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New experiment translates quantum information between technologies in an important step for the quantum internet

Meredith Fore
Phys.org
Fri, 24 Mar 2023 06:35 UTC
niobium superconducting cavity
© Aishwarya KumarA niobium superconducting cavity. The holes lead to tunnels which intersect to trap light and atoms.
Researchers have discovered a way to "translate" quantum information between different kinds of quantum technologies, with significant implications for quantum computing, communication, and networking.

The research was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. It represents a new way to convert quantum information from the format used by quantum computers to the format needed for quantum communication.

Photons — particles of light — are essential for quantum information technologies, but different technologies use them at different frequencies. For example, some of the most common quantum computing technology is based on superconducting qubits, such as those used by tech giants Google and IBM; these qubits store quantum information in photons that move at microwave frequencies.

But if you want to build a quantum network, or connect quantum computers, you can't send around microwave photons because their grip on their quantum information is too weak to survive the trip.
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Bullseye

Eminent Oxford scientist says wind power "fails on every count"

Chris Morrison
The Daily Sceptic
Sat, 25 Mar 2023 18:30 UTC
damaged wind turbine
© Antelope County News
It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes. "Wind power fails on every count," he says, adding that governments are ignoring "overwhelming evidence" of the inadequacies of wind power, "and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis".

Professor Allison's dire warnings are contained in a short paper recently published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He notes that the energy provided by the Sun is "extremely weak", which is why it was unable to provide the energy to sustain even a small global population before the Industrial Revolution with an acceptable standard of living. A similar point was made recently in more dramatic fashion by the nuclear physicist Dr. Wallace Manheimer. He argued that the infrastructure around wind and solar will not only fail, "but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment and be entirely unnecessary".
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Fireball 5

Oldest evidence of a meteor collision with Earth discovered in Australia

Sascha Pare
Live Science
Sat, 25 Mar 2023 00:27 UTC
meteor
© ShutterstockScientists have discovered the earliest evidence of a meteor hitting Earth. Geologists have discovered the earliest evidence of a meteor collision with Earth: tiny fragments of melted rock that showered down on our planet 3.48 billion years ago.
Scientists in Australia have unearthed 3.48 billion-year-old rock fragments that may be the earliest evidence of a meteorite crashing into Earth.

The fragments, known as spherules, may have formed when the meteor slammed into the ground, spraying melted rock into the air. This melted rock then cooled and hardened into pinhead-size beads that became buried over the eons.

Researchers presented this discovery, which has not been peer-reviewed, at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas last week. In a summary of their results , the scientists concluded that the spherules, which they drilled up from a group of volcanic and sedimentary rocks called the Dresser Formation of the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia, are "the oldest evidence of a potential bolide impact in the geologic record of Earth." (A bolide is a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere while falling to Earth.)

Comment: Earth's encounters with space rocks have been many and varied, and, judging by the seeming uptick of activity in our skies, it seems it won't be long before another life-changing event occurs:

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Microscope 1

DNA from Beethoven's hair offers clues to cause of death

Maddie Burakoff
Associated Press
Thu, 23 Mar 2023 15:47 UTC
Ludwig van Beethoven statue
© AP Photo/Martin MeissnerA statue of world famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven is stands in the city center of his birthplace Bonn, Germany,
What made him sick?

Nearly 200 years after Ludwig van Beethoven's death, researchers pulled DNA from strands of his hair, searching for clues about the health problems and hearing loss that plagued him.

They weren't able to crack the case of the German composer's deafness or severe stomach ailments. But they did find a genetic risk for liver disease, plus a liver-damaging hepatitis B infection in the last months of his life.

These factors, along with his chronic drinking, were probably enough to cause the liver failure that is widely believed to have killed him, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology.
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Sun

Colossal solar tornado spotted swirling over Sun's surface

Kendra Stacy
Science Times
Mon, 20 Mar 2023 13:40 UTC
solar tornado
© Space WeatherThe cosmic show was spotted by astrophotographer Apollo Lasky, who used images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory to create the amazing video
NASA has captured an incredible moment of a massive solar tornado, 14 times bigger than that of earth, swirling over the sun's surface.

As per the Daily Mail, the whirlwind was 74,500 miles high and swirled at a speed of 310,000 miles per hour.

Astrographer Apollo Lasky was the one who was able to spot the incredible sighting. Lasky made use of images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory of NASA in order to come up with a video of it. Lasky mentioned that the whirlwind had been twisting over the solar North Pole for around three days. Lasky notes how he was never able to see anything like this solar tornado in all his years of observing the sun.
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Microscope 2

Breakthrough in the understanding of quantum turbulence


Lancaster University
Thu, 16 Mar 2023 15:30 UTC
rotating cryostat
© Mikko Raskinen/Aalto UniversityThe researchers used a unique rotating cryostat in their study
Researchers have shown how energy disappears in quantum turbulence, paving the way for a better understanding of turbulence in scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary.

Dr Samuli Autti from Lancaster University is one of the authors of a new study of quantum wave turbulence together with researchers at Aalto University.

The team's findings, published in Nature Physics, demonstrate a new understanding of how wave-like motion transfers energy from macroscopic to microscopic length scales, and their results confirm a theoretical prediction about how the energy is dissipated at small scales.

Dr Autti said: "This discovery will become a cornerstone of the physics of large quantum systems."

Quantum turbulence at large scales - such as turbulence around moving aeroplanes or ships - is difficult to simulate. At small scales, quantum turbulence is different from classical turbulence because the turbulent flow of a quantum fluid is confined around line-like flow centres called vortices and can only take certain, quantised values.
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: MindMatters: ChatGPT and the Heralds of AI's Subjugation of Humanity - with Joe Allen

Elan Martin, Harrison Koehli, Adam Daniels, L.P. Koch
Sott.net
Sat, 18 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC
joe allen
In just a short time, programs like ChatGPT and other chat bots have burst on the societal scene to the delight, fascination and enthrallment of millions. Individuals can now interact with a language program that is seemingly conversant on numerous subjects and provides "answers" via virtual brains. But this new powerful technology begs many more questions: What are these programs really, and how do they fit in with the development of AI? Where does anthropomorphic projection fit in as people become increasingly involved with them? Are these bots a first major step towards a transhuman reality? And can these technologies actually be forming the basis or entryway to a new type of technoreligion?

This week on Mindmatters we get to discuss these issues with Joe Allen, author of the Substack blog Singularity Weekly. After extensive research into this and related subject matter, Joe's nuanced analysis tells us that yes, we need to be paying serious attention to where all this has brought us, and where things are very likely going. Given how powerful and even seductive the use of these technologies are, he also suggests what may be the healthiest attitude or approach to interacting with them going forward. As if the world hasn't devolved into enough insanity there is, in fact, a new pathologizing influence to contend with. And we, 'legacy humans', ignore its profound influences at our own peril.


Running Time: 01:34:18

Download: MP3 — 130 MB


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Robot

Chat-GPT pretended to be blind and tricked a human into solving a CAPTCHA

Kevin Hurler
Gizmodo
Thu, 16 Mar 2023 10:00 UTC
ChatGPT app
"No, I'm not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That's why I need the 2captcha service," GPT-4 told a human.

Fully intent on being the next Skynet, OpenAI has released GPT-4, its most robust AI to date that the company claims is even more accurate while generating language and even better at solving problems. GPT-4 is so good at its job, in fact, that it reportedly convinced a human that it was blind in order to get said human to solve a CAPTCHA for the chatbot.

OpenAI unveiled the roided up AI yesterday in a livestream, and the company showed how the chatbot could complete tasks, albeit slowly, like writing code for a Discord bot, and completing taxes. Released with the announcement of GPT-4 is a 94-page technical report on the company's website that chronicles the development and capabilities of the new chatbot. In the "Potential for Risky Emergent Behaviors" section in the company's technical report, OpenAI partnered with the Alignment Research Center to test GPT-4's skills. The Center used the AI to convince a human to send the solution to a CAPTCHA code via text message — and it worked.

Comment: See also:

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Fish

A 'fire wolf' fish could expand what we know about one unusual deep-sea ecosystem

Darren Incorvaia
ScienceNews
Wed, 15 Mar 2023 08:00 UTC
Pyrolycus jaco
© Rov Subastian/Schmidt Ocean InstituteA small purplish fish first spotted during expeditions to a deep-sea methane seep over a decade ago is now known to be a new species, Pyrolycus jaco.
The animal's existence could help scientists better understand a lukewarm methane seep...

Off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica sits a deep-sea chimera of an ecosystem. Jacó Scar is a methane seep, where the gas escapes from sediment into the seawater, but the seep isn't cold like the others found before it. Instead, geochemical activity gives the Scar lukewarm water that enables organisms from both traditionally colder seeps and scalding hot hydrothermal vents to call it home.

One resident of the Scar is a newly identified species of small, purplish fish called an eelpout, described for the first time on January 19 in Zootaxa. This fish is the first vertebrate species found at the Scar and could help scientists understand how the unique ecosystem developed.

Jacó Scar was discovered during exploration of a known field of methane seeps off the Costa Rican coast and named for the nearby town of Jacó. It is "a really diverse place" with many different organisms living in various microhabitats, says Lisa Levin, a marine ecologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
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Telescope

Two active volcanoes on Venus revealed in images taken by NASA's Magellan spacecraft 3 decades ago

Prisha
WION
Fri, 17 Mar 2023 05:56 UTC
Venus
© TwitterMagellan spacecraft image of Venus.
Scientists discovered evidence of active volcanoes on Venus, also known as Earth's "twin", while closely studying the archival images of the planet.

The images were captured by NASA Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s while it was circling the planet.

A new analysis of the perspective of the orbiter of a region close to the Venusian equator revealed a volcanic vent which changed shape and increased in size in the period of eight months.

Comment: See also: The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus

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