Engineers crack 58-year-old enigma,
make quantum breakthrough
Fox News,
by
James Rogers
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
3/12/2020 3:58:03 AM
A team of engineers in Australia has cracked a problem that has stood for more than half a century.
In 1961, scientist and Nobel Laureate Nicolaas Bloembergen had suggested that the nucleus of a single atom could be controlled using only electric fields. Now, the engineers at the University of New South Wales Sydney have achieved just that. "This discovery means that we now have a pathway to build quantum computers using single-atom spins without the need for any oscillating magnetic field for their operation," said Andrea Morello, UNSW's scientia professor of quantum engineering, in a statement. "Moreover, we can use these nuclei
Reply 1 - Posted by:
caljeepgirl 3/12/2020 4:57:06 AM (No. 343703)
I sure don't understand the technicalities here, but I know that this is a very BIG DEAL! The breadth of potential impact in a number of fields, not least of which are computing and medicine, is truly mind-boggling. This is really exciting stuff.....a key turning point!
28 people like this.
What does this have to do with panicking everyone about the Black Death. (Covid-19) Every news article must contain Black Death news or Trump is hated news. Come on people.
54 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Strike3 3/12/2020 6:29:01 AM (No. 343739)
Thanks, OP. Just when we thought computers could not get any faster.
13 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
petrichor 3/12/2020 6:38:06 AM (No. 343748)
This is definitely a new toy for scientists. We will see faster computers and the "detection" factor this introduces could help to address the quest for uniform field theory. However, this does not make AI any more inevitable. AI will never truly be created until we learn how the human brain works. For now, AI will continue to be just expert systems.
20 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
BarryNo 3/12/2020 7:08:30 AM (No. 343771)
I agree, poster 4. An 'AI' is never more than an imperfect reflection of the programmer. Of course, considering their opinions and predilections, we should still be worried they want us to trust their creations.
16 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Laotzu 3/12/2020 8:40:58 AM (No. 343851)
Changes for particle accelerators?
2 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Quigley 3/12/2020 9:05:30 AM (No. 343881)
Joe bi.den was really excited until “dr” jill shouted “it says enigma” to him several times.
I wonder if this means amazon will really be able to predict what I want to buy before i even know it.
I am jaded by the media, remembering breathless articles about cloning dinosaurs, achieving invisibility, teleportation, all nearly achieved with an experiment,
But i want to stay exicted about scientific progress. But with people like schmuck schumer selling the population out for donations and get him rich deals, how much will be progress and how much will be merely social control and public numbing?
9 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
snowoutlaw 3/12/2020 10:15:33 AM (No. 343984)
Flying cars?
1 person likes this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
kono 3/12/2020 10:31:01 AM (No. 344005)
Viable quantum computing ... a Holy Grail of sorts is found, and WOULDN'T you know it would happen JUST before the whole human race catches cold and dies off... So we'll never get to see how much of an advancement this would represent. Moore and Murphy both let out a cackle.
Please forgive the sarcastic tone; but memory is tempering my enthusiasm until the claim proves out. Remember cold fusion. Remember room-temperature superconducting. Remember human cloning. A few years from now (should we learn that the celebration for this was a bit overblown, and premature at that) we could be saying, "Remember quantum computing.")
6 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
jlw509 3/12/2020 10:31:10 AM (No. 344006)
Oh hallelujah, I've been hoping and pining for this for so, so long...
:o?
2 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
John Gee 3/12/2020 10:43:47 AM (No. 344023)
There may be new science discoveries in this, but it won't help with the basic problem with quantum computing. To have a Q computer that does anything useful, one must entangle around a thousand qubits (atoms in this case), but quantum entanglement is a very touchy thing, and as you add qubits to the system the touchiness rises much faster than the number of qubits. The largest number they've achieved so far is less than fifty, and that's for only a couple of microseconds before entanglement collapses.
And it's a good thing this natural limit exists, because otherwise our modern cryptography would become useless and buying stuff online would no longer be secure.
6 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
DVC 3/12/2020 11:15:15 AM (No. 344067)
Electric fields versus magnetic fields.....they interact, but are quite different, although both are described by Maxwell's equations. Cool outcome, and I can see how this would have worked in the lab, and the "Aha!" moment, since in most cases both kinds of fields are present to a degree.
Interesting to be able to control a single atom's location. Probably other useful stuff, as yet unimagined that this will help along, too.
And I agree with #4 on "AI". What is currently passed off as "AI" is smoke and mirrors, merely massive amounts of computer code, trying to think up "every possible situation" in advance so that the device can be pre-programmed react "intelligently".....and then there is the unimagined situation which crops up and the "intelligent" device freezes up, or does something wrong - sometimes VERY wrong. AI today and in the near future (
4 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
DVC 3/12/2020 11:20:12 AM (No. 344075)
Hmm. Somehow the last bit was amputated.
AI today and in the near future (
0 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
DVC 3/12/2020 12:24:55 PM (No. 344131)
Uh, OK, now I know that this system believes that a left paren and a less than sign means.....end it all.
One more time, with alternate symbols.
AI today and in the near future, less than 30 years or so, will remain pretty much just marketing hype.
And # 11, were you ever in the supercomputer biz? I once knew a guy.....
3 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Starboard_side 3/12/2020 12:28:33 PM (No. 344140)
Found by accident, but likely will transform the electronics and computing world in ways we can hardly understand today.
Just amazing!!!
1 person likes this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Mushroom 3/12/2020 12:55:08 PM (No. 344175)
I didn't see in the article if this had been replicated in another lab. That is when we can cheer.
1 person likes this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
GoodDeal 3/12/2020 2:46:22 PM (No. 344279)
Ok Scotty lock on photon torpedoes and on my mark fire tubes two and three and beam me up before impact.
0 people like this.
I agree that we need to see the experiment duplicated, but if it proves out, we may be approaching "The Singularity" predicted by Ray Kurzweil, genius inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist. In a nutshell, Kurzweil points out that
+ humans have been adapting faster and faster to technological innovations,
+ right now there are three innovations in process (computing power, DNA manipulation, and nanotechnology), and that
+ all three of these innovation threads are likely to grow exponentially, "hitting" at the SAME TIME.
Before now, these kinds of changes happened more slowly, and one at a time.
Again the old adage "when all is said and done, a lot more is said than done" applies here, until there are independent verifications of these results.
1 person likes this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Omen55 3/12/2020 6:42:20 PM (No. 344461)
Will this lead us to the world of Star Trek?
0 people like this.
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