells.

Working with phosphorene is not easy, however. It is highly unstable and rapidly oxidizes unless stored correctly. Literally, it will decompose if it is sitting out in the room, Hight Walker says, typically in less than a minute. Layering it with other 2D materials could help protect the fragile chemical.

Boron would seem an odd fit for electronic applications. Its better known as a fertilizer, an ingredient in fiberglass or (combined with salt) a laundry-detergent additive. But make it very thin and very flat, and boron begins to act more like a metal, conducting electricity easily. Two-dimensional boron, called borophene, is also ultra-flexible and transparent. Combined with its conductive properties, borophenes flexibility and transparency could eventually make it a go-to material for new gadgets, including ultra-thin, foldable touch screens.

Like graphene, borophenes structure allows electrons to fly through it. Its such a good conductor that its now being studied as a way to boost energy storage in lithium-ion batteries. Some researchers even think it might be coaxed into superconducting states at relatively high temperatures though thats still very cold (initial tests show the effect between minus-415 to minus-425 degrees Fahrenheit). Most current superconductors work close to absolute zero, or nearly minus -460 degrees F. A superconducting material allows electrons to move through it without any resistance, creating the potential for a device that accomplishes robust electronic feats while using only a small amount of power.

Emerging 2D materials phosphorene, borophene and boron nitride form thin films. Their atomic arrangements are viewed here from above and in profile.

CREDIT: MODIFIED FROM V.K. SANGWAN AND M.C. HERSAM / AR PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY 2018

In the form of borophene, boron can conduct electrons like a metal. Yet, as part of a 2D-film of boron nitride, it can block the flow of electrons quite effectively. In other words, 2D boron and [2D] boron nitride are on opposite ends of the electrical conductivity spectrum, Hersam says.

Boron nitrides insulative property has come in handy for research on other 2D materials. Take that ephemeral black phosphorus: One way scientists have managed to keep it stable enough to study is by sandwiching it between two sheets of boron nitride.

Even as it is blocking electrons, however, boron nitride will allow photons to pass, says physicist Milos Toth of the University of Technology Sydney, who coauthored an article about the potential of boron nitride, and other 2D materials, in the 2019 Annual Review of Physical Chemistry. Thats ideal for creating things called single-photon sources, which can emit a single particle of light at a time and are used in quantum computing, quantum information processing and physics experiments.

Another atomically thin material creating quite a buzz in materials science circles is a compound of chromium and iodine called chromium triiodide. Its the first 2D material that naturally generates a magnetic field. Scientists working on chromium triiodide propose the material could eventually find uses in computer memory and storage, as well as in more research-focused purposes such as controlling how an electron spins.

Theres a hitch, Hersam says: This material is extremely hard to work with, because it is both tough to synthesize and unstable once its made. Right now the only way to work with it is at extremely low temperatures, at minus-375 degrees Fahrenheit and below. But boron nitride might again come to the rescue: Some chromium triiodide samples have been preserved for months on end inside boron nitride sandwiches.

Because of its finicky properties, chromium triiodide may not itself end up built into devices, Hight Walker says. But when we understand the physics of whats happening, we can go look for this 2D magnetic behavior in other materials. A number of 2D magnetic materials are now being explored single-layer manganese crystals woven into an insulating material is one possibility.

Wrangling any of these thin layers into something usable may ultimately depend literally on how they stack up. Different super-thin materials would be layered together so that the properties inherent in each material can complement one another. We have insulators, semiconductors, metals and now magnets, Hight Walker says. Those are the pieces that you need to make almost anything you want.

One potential application especially exciting to Hight Walker is in quantum computing. Unlike traditional computing, in which bits of information are either ones or zeroes, quantum computing allows each qubit of information to be both one and zero at once. In principle, this would allow quantum computers to quickly solve problems that would take an impossibly long time with conventional machines.

Right now, though, most qubits are made of superconductors that have to be kept freezing cold, limiting their real-world use and motivating the search for new types of superconducting materials. For this reason, researchers are eager to explore borophenes ability to superconduct. (Graphene, layered a certain way, also has shown potential superconducting properties.)

But a stacked material involving several superconducting layers separated by strong insulators could enable smaller, more stable qubits that dont require quite as low temperatures which could reduce the overall size of quantum computers. Right now, these are room-sized affairs, much like early computers were. Reducing their size is going to require novel approaches and, possibly, very thin materials layered sheet by little sheet.

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The future that graphene built - Knowable Magazine

Last week, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, we sat down with Maryanna Saenko and Steve Jurvetson, investors who came together to create the investment outfit Future Ventures roughly one year ago. It was their first public appearance together since announcing their $200 million fund, and we started by asking Jurvetson about his high-profile split from his old firm DFJ. (He said of the experience that sometimes life forces a dislocation in what youre doing, and it got me to become an entrepreneur for the first time in a long time.)

We also talked about how the two came together and where theyre shopping, as they have fewer constraints than most firms. It was a wide-ranging chat that covered SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla, whose boards of directors Jurvetson sits on. We also talked about The Boring Company, in which Future Ventures has a stake, the profound dangers of the AI race between companies (and countries), and whether the powerful psychedelic ayahuasca or something like it might represent an investment opportunity. Included in the mix was what Jurvetson described as potentially the biggest money-making opportunity he has ever seen.

Read on to learn more. Our conversation has been edited lightly for length.

Youve come together to build this new fund that has a 15-year investing horizon. Your interests overlap quite a bit. Maryanna, youre a robotics expert with degrees from Carnegie Mellon; you were with Airbus Ventures before joining DFJ then heading later to Khosla Ventures. Who is better at what?

SJ: Shes better at everything, is the answer, but I think were better as a pair. The beauty of small team is youre better than you would be on your own. I knew when I set off that I didnt want to do it alone. I know that the people Ive worked with over the last 20 years have made me better. The best investments I did at DFJ I largely attribute to the junior partner I was working with at the time, and I might not have done those best deals if I was on my own.

Theres something about the dialectic, the discussion, the debates with someone you respect whose opinion is valuable, so rather than thinking, You handle this, Ill handle that and partitioning it, its more of a [back and forth]. So we have partner meetings all the time, just not any scheduled meetings.

Certainly, Maryannas deep background in robotics is a vein of interest, as is all the aerospace stuff. But just a reminder, when I first interviewed her [Jurvetson originally hired her at DFJ], I was blown away that she had already invested in several of the quirky sectors from quantum computer to phasor antennas for satellites to [inaudible but relating to space].

Of course you would be investing [in this thing Ive never heard of before].

MS: Its going to become relevant, I promise.

Speaking of aerospace, you two have invested in SpaceX, a company that DFJ had also backed. Is this company ever going to go public?

SJ: I think the official last tweet on this matter was that the company will go public after there are regularly scheduled flights to Mars.

Which is when?

SJ: It might not be that far off. Probably within the 15-year [investing] cycle that we have now. Clearly the business is much more dramatic than just that. Thats the big storm on the horizon [that captures a lot of interest] but in the near term, there are multiple billions of dollars in revenue. Theyre a profitable business. And frankly, theyre about to launch what may be the biggest money-making opportunity Ive ever seen in my life, which is the broadband satellite data business [Starlink, which is a constellation being constructed by SpaceX to provide satellite Internet access].

So theres plenty of good stuff happening before we get to Mars. That was just a way to put all the investment bankers off. Theyre continuously hounding the company, When are you going public? When are you going public?

It is 17 years old. Have you made money off it [as an investor] thus far?

SJ: Oh, yeah, at our prior firm, theyve [enjoyed] well over $1 billion in profit [through secondary sales].

What do you think of scientists concerns that these satellites going to ruin astronomy because theyre so bright? I know SpaceX has tried to paint them. I also know SpaceX isnt alone and that Amazon is also trying to put up a constellation, for example. But youre a mission-driven firm. Should we be worried that were littering the sky with these things?

MS: One of the fundamental questions when you invest in technology is what are the second-order effects that were aware of and what are the second-order effects that were not clever enough to foresee ahead of time [and] to look holistically at these problems.

So first and foremost, right, its not just Space X. Many companies these days are trying to put up a constellation whether in [Low Earth Orbit] or [Medium Earth Orbit] or increasingly in [Geostationary Orbit]. We need to think mindfully and work with the scientific communities and say, What are the needs? Because the reality is that the communication is going to go up, and if its not from U.S. companies, itll be from European or from Asian companies. So I think the scientific community needs to wake up, unfortunately, to the reality that the Luddite form of saying, Technology isnt going up to space . . . and they should say say, Heres a set of metrics that wed like to continue moving forward with.

Ideally we can design to those specs. Beyond that, I fundamentally believe well find ways to shine brighter lights and move further [out]. Honestly, most of the interesting imaging happens well past [Low Earth Orbit] and I think when we start building a lunar base, well solve a lot of these problems.

At StrictlyVCs last event, we played host to a supersonic jet company called Boom. There are a handful of companies with which it competes, too

MS: Oh, more than [a handful]. If you count just pure electric aircraft companies, Ive met with 55 of, I would guess, around 200 or 300. Within that, supersonic is smaller, but its still in the dozens.

Whoa, that many? Does the world need supersonic jets again?

MS: [As a] recovering engineer and scientist, the way that I look at the space is does the business model fundamentally [make more sense] than when we tried this the last time in the 80s. If the answer is, This time, were a bunch of clever software kids building an aerospace device and dont worry about it, well figure out how to build an aircraft, Im going to tell you all the reasons that isnt necessarily going to work.

I think on the electric aircraft side, we have a bunch of questions to answer about what is the timeline of battery density versus what is a mission profile for these flights that actually makes sense. On the long-range side, we can look at what SpaceX might do with point-to-point capsules. [At the intermediate stage, hypersonic fight],I have not yet seen an engineering trajectory matched with a business model that I think closes in this space, at all, so Im not sure what the bankers are doing,

SJ: Also, the FAA regulatory cycle is very long. But [in addition to these reasons], our life becomes very simple the moment we know there are 55 to maybe 200 companies in a sector, and this is true for small sat launch or eVTOL aircraft huge swaths of the landscape. Whenever theres more than one or two [companies in a space], we dont even want to meet unless were just trying to understand whats going on. Why would anyone invest in the 130th small sat launch company? We try to look for companies that are unlike anything thats been seen before at the time.

On that note, theres only one new company that I know of thats digging a tunnel-based transportation system, Boring Company. Its another investment of Future Ventures . Did it come with a board seat?

SJ: No. Were in the first round of investment.

Is this a real company? Ive read it takes $1 billion to tunnel through a mile.

SJ: It depends where youre digging. Thats the worst case, but it can be up there, like when Boring Company won this contract in Las Vegas for a very short segment, the competition was bidding like $400 million for just a mile. It was like, really?

If you think about the pattern across aerospace with SpaceX, [the motor] issue with Tesla, and now potentially in construction, fintech, and agriculture, there are industries that havent [seen major innovation] in a long time. So the top four companies in America that are digging tunnels all started in the 1800s. Thats an especially long time ago. And the whole point, too, with Boring is switching diesel to electric, to do continuous digging, to reengineer the entire thing with a software and simulation mindset, to dramatically increase the speed and lower the cost. Think two orders of magnitude cheaper at least.

Steve, youd said once before that in most of the deals youve funded across your career, yours was the only check, that there just wasnt any competition. But more people are focused on the future as an investment theme now. Is it harder to find those outliers?

SJ: Its a little harder. We usually use that as a signal to look to a new market whenever there are multiple checks, When its a category, when there are conferences about it, when other venture firms are talking about it, thats usually a sure-enough sign that we already should have moved on to something else.

MS: The simple reality, too, is the industry is focused on a handful of sectors enterprise software, consumer internet, and the like and often there are fantastic funds with one or two edge-case investments, and thats great, because we love those funds and we want to work with them. But there are very few funds where that trajectory is the straight and narrow of their fundamental thesis.

You raised $200 million for this fund from tech CEOs and hedge funds and VCs; do you have the same constraints that other firms have?

MS: I dont think we have particularly fine constraints on anything, but we do have the constraint of our own conviction, our word and the quality of our characters, so one of the theses when we raised the fund was that we dont prey on human frailty, so no addictive substances, no [social media influencers] and not just because were bad at being cool hunters. But thats not our intention; thats not what were trying to create in the world.

I know youre interested in AI. What does that mean? Are you funding drug development?

SJ: What have you heard? Thats a really good guess.

There are so many companies hundreds of them using AI to try and uncover drug candidates, but they dont seem to be getting very far or maybe theyre arent getting far enough along as fast as Id expected.

SJ: [We have a related deal in process]. Interestingly, weve done ten deals that have closed; we have three more that are in the process, two in the signed term sheet phase. Four are in the area of edge intelligence . . .

MS: Ill often come at things from how would I build this robot in the world to do some critical task and Steve often looks at it more from the chip and power and processing and how you lay the algorithm onto the silicon. And between those two, we arrive at a really interesting thesis up and down the stack. So weve done Mythic, an edge intelligence chip company, but weve also looked at this idea that were going to send out these AIs into the world but we basically bake them into these edge devices that are terrible [because they dont work well].

The real issue is an AI thats getting trained somewhere in some cloud then getting pushed to your edge device and then, good luck. But increasingly [were thinking] about continuous improvement of those AIs as theyre running in real time and mindful of how we shuttle the data back to the mother ship data centers. [Were looking to] enable continuous improvement and acceleration of that learning. We have a number of portfolio companies up and down that stack that Im incredibly excited about.

That all sounds comfortably pedestrian compared to the very big picture, wherein a small group of companies is amassing all the richest data to train AI and are growing more powerful by the day. Steve, youve talked about this before, about your concerns that one day there could be very few companies, which would exacerbate income inequality. You said this could be a bigger threat to society than climate change. Do you think these companies Facebook, Amazon, Google should be broken up?

SJ: No, I dont think they should be broken up, but I do think its an inexorable trend in the the technology business that there are power laws within firms and between firms . . . If you want to maintain capitalism and democracy, its not self-rectifying and its only going to get worse. Compared to when we last spoke about this [in 2015], its gotten a lot worse. The data concentration, the usage of it.

Think, for example, of SenseTime in China . . . it recognizes faces better than any other algorithm on earth right now . . . So you have the U.S. power laws and power laws between countries as well. Thats just one new pejoration as AI and quantum computing escalates.

So everyone in technology and who invests in it should be thoughtful about what this means and think about entrepreneurial paths to the future we want to live in . . . how we get from here to there is not obvious. The markets [will handle some but not all of these things]. So its very worrisome and when I said its worse than climate change, I meant it will have more impact on whether humanity makes it through the next 20 years. Climate change [may do us in] 200 years from now but theres some serious pressing issues over the next 20 years.

And breaking up these companies isnt part of the solution.

Its almost like this notion of controlling an AI thats greater than human intelligence. How would you ever imagine you would control such a thing? How would you even imagine understanding its inner workings? So the notion that through regulation you could break up a natural monopoly when everything that fixes the industry creates a natural monopoly, itd be like whack-a-mole.

Whats the answer? Looking around the corner, what are you funding thats going to blow peoples minds? Ayahuasca? Is there a market for that? I know its everywhere.

SJ: [Looking shocked.] There are two companies, one we wired funds earlier today and the other is a signed term sheet and they relate to your questions.

MS: We should check if the office is bugged [laughs].

SJ: Theres a lot going on. Curing mental illness. Alternative modalities.

MS: The largest rising global epidemic is depression. Adolescent suicide rates are up 300 percent in the U.S. in the last 10 years. And we dont have the resources, the skills, the technologies and the licensed therapists available. We know there are medicinal compounds, often from plant vines, that have shown incredible value in addressing treatment-resistant depressions and addiction and abusive substances. And often participation in those things is a privilege of particular groups in society and so how do we democratize access to mental health.

Wait, I cant believe I guessed it. Youre investing in an ayahuasca-related startup!?

SJ: Its close, not exactly. [Laughs.]

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Maryanna Saenko and Steve Jurvetson of Future Ventures talk SpaceX, the Boring Co. and . . . ayahuasca - TechCrunch

TORONTO , Nov. 21, 2019 /CNW/ -01 Communique Laboratory Inc. (the "Company") (ONE:TSX-V) issued a world-wide challenge to hackers to crack their quantum-safe encryption in exchange for a $100,000 prize. 10 Days in, the response to the challenge has been overwhelming!

Many contestants from several countries have signed up for the world's first hackathon on post-quantum encryption. With more contestants signing up every day, the Company's President and CEO, Andrew Cheung remains confident. "Come and get it! Our hackathon will show the world that IronCAP encryption stands strong against powerful quantum computers."

Contestants are rushing to sign up online at http://www.ironcap.ca before the contest closes on December 12 , 2019. The result will be announced on or about December 16, 2019 .

IronCAP encryption is the most secure, commercially available Goppa code-based encryption available today. All companies need protection from quantum computers and should start the process immediately. For more information and advice, visit ironcap.ca or contact the Company at sales@ironcap.ca.

About 01 Communique

01 Communique Laboratory Inc. (ONE.V) is focused on cybersecurity with its IronCAP patent-pending cryptographic system designed to protect users and enterprises against the ever-evolving illegitimate and malicious means of gaining access to their data today and in the future with the introduction of powerful quantum computers. Based on improved code-based encryption it is designed to be faster and more secure than current standards. IronCAP operates on conventional computer systems so users are protected today while at the same time being secure enough to safeguard against future attacks coming with the introduction of quantum computers. Along with IronCAP the Company's legacy business provides customers with a suite of secure remote access services and products. These legacy products are protected in the U.S.A. by its patents #6,928,479 / #6,938,076 / #8,234,701; in Canada by its patents #2,309,398 / #2,524,039 and in Japan by its patent #4,875,094. For more information on the Company visit http://www.01com.com or for more information on IronCAP visit http://www.ironcap.ca .

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements.

Certain statements in this news release may constitute "forward-looking" statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. When used in this news release, such statements use such words as "may", "will", "expect", "believe", "plan", "intend", "are confident" and other similar terminology. These statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the factors discussed under "Risk and Uncertainties" in the Company's Management`s Discussion and Analysis document filed on SEDAR. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange ("TSX-V") nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE 01 Communique Laboratory Inc.

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/November2019/21/c3840.html

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Quantum Hackathon With $100,000 Prize Receives Overwhelming Response - Yahoo Finance

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If you threw an encyclopedia to be devoured by a black hole, could you ever retrieve its information back again?

Even with todays most powerful supercomputers, there are limitations to the complexity of possible calculations, preventing us from understanding some of the greatest mysteries in particle physics.

In an attempt to bridge the divide, Google LLC claims to have achieved quantum supremacy, using a quantum computer to perform a calculation in 200 seconds it would take the largest supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. Even though industry competitors like IBM dispute Googles claim, no one disputes the future lies in quantum computing.

Computer science researcher Jim Kowalkowski (left) and particle physicist Steve Mrenna (right) work on Fermilabs Quantum Science Program (photo by Kate Zadell)

Jim Kowalkowski transitioned to quantum computing at Fermilab National Laboratory in Batavia, Il. because of the exciting new ways it challenges researchers to think. Fermilab is run by the U.S. Department of Energy, specializing in high-energy particle physics. As part of a national initiative, federal funding has fueled research into quantum computing as part of the labs Quantum Science Program.

After the recent headlines, Kowalkowski was surprised to receive calls from people who never inquire about science. He said Fermilab is not in the process of building a quantum computer, but rather performing physics experiments using different quantum apparatuses to lay the groundwork for the future.

On a regular computer, information bits are in a determinant state of on or off, one or zero, said Kowalkowski. On a quantum computer, a qubit is quantum mechanical and can exist in both states until you observe it. These silicon qubits square the magnitude of how many states you can represent. (However,) current technology has limitations to how many qubits can be added and how big a problem they can solve. Right now, 53 qubits, (number in Google and IBMs quantum computers) isnt big enough to compute the harder problems. Over the next decade, there needs to be a breakthrough in materials science. Theres a lot of research to do before we get there.

The longer researchers can maintain the superposition state (both one and zero), the more time the quantum system has to perform operations. Fermilab uses 3-D-microwave resonators to manipulate electromagnetic fields, establishing the superposition state. According to Fermilab, their superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) resonators enable superposition durations 1,000 times more than the best resonators found in other quantum computers. Researchers aim to develop qubits with even longer superposition durations and string them together into a quantum computing system.

Alex Romanenko, head of quantum technology at Fermilab, inspects a quibit made with accelerator technology (photo provided by Fermilab)

Kowalkowski said a dilution refrigerator is used to cool the superconducting qubits to near absolute zero. Theres a chip located in the bottom containing harmonic oscillators. Using classical computing methods of communication, specific radio frequencies are sent into the chip resulting in the creation of artificial particles because of the quantum principle of particle-wave duality. This establishes temporary artificial atoms.

Unlike a traditional computer, these are probabilistic machines, said Kowalkowski. You have to establish the state over and over again to derive the answers from a large statistical sample. In the next two years, it would be fantastic having a hardware system to create qubits with SRF cavities allowing us to measure increases in how long a state lasts and how long of a calculation we can operate.

(Joey Weslo: inside look into Fermilabs neutrino research)

(Joey Weslo: challenging gender inequality in physics)

Steve Mrenna is a particle physicist at Fermilab who sees quantum computing research as an exciting new opportunity. He believes the limitations of classical computers are a hindrance to solving the more difficult and fascinating problems.

The power of our lab is the ability to bring together people of different skill sets to solve difficult problems of common interests, said Mrenna. A lot of other people in quantum computing work on problems that are more esoteric (toy problems) in interest. We have real problems that were trying to solve to help us understand something about nature. We are still figuring out how to set up quantum computers to solve these problems.

Mrenna said quantum computing can provide breakthroughs both inside and outside the field of physics. The stronger computing power is predicted to help create new medicines as quantum chemists use quantum mechanics to better understand and synthesize molecules. Cryptologists and those in cybersecurity also endeavour to use quantum computers to create encrypted messages that cannot be hacked. Because of the properties of quantum mechanics, once you measure something, the wave function collapses and the coded information is changed or lost.

Eric Holland, deputy head of quantum technology at Fermilab, examines the labs quantum dilution refrigerator (photo provided by Fermilab)

What we are currently doing is optimization problems, said Mrenna. Whats the best way to do something? Whats the minimum energy you would produce by putting things together? Quantum computers give the hope you can solve these problems that appear impossible with classical computers. The goal is to eventually work on quantum mechanical problems like the Schrodinger equation which is seen as the key to understanding quantum mechanical behavior. Better understanding particle wave duality will help calculate what happens when you collide together protons, like at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Mrenna said they can currently solve the problems they are looking at better with classical methods, but each solution is a stepping stone to progressing quantum computations towards currently unsolvable problems.

Kowalkowski said the strength in quantum computers over supercomputers comes in their systems approach to solving problems of multi-faceted inputs. This is because qubits are synchronized utilizing the quantum principle of entanglement.

Quantum entanglement means you are establishing an intimate relationship between particles, so when you manipulate one part, it has a global effect on the entire system at once, said Kowalkowski. When solving a problem, you take the machine and put its bunch of particles in the state you desire. Then by manipulating them through magnetic fields or radio frequency pulses, the entire system is affected. When youre manipulating a state all at once, it requires a different programming model altogether.

Industry wants to be able to utilize this because scheduling and computing with multiple interactive factors is really difficult, continued Kowalkowski. Weve been working on routing a (hypothetical) traveling salesman through multiple cities while trying to maximize profit and efficiency. With traditional computers doing one manipulation at a time, the increasing number of factors makes the problem almost unsolvable. However, with a small number of qubits, you can represent this complex system. By manipulating the whole state and turning the information into a global problem, you get your solution.

Mrenna said the basic idea of entanglement is some problems have more than one solution. Quantum mechanics tells us the solution is a mixture of the two. One of Fermilabs goals is to one day teleport entangled photons between the lab and Argonne National Laboratory 30 miles away in Lemont along underground fiber optic cables. This will enable the communication of information between two distant objects like the direction of a twin magnets located at each lab. Researchers are currently teleporting entangled photons across buildings at Fermilab. Separation of entangled photons must be done very carefully to maintain the coherent state.

Because of qubits extreme precision, they are very vulnerable to environmental interference. Sound disturbances are removed from the dilution refrigerator as best as possible, but quantum computers still need to operate the same calculation multiple times to identify and quantify impacted solutions. A quirk of this sensitivity is the ability of researchers to detect incredibly fine variations in environmental pressure and temperature. Another side-effect is the systems ability to detect and measure dark matter particle interference. This detection can help explore questions physicists have about the mysterious dark matter which constitutes 27 percent of the Universe compared to normal observable matters 5 percent.

Mrenna said the quantum computing field is so exciting because they are developing new machinery and using tools theyve never been introduced to.

When a science field is new, theres an opportunity to really contribute something foundational to the science, said Mrenna. If you enter a field thats well-established, its harder to carve out your niche. Someday, the technology will allow us to harness quantum computers full potential. Growing up, it seemed like particle physics was the coolest thing out there. It was the biggest questions, with the biggest ideas. Finding the hardest problems to solve has been a drive all throughout my life. If its not the hardest problem, why go after it?

(for Fermilab student internships info visit internships.fnal.gov/)

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(Joey Weslo: Stephen Hawkings eternal light (1942-2018)

(Joey Weslo: physicst Brian Greene discusses string theory)

(Joey Weslo: Argonnes new developments with lithium-ion)

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