Search

Researchers have developed a quantum bit, or qubit, inspired by Schrödinger's cat that can operate without errors for an extended period of time. Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that traditional computers cannot, but they often make errors during computation. The qubit created by the researchers, known as a "cat qubit," can function for 10 seconds without errors, which is significantly longer than previous experiments. While this development is promising, there are still other types of errors that need to be addressed. [Extracted from the article]

Microsoft and Quantinuum claim to have developed a highly reliable quantum computer that can correct its own errors. This advancement could bring practical quantum computers closer to reality. The researchers ran over 14,000 computational routines on the quantum processor without a single error. By creating logical qubits, the researchers were able to repeatedly detect and correct errors, resulting in significantly fewer errors compared to ungrouped qubits. While some experts consider this a significant advance, more details on the experiment are needed to qualify it as a breakthrough. [Extracted from the article]

Quantum computing firm D-Wave claims to have achieved "computational supremacy" by solving real-world problems faster than ordinary computers. While Google previously demonstrated "quantum supremacy" in a contrived test, D-Wave's achievement involves solving transverse field Ising model problems, which represent how matter changes state. The team estimates that the world's most powerful classical computer would require millions of years and more electricity than is produced globally each year to solve these problems. However, critics argue that D-Wave's computers are limited to specific classes of optimization problems and may not be capable of tackling a wide range of practical problems. [Extracted from the article]

A recent article in New Scientist discusses the potential use of time crystals to stabilize quantum computers. Time crystals are a strange state of matter that can flip between two configurations without any energy input. Researchers at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences have created a control knob for a quantum computer using a discrete time crystal, which oscillates following a pattern in time. By using the time crystal, the researchers were able to increase their control over the quantum computer and minimize disturbances, resulting in a record-breaking Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state with 60 qubits. This research has practical implications for making quantum computing and communication applications more stable. [Extracted from the article]

Researchers have demonstrated how secure quantum e-commerce could work on the unhackable quantum internet of the future. They built a small network from five quantum computers connected with fiber, using quantum encryption keys to communicate. The researchers successfully completed the contract signing process 11 times per second, which is faster than previous protocols and closer to the speeds of traditional communication networks. While the work is considered very secure, scaling this protocol to larger networks may be challenging due to the need for a high number of encryption keys. [Extracted from the article]

A start-up called SuperGround has developed a method of grinding fish or chicken bones into a nutritious paste that can be added to meat products. This process allows for more efficient use of the animal and reduces food waste. The paste can increase the amount of food produced from the same number of animals by up to 40%. While some cultures already use bones in their meals, many bones in Europe and North America end up in landfills. SuperGround's bone paste aims to make bones more palatable and incorporates key nutrients into meat products. [Extracted from the article]

Google researchers have developed an algorithm that can translate complex physical problems into the language of quantum mechanics, potentially allowing quantum computers to tackle a wider range of tasks. While quantum computers may eventually be useful for specific jobs like breaking encryption or modeling quantum mechanics, their usefulness for other scientific problems is still uncertain. The algorithm developed by the researchers can translate classical problems into a form that can be run on quantum computers, potentially providing an exponential speed-up in simulating the dynamics of these systems. This algorithm represents a problem that is firmly outside the capabilities of classical computers. [Extracted from the article]

In fact, Google delivered on this promise in 2019, when it declared that its quantum computer had achieved quantum supremacy, performing a calculation impossible for the best classical computers of the day. News Insight QUANTUM computers have long promised to solve certain problems faster than any ordinary, or classical, computer can. At the moment, this stands as the best demonstration of quantum supremacy, yet to be bested by classical computers, but these 70 qubits aren't perfect - they are plagued by "noise", which makes it difficult to verify that the computer is fully taking advantage of its quantum nature and isn't vulnerable to classical advancements. [Extracted from the article]

The race is on to create a super secure online space that channels the eerie power of the quantum world. Stephen Battersby logs on [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IBM has announced the development of two new quantum computers, Condor and Heron. Condor is the second-largest quantum computer ever made, with 1121 qubits, just 59 fewer than the current largest quantum computer by Atom Computing. Heron, on the other hand, is IBM's least error-prone device to date, with 133 qubits. While quantum computers are still primarily research tools, IBM is working on improving their algorithms and error mitigation to make them more useful in the near future. [Extracted from the article]

Because qubits can be so varied, it can be hard to compare quantum computers, but Bloom says Atom Computing's machine is comparable in processing ability to IBM's, although the company has yet to release figures on this. Neutral atom qubits lend themselves better to quantum entanglement, a strange quantum effect where qubits are linked, so that measuring a property of one qubit reveals that of the other. THE world's first quantum computer to exceed 1000 qubits has more than double the number of the previous record holder, IBM's Osprey machine, which has 433 qubits. [Extracted from the article]

Pink can't contain red, and green can't contain pink, so the order must be blue, yellow, red, pink, green. We have already used the smallest green, so the order must be yellow, red, pink, green, with the smallest doll being blue. To create this puzzle, a "dominoku", I have taken a full set of 28 dominoes (in which the numbers run from 0 to 6, and each number is paired exactly once with every other number, including itself). [Extracted from the article]

Editor's pick Going with the lottery herd could cost you dear 5 August, p 14 From Andrew Mounter, Alston, Cumbria, UK The idea of UK National Lottery ticket numbers that mathematically guarantee a win of some kind every time you play perked my interest. That quantum computer wormhole is far from real 12 August, p 40 From Gerard Buzolic, Coolum Beach, Queensland, Australia Philip Ball writes of physicists puzzled over when a simulation of a physical entity, such as a wormhole, in a quantum computer is actually real. Bias in science is dwarfed by that in wider society 5 August, p 21 From Geoff Harding, Sydney, Australia Dan Levitt writes about the issue of cognitive bias in science. [Extracted from the article]

The researchers say it could achieve a level of error correction with 288 qubits that would require 4000 qubits using the surface code (arXiv, doi.org/kqc6). This would require new types of chips and long-range connectors between the qubits, but it could reduce the number of qubits required to store information in a quantum computer by a factor of 10. News Quantum computing IBM has managed to dramatically reduce the number of quantum bits, or qubits, required to prevent errors in a quantum computer. [Extracted from the article]

P12 Early night Blackbirds go to bed sooner when they feel ill p19 Technology Dancing robots steal the show These AI-powered robots performed dance routines and somersaults at the 2023 World Robot Conference in Beijing, China. News Freeze squeeze Strange springy ice may explain how clouds make rain p9 Quantum leap IBM makes quantum computer error-correction easier p10 Zeroing in Consciousness traced to specific nerve cell clusters in brain p10 Planet undressed Why has Neptune's cloak of clouds vanished?. [Extracted from the article]

Several research groups claim to have achieved "quantum advantage" - the point at which a quantum computer can complete a task that would be impossible for ordinary machines. A QUANTUM version of a computer algorithm widely used in finance, engineering and scientific modelling shows promising signs of operating much faster than existing methods. A quantum computer running the algorithm would be likely to need at least 1000 qubits, or quantum bits, to pull ahead of a classical machine. [Extracted from the article]

Josh Nunn at Orca Computing says it makes sense, but that it suits IonQ's approach to quantum computers - creating a string of qubits made of trapped ions that can each talk to any other qubit. News QUANTUM computing firm IonQ has sold a device that it claims will be able to outperform any classical supercomputer or other quantum computer in the world - but the machine has yet to be built. So IonQ has created a metric called algorithmic qubits (AQ), which the firm claims is the most holistic measure yet, taking into account the number of qubits and how interconnected they are. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the history of quantum mechanics and the separation of classical physics from basic physics. Topics include the study of quantum phenomena such as entanglement by physicists including Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger, and efforts to build a quantum computer which uses quantum bits, or qubits.

News IN A contest between a quantum computer and a supercomputer attempting the same calculation, IBM's Eagle quantum machine has come out on top. They pitched IBM's Eagle quantum computer, which contains 127 quantum bits, or qubits, against a supercomputer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Now, Abhinav Kandala at IBM and his colleagues have shown that even a noisy quantum computer can be more accurate in its calculations than a conventional machine. [Extracted from the article]

Brennen and his team have proposed using a kind of quantum computer called a boson sampler to create a new cryptocurrency network, which should be a more energy-efficient alternative when run on quantum hardware. News QUANTUM computers could be used to mine existing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or future, more energy-efficient ones, slashing their electricity use, according to two new analyses. If quantum computers come to threaten the encryption that cryptocurrencies rely on to be secure, this method could be a useful alternative and save energy too, says Mark Webber at UK start-up firm Universal Quantum. [Extracted from the article]

A CRUCIAL building block for quantum computers based on sound has been shown to work for the first time. His team built a chip-sized device that can create phonons one at a time and send them to other parts of the device. One way of building quantum computers is to encode information into quantum states of particles of light, then use mirrors and lenses to manipulate the information. [Extracted from the article]

Connecting the qubits across such a distance also shows that superconducting circuit-based quantum computers could be scaled up to create quantum supercomputers, says Storz. A SUPERCONDUCTING circuit has passed a Bell test, the gold-standard confirmation of quantum behaviour. [Extracted from the article]

Quasiparticles, as the name suggests, aren't true particles, but rather collective vibrations that behave as if they are particles. A MYSTERIOUS and long-sought particle with a memory has been discovered using a quantum computer. [Extracted from the article]

To make their test network, Qunnect's researchers had to build a device called an entanglement source that generates entangled photons. The advantage of this approach is it produces more photons, so can transfer more information, but the photons aren't the right wavelength to be used with current fibre-optic networks. Since the previous evening, researchers at Qunnect have been sending particles of light, or photons, through a 34-kilometre-long loop of optical fibre underneath New York. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on the development of quantum computers by the researchers in the U.S. Topics discussed include the strange laws of quantum physics, the new generation of programmers, and encoding of information by classical computers. Also being discussed are quantum supremacy, and increasing number of qubits.

GOOGLE has demonstrated that its approach to quantum error correction - seen as an important element of developing useful quantum computers - is scalable, giving researchers at the company confidence that practical devices will be ready in the coming years. Surface code logical qubits are typically a grid of qubits paired with another of the same size, with a single qubit reserved to measure the value of others. The company's experiment saw a move from 3 by 3 grids, involving 17 physical qubits, to 5 by 5 grids using 49 qubits, meaning almost the entire processor was acting as a single logical qubit. [Extracted from the article]

For example, the widely used RSA algorithm relies on the fact that multiplying two prime numbers to generate a large encryption key is easy, while finding those original prime factors when you only have the encryption key is very difficult. News A GROUP of researchers has claimed that quantum computers can now crack the encryption we use to protect emails, bank accounts and other sensitive data. But quantum computers can exploit the unusual properties of quantum physics to speed up some calculations and will probably render current encryption techniques obsolete once the hardware is sufficiently powerful and accurate. [Extracted from the article]

Maria Spiropulu at the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues used Google's Sycamore quantum computer to simulate a holographic wormhole - a tunnel through space-time with black holes at either end. In a real wormhole, the journey would be largely mediated by gravity, but the holographic wormhole instead uses quantum effects, removing relativity from the equation. News Quantum physics A QUANTUM computer has been used to simulate a holographic wormhole for the first time. [Extracted from the article]

The IBM team's quantum computer had qubits made from tiny wires that conduct electricity perfectly - meaning they don't lose energy to electrical resistance. News News Technology A QUANTUM computer has run the largest quantum program yet. Having many qubits doesn't guarantee useful computation results because quantum computers often make errors, says IBM team member Abhinav Kandala. [Extracted from the article]

IBM's Osprey quantum computer has 433 qubits, or quantum bits, which is more than triple the size of the company's previously record-breaking 127-qubit computer. Qubits can be disturbed by forces exerted on them by neighbouring qubits in a similar way to how "crossed wires" can make conventional computers malfunction. IBM's team is on track to have a working quantum computer with 1121 qubits in 2023, he says. [Extracted from the article]

He attended the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1987 and later the University of Vienna in Austria for his doctorate, ultimately returning to USTC to run one of the largest and most successful quantum research groups in the world. GOVERNMENTS and companies around the world are racing to build a useful quantum computer, and the stakes are as high as the R&D budgets. "He was certainly driven and motivated to build bigger things", says Thomas Jennewein at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who also worked with Pan in Vienna and helped him set up a new quantum research lab at USTC in 2002. [Extracted from the article]

Reality check The team calculated how long it would take for classical and quantum methods to find the quantum states of iron-sulphur groups, which are molecules found throughout nature and frequent targets for quantum chemistry. QUANTUM computers may not be able to simulate molecules and solve other problems in chemistry as fast as hoped, a new analysis has found. Because there are still large advantages for quantum computers in solving chemistry problems, the results are unlikely to change or halt any current quantum computing research, says Tew. [Extracted from the article]

IF YOU struggle with Wordle, you might just need to think like a quantum computer. Li and the team based their quantum Mastermind strategy on a well-known quantum codebreaking algorithm that has previously been used in real-world cryptography. Lvzhou Li at Sun Yat-sen University in China and his colleagues developed a quantum algorithm for the game Mastermind, which has many of the same underlying principles as Wordle. [Extracted from the article]

And experts expect thateven upcoming quantum computers that will be morepowerful will only perform up to thousands of operations asecond, whereas a classical computer can perform billions. A quantum computer running the algorithmwould be likely to need at least 1000 qubits, or quantum bits,to pull ahead of a classical machine. News News & Technology Technology A QUANTUM version of a computer algorithm widely usedin finance, engineering and scientific modelling showspromising signs of operating much faster than existingmethods. [Extracted from the article]

QUANTUM computers made from imperfect diamonds could stop themselves from overheating just by running an algorithm. Eric Lutz and his colleagues at the University of Stuttgart in Germany built a small, diamond-based quantum computer that can cool itself by performing a sequence of mathematical operations. [Extracted from the article]

Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, to measure and extract information. IT IS official - there is now proof that quantum computers can perform some tasks exponentially faster than classical computers, and it could massively boost their usefulness. [Extracted from the article]

A QUANTUM computer made of charged atoms can catch its own errors when performing any operation - a meaningful step towards more reliable and practical quantum computers. For quantum computers that use superconducting qubits, such as Google's Sycamore, error correction from the get-go requires devices much larger than 16 qubits, he says. [Extracted from the article]

The team found that exchanging a single qubit and a million classical bits would be enough to make the system secure against anyone with a quantum computer smaller than a million qubits. Matthias Christandl at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and his colleagues have developed a system for verifying location that takes advantage of special properties of the basic units of memory in quantum computers, known as quantum bits, or qubits. CREATING a fully secure method to verify the location of a device or computer isn't possible with classical computers, but now it seems it will be with quantum ones. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses quantum computing, analyzing the components and abilities of the technology through the format of a product comparison and review. Topics include an overview of how quantum computers work through the unit of the qubit, superposition, and entanglement, different types such as superconducting qubits and spin qubits, and applications such as factorisation, backward search, and quantum simulation. The possible quantum computer D-Wave Two by D-Wave Systems is discussed.

The article reports that a range of algorithms for encryption are verified and approved as secure by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and are used around the world but these algorithms are expected to be obsolete by the arrival of quantum computers. Topics include expectations on the machines once developed, attack that makes Rainbow algorithm useless as a method to verify messages, and comments from Dustin Moody at NIST about the attack against Rainbow.

The article describes the type of a quantum computer that is needed to break the algorithm that secures bitcoin in 24 hours.

Now, Mark Saffman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues have built an alternative quantum computer using six qubits made from neutrally charged caesium atoms, as opposed to charged ions. A QUANTUM computer that uses ordinary atoms to perform calculations could be a rival to more exotic devices, although one of its creators says there are still challenges ahead in scaling up the technology. And Mikhail Lukin at Harvard University and his colleagues have built a neutral-atom machine that lets qubits entangle with qubits that are much further than neighbouring ones, though it isn't fully programmable. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on the claim by International Business Machines (IBM) that it has created the world's largest superconducting quantum computer, surpassing the size of state-of-the art machines from Google and from researchers in China. Topics discussed include approaches that are being pursued to create a practical quantum computer, claim made by Google on its Sycamore processor in 2019, and features IBM's 127-qubit Eagle processor.

The article focuses on the possibility of a gathering of encrypted messages by intelligence agencies to help with the development of a practical quantum computer to crack them, according to Andersen Cheng of cybersecurity firm Post-Quantum and director of L3 TRL company that supplies encryption technology to the British government. Topics discussed include the capability of a quantum computer and a leak by Edward Snowden in 2014 involving the U.S. National Security Agency.

The article presents the discussion on cybersecurity intelligence agencies intercepting encrypted message developing a practical quantum computer for cracking them.

The article discusses the capability of quantum computers to rectify its own mistakes. It cites the error-correction strategy demonstrated by a quantum computer that fixed more errors. As an example, Google's Sycamore processor showed its capability of detecting and fixing computational errors. Christopher Monroe and colleagues at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland have successfully set the state of a logical qubit by using trapped-ion qubits using charged atoms manipulated with lasers.