Classical thermodynamics has only a handful of laws, of which the most fundamental are the first and second. The first says that energy is always conserved; the second law says that heat always flows from hot to cold. More commonly this is expressed in terms of entropy, which must increase overall in any process of change. Entropy is loosely equated with disorder, but the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann formulated it more rigorously as a quantity related to the total number of microstates a system has: how many equivalent ways its particles can be arranged.

The second law appears to show why change happens in the first place. At the level of individual particles, the classical laws of motion can be reversed in time. But the second law implies that change must happen in a way that increases entropy. This directionality is widely considered to impose an arrow of time. In this view, time seems to flow from past to future because the universe began for reasons not fully understood or agreed on in a low-entropy state and is heading toward one of ever higher entropy. The implication is that eventually heat will be spread completely uniformly and there will be no driving force for further change a depressing prospect that scientists of the mid-19th century called the heat death of the universe.

Boltzmanns microscopic description of entropy seems to explain this directionality. Many-particle systems that are more disordered and have higher entropy vastly outnumber ordered, lower-entropy states, so molecular interactions are much more likely to end up producing them. The second law seems then to be just about statistics: Its a law of large numbers. In this view, theres no fundamental reason why entropy cant decrease why, for example, all the air molecules in your room cant congregate by chance in one corner. Its just extremely unlikely.

Yet this probabilistic statistical physics leaves some questions hanging. It directs us toward the most probable microstates in a whole ensemble of possible states and forces us to be content with taking averages across that ensemble.

But the laws of classical physics are deterministic they allow only a single outcome for any starting point. Where, then, can that hypothetical ensemble of states enter the picture at all, if only one outcome is ever possible?

David Deutsch, a physicist at Oxford, has for several years been seeking to avoid this dilemma by developing a theory of (as he puts it) a world in which probability and randomness are totally absent from physical processes. His project, on which Marletto is now collaborating, is called constructor theory. It aims to establish not just which processes probably can and cant happen, but which are possible and which are forbidden outright.

Constructor theory aims to express all of physics in terms of statements about possible and impossible transformations. It echoes the way thermodynamics itself began, in that it considers change in the world as something produced by machines (constructors) that work in a cyclic fashion, following a pattern like that of the famous Carnot cycle, proposed in the 19th century to describe how engines perform work. The constructor is rather like a catalyst, facilitating a process and being returned to its original state at the end.

Say you have a transformation like building a house out of bricks, said Marletto. You can think of a number of different machines that can achieve this, to different accuracies. All of these machines are constructors, working in a cycle they return to their original state when the house is built.

But just because a machine for conducting a certain task might exist, that doesnt mean it can also undo the task. A machine for building a house might not be capable of dismantling it. This makes the operation of the constructor different from the operation of the dynamical laws of motion describing the movements of the bricks, which are reversible.

The reason for the irreversibility, said Marletto, is that for most complex tasks, a constructor is geared to a given environment. It requires some specific information from the environment relevant to completing that task. But the reverse task will begin with a different environment, so the same constructor wont necessarily work. The machine is specific to the environment it is working on, she said.

Recently, Marletto, working with the quantum theorist Vlatko Vedral at Oxford and colleagues in Italy, showed that constructor theory does identify processes that are irreversible in this sense even though everything happens according to quantum mechanical laws that are themselves perfectly reversible. We show that there are some transformations for which you can find a constructor for one direction but not the other, she said.

The researchers considered a transformation involving the states of quantum bits (qubits), which can exist in one of two states or in a combination, or superposition, of both. In their model, a single qubit B may be transformed from some initial, perfectly known state B1 to a target state B2 when it interacts with other qubits by moving past a row of them one qubit at a time. This interaction entangles the qubits: Their properties become interdependent, so that you cant fully characterize one of the qubits unless you look at all the others too.

As the number of qubits in the row gets very large, it becomes possible to bring B into state B2 as accurately as you like, said Marletto. The process of sequential interactions of B with the row of qubits constitutes a constructor-like machine that transforms B1 to B2. In principle you can also undo the process, turning B2 back to B1, by sending B back along the row.

But what if, having done the transformation once, you try to reuse the array of qubits for the same process with a fresh B? Marletto and colleagues showed that if the number of qubits in the row is not very large and you use the same row repeatedly, the array becomes less and less able to produce the transformation from B1 to B2. But crucially, the theory also predicts that the row becomes even less able to do the reverse transformation from B2 to B1. The researchers have confirmed this prediction experimentally using photons for B and a fiber optic circuit to simulate a row of three qubits.

You can approximate the constructor arbitrarily well in one direction but not the other, Marletto said. Theres an asymmetry to the transformation, just like the one imposed by the second law. This is because the transformation takes the system from a so-called pure quantum state (B1) to a mixed one (B2, which is entangled with the row). A pure state is one for which we know all there is to be known about it. But when two objects are entangled, you cant fully specify one of them without knowing everything about the other too. The fact is that its easier to go from a pure quantum state to a mixed state than vice versa because the information in the pure state gets spread out by entanglement and is hard to recover. Its comparable to trying to re-form a droplet of ink once it has dispersed in water, a process in which the irreversibility is imposed by the second law.

So here the irreversibility is just a consequence of the way the system dynamically evolves, said Marletto. Theres no statistical aspect to it. Irreversibility is not just the most probable outcome but the inevitable one, governed by the quantum interactions of the components. Our conjecture, said Marletto, is that thermodynamic irreversibility might stem from this.

Theres another way of thinking about the second law, though, that was first devised by James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish scientist who pioneered the statistical view of thermodynamics along with Boltzmann. Without quite realizing it, Maxwell connected the thermodynamic law to the issue of information.

Maxwell was troubled by the theological implications of a cosmic heat death and of an inexorable rule of change that seemed to undermine free will. So in 1867 he sought a way to pick a hole in the second law. In his hypothetical scenario, a microscopic being (later, to his annoyance, called a demon) turns useless heat back into a resource for doing work. Maxwell had previously shown that in a gas at thermal equilibrium there is a distribution of molecular energies. Some molecules are hotter than others they are moving faster and have more energy. But they are all mixed at random so there appears to be no way to make use of those differences.

Enter Maxwells demon. It divides the compartment of gas in two, then installs a frictionless trapdoor between them. The demon lets the hot molecules moving about the compartments pass through the trapdoor in one direction but not the other. Eventually the demon has a hot gas on one side and a cooler one on the other, and it can exploit the temperature gradient to drive some machine.

The demon has used information about the motions of molecules to apparently undermine the second law. Information is thus a resource that, just like a barrel of oil, can be used to do work. But as this information is hidden from us at the macroscopic scale, we cant exploit it. Its this ignorance of the microstates that compels classical thermodynamics to speak of averages and ensembles.

Almost a century later, physicists proved that Maxwells demon doesnt subvert the second law in the long term, because the information it gathers must be stored somewhere, and any finite memory must eventually be wiped to make room for more. In 1961 the physicist Rolf Landauer showed that this erasure of information can never be accomplished without dissipating some minimal amount of heat, thus raising the entropy of the surroundings. So the second law is only postponed, not broken.

The informational perspective on the second law is now being recast as a quantum problem. Thats partly because of the perception that quantum mechanics is a more fundamental description Maxwells demon treats the gas particles as classical billiard balls, essentially. But it also reflects the burgeoning interest in quantum information theory itself. We can do things with information using quantum principles that we cant do classically. In particular, entanglement of particles enables information about them to be spread around and manipulated in nonclassical ways.

Read the rest here:

Physicists Trace the Rise in Entropy to Quantum Information - Quanta Magazine

Jacinda Ardern is right to draw attention to the fragile nature of democracy (New Zealand PM addresses Harvard on gun control and democracy, 27 May). In rewriting the ministerial code, Boris Johnson is making a blatant attempt to save his own neck (Boris Johnson accused of changing ministerial code to save his skin, 27 May). How long before he changes other cornerstones of British democracy? Why bother with the scrutiny of select committees? Why go through the difficult and expensive process of election? Why not appoint a prime minister for life?

Johnson is as grubby a man who ever set foot in politics, but the electorate need to look at the equally grubby band of sycophantic enablers who keep him in post. If we stand by as Johnson and his cronies stealthily undermine our democracy, future generations may find themselves negotiating a very different political landscape: one that cannot be easily overthrown.Lynne CopleyHuddersfield, West Yorkshire

The shenanigans in Downing Street, and the apparent absolution of the chief political protagonist after police inquiries (barring one fixed-penalty notice), seemed to me to be reminiscent of Bullingdon Club behaviour. Rich kids get drunk, trash the place, abuse the servants, ignore the laws that are for the little people and are let off by a spineless police service after heavy action by expensive lawyers.

That seemed bad enough, but now it seems that Boris Johnson has decided to use his power to protect himself by changing the ministerial code. So much for our unwritten constitution, British values and the rule of law. I am incandescent with rage at this shamelessness.Anne CarslawGlasgow

So much of the UK constitution, based in convention as much as law, is reliant on the integrity of its government. It follows that a rogue prime minister, lacking integrity and with a servile majority in the Commons, can alter this uncodified constitution to his own advantage, more or less at will. This government has a long track record of changing, and attempting to change, both convention and law, of which the alterations to the ministerial code of conduct are but the most recent example. It is what makes this government so dangerous. It is accentuating the trend to an unaccountable elective dictatorship. We should not be complacent about the weaknesses of our much-lauded democracy.Roy BoffySutton Coldfield, West Midlands

Marina Hyde likens the cabinets Partygate comments to quantum physics (No drive, no spine, very little vision: even science cant explain the creatures clinging on to Johnson, 27 May), but it is equally Marxist. Groucho, when chairing a meeting in the film Duck Soup, does not allow a point to be raised because the current agenda item is old business. He immediately moves on to new business, but disallows the previous point again because thats old business already.Joe LockerSurbiton, London

Marina Hyde could have found a word in another science, biology, to account for Boris Johnson and the weird creatures who cling to him: atavism. An atavism is a characteristic thought to have disappeared from the genome of a species many generations in the past, only to suddenly reappear usually to the detriment of the species as a whole.Pauline CaldwellDerby

Have an opinion on anything youve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.

Go here to see the original:

Democracy is in danger as Boris Johnson rips up the rulebook - The Guardian

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist discusses free will, time travel, and the relationship between innovation and scientific discovery.

Todays scientific landscape teems with conversations and interactions between scientists and humanists. The cutting edge of new knowledge is the product of collaboration across traditional disciplinary boundaries; it emerges, I believe, from places where researchers from diverse backgrounds come together to solve concrete problems.

This is the premise that sparked the idea for my book Is the Universe a Hologram? Scientists Answer the Most Provocative Questions, which comprises a series of interconnected dialogues with leading scientists who are asked to reflect on key questions and concepts about the physical world, technology, and the mind. These thinkers offer both specific observations and broader comments about the intellectual traditions that inform these questions; in doing so, they reveal a rich seam of interacting ideas.

When the book went to press a few years ago, I hadnt yet had a chance to sit down with Frank Wilczek, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose work Ive long admired. Our conversation which took place in 2020 during his visit to the city of Valencia, Spain, as a member of the jury of the prestigious Rei Jaume I Awards made its way into the recently published Spanish edition of the book titled De neuronas a galaxias (From neurons to galaxies). Im so pleased to share our discussion, translated and edited for length, below.

Adolfo Plasencia: Professor Wilczek, lets jump right into a difficult but, I think, fascinating subject. In my dialogue with the physicist Ignacio Cirac, a pioneer in the field of quantum computing, he said that quantum physics in a way takes into account free will. Its a bold statement, and Ive been eager to get your take on it. Do you agree with Cirac?

Frank Wilczek: I think the question can be understood in two different ways. So let me answer each of them separately.

The first interpretation is to ask whether quantum mechanics explains the phenomenon of free will, or whether there is something else that must be taken into account in our description of the world which is not within the scope of quantum mechanics or which is not within physics as we understand it. And the answer is that we dont really know for sure. But there seems to be a very good hypothesis that I think scientists are in fact adopting, and it is that the phenomena of mental life, including free will, can be derived from the physical embodiment of mind in matter. So what we call emergent phenomena are qualitatively different behaviors that can be very difficult to see in the basic laws but can emerge in large systems with many components that have a rich structure. So, for example, when neurobiologists study the nervous system, when they study the brain, they adopt the working hypothesis that thought, memory all mental phenomena have a physical basis, have a physical correlate.

Another aspect is that you can ask yourself if, when we do physical experiments, we have to add something else that is mental. Do we have to make corrections for what people are thinking? Physicists now do very refined, precise, delicate experiments in which corrections have to be made for all sorts of things. You have to make corrections for trucks that pass by, you have to make corrections for electric and magnetic fields, you have to control the temperature very precisely, and so on, but something that people have never needed before is to make corrections related to what people are thinking. So I think there is very good circumstantial evidence that the world, the physical world, is not influenced by a separate mental world.

I believe that the barriers that physicists are encountering are not barriers of principle, but barriers of technique.

The second interpretation of the question is whether in the formulation of quantum mechanics one should involve the observer as a separate object that has free will, that decides what to observe. Quantum mechanics has an unusual mechanism since the theory has equations, and to interpret the equations one must make an observation. I believe that, eventually, in order to understand the phenomena of free will on a physical basis, and thus fully understand quantum mechanics, we will need to understand that we have that model of consciousness that corresponds to our experience of everyday life, which is fully based on quantum mechanics. At present, I dont think we have that. However, I believe that the barriers that physicists are encountering are not barriers of principle, but barriers of technique.

We are not advanced enough in quantum mechanics to make models where we can identify something wed begin to recognize as consciousness. Thats a big challenge for the future. But we have every reason to believe that this challenge can one day be met. So what we need is a model thats fully quantum mechanical and contains complicated objects that you can point to and say, thats behaving like a conscious mind and that thing is something I can recognize as a thinking entity. Part of the trouble, of course, is that the definition of consciousness is very slippery.

AP: Your response reminds me of something someone quipped to me after seeing the table of contents of my book and reading the discussion with Cirac: So physicists are now getting into philosophy too?

FW: Physicists have always been philosophers. In fact, historically, the beginnings of philosophy and of natural science, in ancient Greece, involved the same set of people. People like Pythagoras and Thales and Plato did not consider themselves philosophers or physicists, they were both. They developed the main issues of both disciplines, somehow, together, from the very beginning. Now, in recent years physics has become much more sophisticated and has become separated from academic philosophy, which is a discipline in itself, has its own techniques and body of academic literature, and so forth.

However, I dont think physicists should give up the enterprise of attempting to understand the world fully. They have made many advances in understanding the physical world, with precision, accuracy, and great depth, and I dont think this disqualifies them from addressing the classic questions of philosophy. On the contrary, I think that empowers them so that they can bring in new kinds of insights into what have become the traditional philosophical questions.

And I think many physicists have not wanted to do that, either because they are busy with physics or because they dont dare, but I think it is perfectly appropriate for physicists to also be philosophers. In fact, I think they should be, because many of the ideas weve learned about the physical world in physics are very surprising things that you wouldnt guess from everyday experience so I think we have things to teach philosophers. Especially since quantum mechanics is really a vast expansion of what we mean by reality, and it requires adjusting how you think. If you want to be a serious student of reality or of mind you really should know quantum mechanics. To me, a philosopher who doesnt know quantum mechanics is like a swimmer with his or her hands tied behind their back.

To me, a philosopher who doesnt know quantum mechanics is like a swimmer with his or her hands tied behind their back.

AP: Lets move into what Ill call the weird ideas questions stuff Ive been wondering about, as a non-scientist, coming from a position of great ignorance but with deep curiosity. If theres any known symbol or idea about quantum physics that for ordinary people clashes with everyday logic, thats the subject of Schrdingers cat. Dont you think its difficult to explain to people that, not knowing if the cat is dead or alive, when you try to find out, you come to the conclusion that the cat is both dead and alive at the same time? That is something rather strange, counterintuitive, even to university students who study the subject.

FW: There are many situations when you describe them by probability that you dont know before you observe what you will observe. That, almost by definition, is what probability means. You dont know what you can find when you look into it, when you make the observation, when you pick from a sample, or whatever, but the quantum mechanical situation is a little bit different. What makes it paradoxical is that there is a very real sense in which the cats alive state and dead state possibilities coexist in a way that is not true in classical situations. Now, this coexistence is not a practical situation for cats, but we can talk about a similar situation for atoms, and it does become practical for atoms. But, in the spirit of your question, let me go back to talking about cats.

In principle lets assume that after some time T, the probability of having a cat alive or the probability of having a cat dead, according to quantum mechanics, is predicted to be 50/50, so each of them is equally likely. We have that situation, and we can check it and experiment, so we have a lot of cats, and we can do the same experiment over and over again. But quantum mechanics tells you that if you do certain operations after that time T you can reverse the situation so that the cat will be certainly alive or that the cat will be certainly dead and both of those possibilities were present and you could restore them by doing different things to the initial situation, to the initial wave function.

So what is different about quantum mechanics, is that those two possibilities are not mutually exclusive, they both coexist in the situation and what happens when you observe is you find out whats called collapse of the wave function. You fix one possibility, but before you made the observation, before you intervened in the situation, both were present. And if you dont intervene, but let the systems stay close, dont observe it, manipulate it with some fields, never looking in to know if the cat is alive or dead, you can reverse the evolution and make it totally alive or you can make it totally dead. For real cats this is not practical at all, but it is for atoms If you are not talking about a live cat or a dead cat but about the spin of an atom, pointing up or down, you can literally do these things you can create a situation where there is a 50/50 percent chance that the spin is up or the spin is down, but then, by operating on that wave function, without observing, just operating on it, you can show that either possibility was really present.

AP: So you believe that quantum superposition is part of human logic

FW: Oh, yes! Well, some human beings do physics and quantum mechanics pretty successfully. You know, I do quantum mechanics sometimes and I make mistakes occasionally, but Ive always been able to correct them. There is no real doubt about how you apply quantum mechanics to physical situations; there are right and wrong answers. It can be hard to think about there are sometimes very counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics. You have to sort of take yourself outside the realm of common sense and think about some things differently, because if you did apply common sense you would get the wrong answer. Sometimes, it is only necessary to follow the equations. But you know, there are many people who practice quantum mechanics very successfully and use it in design of computers and all kinds of other strange gadgets, use it to do very many concrete things. It is certainly not beyond human comprehension.

You have to sort of take yourself outside the realm of common sense and think about some things differently, because if you did apply common sense you would get the wrong answer.

AP: All right, lets move on to the next issue: time travel. An article you published in Quanta magazine some time ago digs into the concept of the arrow of time, which was coined by Arthur Eddington almost 100 years ago but remains an unsolved problem of modern physics. This idea postulates the one-way direction or asymmetry of time. Let me just ask you directly: Why does time travel only work in science fiction, and therefore in the imagination, and not in our everyday reality?

FW: Well, this is a very complex question. Not only in content but also in formulation. So, let me try to boil your question down to essentials. One aspect is, what do physicists mean when they talk about a universal symmetry? Since you cant actually reverse [in the reality in which we live] the direction of time it sounds like metaphysics to say: Okay, if we reverse the direction of time, such and such and such will happen.

But, actually, it means something very concrete. It means if you have a physical situation where particles are moving with certain velocities, so at some initial moment you know where they are and what direction they are moving these are based on certain equations you can also discuss the situation where you struck with particles in the same space but moving in the opposite direction. So that if you change (in the equations) the direction of time, they would be moving in the opposite direction instead. You can see whether those two situations are governed by exactly the same equations.

Time reversal symmetry simply says that if you reverse the directions of rotation and the speeds of everything in your system, you will see that it is based on the same equations as if you did not. So that is what time reversal means very concretely for physicists. There are many details that are more complicated, that have to do with the spin and have to do with exotic kinds of particles. But thats the idea. And, we find in physics that that principle works very, very accurately. Not perfectly but very, very accurately. But in everyday life it doesnt seem that way. It doesnt seem that the direction of time forwards and backwards is experienced in the same way in our lives. Of course, it definitively isnt.

So, how is that consistent with the experiment I mentioned? Well, first of all, we cannot, as a practical matter, in any complicated system, let alone a human body, change the direction that every particle is moving. So you cant really do it, in practice. You cant get the direct consequence of the underlying time-reversal symmetry. The past and the future are very different and there is a long story about why that is, even though the basic equations look the same forwards and backwards. And I dont think its appropriate to get into that whole story now, but let me say something. The essence of it is that, in the beginning, at the very early stage of the universe, the universe was much hotter and denser and was expanding. That was the Big Bang. And the Big Bang was in the past, not in the future. So that tells you that things were very different in the past and that we are heading toward a future that is very different from the origin (of the universe). And by a long series of arguments about the formation of structure and the universe cooling down and so on, you can sketch a history of the universe that makes sense and accords with our experience of time going in only one direction, although in the fundamental equations, we would have the same behavior if it moved in the opposite direction.

AP: Whew, all right. Sci-fi writers beware

FW: I mean, it is a very intriguing possibility in principle that of reversing the direction of the motion of particles and getting them to reverse their evolution in time so that they reconstitute their state at an earlier time. Maybe if we did that for some key molecules, to reverse aging, for example. But in practice, we dont know what, if any, key elements we need to reverse, and so, the time-reversal symmetry of the fundamental laws does not help us in anything that is very practical for us.

AP: Finally, I want to ask you about something important to me, but not explicitly related to physics. I write and publish a lot about innovation, which has been a buzzword for decades and seems to still be. Everyone these days, from entrepreneurs to politicians, has to innovate. How do you view this term, its notion, and its meaning today, from your point of view as a scientist, but also just as a citizen? What differences do you see between the concepts of discovery, invention, and innovation in the world we live in now?

FW: I think we live in a very special time now, because of the means of communication and the aids to thinking that we have electronics and microelectronics and computer technology and telecommunication. With all these things, people can exchange ideas much more efficiently. People can get together and think. And on the other hand, there is more to think about because the technology is very powerful and we understand matter very, very well. So we can design things based on imagination and planning and be sure that they work or at least be pretty confident that they will work. So thats innovation kind of exploding our knowledge of the world in order to make improvements here and there. And, to me, as a physicist, I am very proud that so much innovation has emerged from a profound understanding of the physical world and reality, that was provided originally by people who were just curious about how the physical world works, and in particular, the quantum world that we were talking about.

All microelectronics, transistors, semiconductors, etc. wouldnt exist without a profound understanding of matter that physics produced during the 20th century. And this isnt over yet. We understand, but we have not exhausted the potential thats been opened up by this profound understanding of the world. In fact, the theory itself tells us that there is much more room for improvement. Richard Feynman, one of my heroes, gave a famous talk in 1959 called Theres plenty of room in the bottom, which anticipated the richness of the micro-world: There are many, many, many atoms in even small things. And if you can work skillfully with them, you can do little machines, you can do useful things, in medicine, and in computing, of course. In principle, he foresaw this would open up various possibilities in many directions; of course he couldnt predict the details but he pointed in that direction. And now we see them embodied in microelectronics, nanotechnology, and modern telecommunications. All these things come from understanding this microcosmic world really well, in great detail and depth. A recent Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for building molecules that function as motors and understanding how to do that. So, in many ways, this fundamental science is opening up new possibilities for innovation.

Now, you asked me about the relationship between innovation and scientific discovery. I think they kind of shade into each other. But basically science, curiosity-driven basic science is more long-term. It doesnt focus on goals that you know how to reach, and you just want to reach them quickly or efficiently. It takes us into unknown territory, where we dont know what were doing or why were doing it. But that kind of thing provides new possibilities for innovation later. So I would say that scientific research is continuous with innovation, it is a long-term curiosity-driven enterprise. While short-term innovation harvests the fruit of discovery.

Adolfo Plasencia is a writer and columnist who covers science and technology, and the author of Is the Universe a Hologram? Scientists Answer the Most Provocative Questions.

The rest is here:

'Physicists Have Always Been Philosophers': In Conversation With Frank Wilczek - The MIT Press Reader

UCLA has received a $5 million pledge from Boeing Co. to support faculty at the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering.

The center, which is jointly operated by the UCLA College Division of Physical Sciences and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, brings together scientists and engineers at the leading edge of quantum information science and technology. Its members have expertise in disciplines spanning physics, materials science, electrical engineering, computer science, chemistry and mathematics.

We are grateful for Boeings significant pledge, which will help drive innovation in quantum science, said MiguelGarca-Garibay, UCLAs dean of physical sciences. This remarkable investment demonstrates confidence that UCLAs renowned faculty and researchers will spur progress in this emerging field.

UCLA faculty and researchers are already working on exciting advances in quantum science and engineering, Garca-Garibaysaid. And the divisions new one-year masters program, which begins this fall, will help meet the huge demand for trained professionals in quantum technologies.

Quantum science explores the laws of nature that apply to matter at the very smallest scales, like atoms and subatomic particles. Scientists and engineers believe that controlling quantum systems has vast potential for advancing fields ranging from medicine to national security.

Harnessing quantum technologies for the aerospace industry is one of the great challenges we face in the coming years, said Greg Hyslop, Boeings chief engineer and executive vice president of engineering, test and technology. We are committed to growing this field of study and our relationship with UCLA moves us in that direction.

In addition to its uses in aerospace, examples of quantum theory already in action include superconducting magnets, lasers and MRI scans. The next generation of quantum technology will enable powerful quantum computers, sensors and communication systems and transform clinical trials, defense systems, clean water systems and a wide range of other technologies.

Quantum information science and technology promises society-changing capabilities in everything from medicine to computing and beyond, said Eric Hudson, UCLAs David S. Saxon Presidential Professor of Physics and co-director of the center. There is still, however, much work to be done to realize these benefits. This work requires serious partnership between academia and industry, and the Boeing pledge will be an enormous help in both supporting cutting-edge research at UCLA and creating the needed relationships with industry stakeholders.

The Boeing gift complements recent support from the National Science Foundation, including a $25 million award in 2020 to the multi-universityNSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Present and Future Quantum Computation, which Hudson co-directs. And in 2021, the UCLA center received a five-year,$3 million traineeship grantfor doctoral students from the NSF.

Founded in 2018, the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering draws from the talents and creativity of dozens of faculty members and students.

Boeings support is a huge boost for quantum science and engineering at UCLA, said Mark Gyure, executive director of the center and a UCLA adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Enhancing the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering will attract additional world-class faculty in this rapidly growing field and, together with Boeing and other companies in the region, establish Los Angeles and Southern California as a major hub in quantum science and technology.

More here:

$5 million from Boeing will support UCLA quantum science and technology research | UCLA - UCLA Newsroom