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There is a worldwide research effort exploring the potentials of quantum mechanics for applications. The field began with Feynmans proposal in 1981 at MIT Endicott House to build a computer that takes advantage of quantum mechanics and has grown enormously since Peter Shors 1994 quantum factoring algorithm. The idea of utilizing quantum mechanics to process information has since grown from computation and communication to encompass diverse topics such as sensing and simulations in biology and chemistry. Leaving aside the extensive experimental efforts to build controllable large-scale quantum devices, theory research in quantum information science (QIS) investigates several themes:

QIS theory research at MIT spans all of these areas. The CTP faculty involved are: Soonwon Choi and Aram Harrow, and the larger group at MIT includes Isaac Chuang (EECS/physics), Seth Lloyd (Mech. Eng.), Anand Natarajan (EECS) and Peter Shor (Math). Other faculty in the area include Eddie Farhi (emeritus), Jeffrey Goldstone (emeritus) and Jeff Shapiro (EECS, emeritus). Together this forms a large and vibrant group working in all areas of QIS.

Some of the notable contributions involving the CTP include the quantum adiabatic algorithm and quantum walk algorithms (Farhi, Goldstone), the first example of a problem for which quantum computers exhibit no speedup (Farhi, Goldstone), proposals for unforgeable quantum money (Farhi, Shor), a quantum algorithm for linear systems of equations (Harrow, Lloyd), efficient protocols for simulating quantum channels (Harrow, Shor), both algorithms and hardness results for testing entanglement (Harrow), proposals for quantum approximate optimization algorithms (Farhi, Goldstone), proposals and experimental observations of exotic quantum dynamics such as slow thermalization or a discrete time crystalline phase in quantum simulators (Choi), quantum sensing protocols using strongly interacting spin ensembles (Choi), and quantum convolutional neural networks (Choi). Ongoing research at MIT in QIS includes work on new quantum algorithms, efficient simulations of quantum systems, methods to characterize and control existing or near-term quantum hardwares, connections to many-body physics, applications in high-energy physics, and many other topics.

The larger QIS group at MIT shares a seminar series, a weekly group meeting, regular events for grad students.

Interdepartmental course offerings include an introductory and an advanced class in core QI/QC, as well as occasional advanced special topics classes. Quantum information has also entered the undergraduate physics curriculum with a junior lab experiment on NMR quantum computing and some lectures in the 8.04/8.05/8.06 sequence on quantum computing.

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Quantum Information Science MIT Physics

James Bardeen, who helped elucidate the properties and behavior of black holes, setting the stage for what has been called the golden age of black hole astrophysics, died on June 20 in Seattle. He was 83.

His son William said the cause was cancer. Dr. Bardeen, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Washington, had been living in a retirement home in Seattle.

Dr. Bardeen was a scion of a renowned family of physicists. His father, John, twice won the Nobel Prize in Physics, for the invention of the transistor and the theory of superconductivity; his brother, William, is an expert on quantum theory at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

Dr. Bardeen was an expert on unraveling the equations of Einsteins theory of general relativity. That theory ascribes what we call gravity to the bending of spacetime by matter and energy. Its most mysterious and disturbing consequence was the possibility of black holes, places so dense that they became bottomless one-way exit ramps out of the universe, swallowing even light and time.

Dr. Bardeen would find his lifes work investigating those mysteries, as well as related mysteries about the evolution of the universe.

Jim was part of the generation where the best and brightest went to work on general relativity, said Michael Turner, a cosmologist and emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, who described Dr. Bardeen as a gentle giant.

James Maxwell Bardeen was born in Minneapolis on May 9, 1939. His mother, Jane Maxwell Bardeen, was a zoologist and a high school teacher. Following his fathers work, the family moved to Washington, D.C.; to Summit, N.J.; and then to Champaign-Urbana, Ill., where he graduated from the University of Illinois Laboratory High School.

He attended Harvard and graduated with a physics degree in 1960, despite his fathers advice that biology was the wave of the future. Everybody knew who my father was, he said in an oral history interview recorded in 2020 by the Federal University of Paraguay, adding that he had not felt the need to compete with him. It was impossible, anyway, he said.

Working under the physicist Richard Feynman and the astrophysicist William A. Fowler (who would both become Nobel laureates), Dr. Bardeen obtained his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1965. His thesis was about the structure of supermassive stars millions of times the mass of the sun; astronomers were beginning to suspect that they were the source of the prodigious energies of the quasars being discovered in the nuclei of distant galaxies.

After holding postdoctoral positions at Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the astronomy department at the University of Washington in 1967. An avid hiker and mountain climber, he was drawn to the school by its easy access to the outdoors.

By then, what the Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, refers to as the golden age of black hole research was well underway, and Dr. Bardeen was swept up in international meetings. At one, in Paris in 1967, he met Nancy Thomas, a junior high school teacher in Connecticut who was trying to brush up on her French. They were married in 1968.

In addition to his son William, a senior vice president and the chief strategy officer of The New York Times Company, and his brother, William, Dr. Bardeens wife survives him, along with another son, David, and two grandchildren. A sister, Elizabeth Greytak, died in 2000.

Dr. Bardeen was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, as is his brother and as was his father.

Although he was speedy at math, Dr. Bardeen didnt write any faster than he spoke. William Press, a former student of Dr. Thornes now at the University of Texas, recalled being sent to Seattle to finish a paper that Dr. Bardeen and he were supposed to be writing. Nothing had been written. Dr. Bardeens wife then commanded the two to sit on opposite ends of a couch with a pad of paper. Dr. Bardeen would write a sentence and pass the pad to Dr. Press, who would either reject or approve it and then pass the pad back. Each sentence, Dr. Press said, took a few minutes. It took them three days, but the paper got written.

One of the epochal moments of those years was a monthlong summer school in Les Houches, France, in 1972 featuring all the leading black hole scholars. Dr. Bardeen was one of a half-dozen invited speakers. It was during that meeting that he, Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University and Brandon Carter, now of the Paris Observatory, wrote a landmark paper entitled The Four Laws of Black Hole Mechanics, which became a springboard for future work, including Dr. Hawkings surprise calculation that black holes could leak and eventually explode.

In another famous calculation the same year, Dr. Bardeen deduced the shape and size of a black holes shadow as seen against a field of distant stars a doughnut of light surrounding dark space.

That shape was made famous, Dr. Thorne said, by the Event Horizon Telescopes observations of black holes in the galaxy M87 and in the center of the Milky Way, and by visualizations in the movie Interstellar.

Another of Dr. Bardeens passions was cosmology. In a 1982 paper, he, Dr. Turner and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton described how submicroscopic fluctuations in the density of matter and energy in the early universe would grow and give rise to the pattern of galaxies we see in the sky today.

Jim was delighted that we used his formalism, Dr. Turner said, and was sure we got it right.

Dr. Bardeen moved to Yale in 1972. Four years later, unhappy with the academic bureaucracy in the East and yearning for the outdoors again, he moved back to the University of Washington. He retired in 2006.

But he never stopped working. Dr. Thorne recounted a recent telephone conversation in which they reminisced about the hiking and camping trips they used to take with their families. In the same conversation, Dr. Bardeen described recent ideas he had about what happens as a black hole evaporates, suggesting that it might change into a white hole.

That was one aspect of Jim in a nutshell, Dr. Thorne wrote in an email, thinking deeply about physics in creative new ways right up to the end of his life.

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James Bardeen, an Expert on Unraveling Einsteins Equations, Dies at 83 - The New York Times

Is there really a heaven? Do people have souls? Dr. Eben Alexander, a former associate professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, answered these questions with his own experience.

Dr. Alexander has been a researcher in neurosurgery for 25 years and is known worldwide for his development of modern neurosurgical techniques and treatment of complex brain diseases. During his 15 years at Harvard Medical School, he published over 150 neurosurgical articles, both individually and collaboratively.

In 2008, without warning, Dr. Alexander developed an extremely rare form of bacterial meningitis that was hardly documented in the medical literature. He fell into a coma within a few hours. Dr. Alexander, a former lifelong believer in science, said that he saw heaven while in the coma and realized that these phenomena, which he had previously considered nonsense, were in fact no fantasy. He wrote a book about his experiences titled Proof of Heaven, which was a New York Times bestseller for 15 weeks.

The following are some highlights from Health 1+1s interview with Dr. Alexander.

In November 2008, I suddenly developed a severe case of bacterial meningitis and was admitted to the hospitals intensive care unit (ICU). It was an extremely rare form of meningitis that was barely documented in the medical literature.

Within a few hours, I fell into a deep coma.

In my coma, I found myself rescued by a slowly spinning white light with a perfect musical melody. The white light was surrounded by golden and silvery hair-like things. Then, a gorgeous and very real entrance valley slowly opened. At that time, my consciousness was only the size of a speck of light, on the wings of a butterfly. There were several million butterflies flying around me.

There was a lush green and vibrant meadow below. There was no sign of death or decline. There were thousands of lives dancing there, and I call them souls among lives. The place was filled with joy, with angels singing from high above and pure soul pearls being pulled out of the lights and reflecting against the deep blue sky, and there were songs coming from all around.

A thunderbolt passed through my consciousness, which was the first thing I knew in this dimension.

I knew that I was loved by a loving compassionate divine being who was not a judge. I could feel that this divine being was very compassionate.

I had no memory of this world at that time, and I had forgotten the language. I had no recollection of Eben Alexanders life or my knowledge of the universe; and my memory was empty.

Fortunately, I was not alone. Our consciousness was all on the wings of a butterfly. A very beautiful lady was beside me, and her clothes were the same as the attires of the joyful dancing beings in the valley. She and I had a deep connection, as she was my guardian angel. Throughout my journey, she was the one who telepathically sent me all the comforting messages: You will always be loved and cherished. You dont need to be afraid. You will be well taken care of.

There are no words to describe how beautiful it was, and I think that was the message I wanted to bring back to this world.

When I woke up in the ICU after that near-death experience, for a moment, I couldnt recognize my family members, who were at my bedside, including my mother, wife, and son. All I knew was that I had been on a strange and mysterious journey.

If you saw my condition, you would think that I was hopeless. However, I miraculously recovered two months later.

Almost all the doctors said that I survived because of the near-death experience I had. Nevertheless, I dont think I just survived, but I recovered completely and became more energetic.

In the hours following the near-death experience, my language returned; and within a few days, my childhood memories came back. My knowledge of the language, neurology, the brain, the universe and physics was all restored within two months of waking up from the coma.

I documented the neocortical damage to my brain to prove that what I saw was not a dream, hallucination, or fiction. In fact, there is clear medical evidence that my neocortex was in a state of damage.

According to the Glasgow Coma Scale, a score of 15 is normal, a score below 9 is considered being in a deep coma, and a score of 3 is considered being a corpse. For most of the time, I was in a coma, and my score would have been 6 or 7, and sometimes as low as 5.

In addition, CT and MRI brain tests showed that all eight lobes of my brain were affected, so my own cerebral cortex would not have been able to generate this experience.

I think it is important to point out that the conventional science based on Newton and materialism, which is promoted by the mainstream media today, should have been disproved 80 years ago, when quantum physics was born. Yet many in the scientific community have not yet emerged from their confusion.

I spent the first 54 years of my life in the worldview of conventional science. I taught neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School for over 15 years, and I thought I knew a thing or two about the brain, thoughts, and consciousness. However, after my near-death experience in 2008 and nearly 12 years of scientific research, I have gained a much deeper understanding of how science understands the brain, mind, consciousness, and reality.

The idea of free consciousness is much more convincing than the outdated materialism ideology. I did not believe it before the coma, and this experience has brought about a refreshing change in my understanding of humanity and the universe.

We mistakenly believe that consciousness is generated by the material brain, as I did before I fell into a coma, but this is not true.

The new theory in science is the filtering theory.

That is, the brain is like a physical processing plant. Our will is free even when it is not in the brain, and it possesses great power to influence the physical world. The placebo effect, for example, is the miraculous healing effect that occurs when the patient is simply comforted in the mind.

The book Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography documented over 3,500 unexplained cases of self-recovery from cancer, and infectious, congenital, and degenerative diseases in the mid-1990s. The reason was often that the patients own faith had an unexpected healing effect.

Actions such as sitting in meditation and praying can also help people enter a healing state, as I have experienced with my therapeutic near-death experience, although our modern medicine is largely unable to explain how near-death experiences can have miraculous healing effects.

We can also look to other near-death experiences for reference. For instance, Anita Moorjani recovered from being on the verge of death from cancer, and skeletal surgeon Mary C Neal miraculously recovered 30 minutes after drowning. These separate cases of spiritual healing are all amazing examples. And the placebo effect is similar to the effect of praying, which is a very powerful healing method.

If our consciousness can influence our bodies and healing effects, we can probably influence what happens in real life as well.

My story is so powerful that hundreds of doctors, nurses, and health care workers, especially those who work with the deceased, have realized that when the material body dies, the consciousness does not die with it. They have seen so much evidence.

If you look at our modern understanding of consciousness, the subject of near death [experiences], and other things beyond the physical brain, you will find vivid examples everywhere in life.

In fact, near death experience is not a modern term. It existed as early as in the time of Plato, who recorded the life review of Er, son of Armenios of Pamphylia, who almost perished in battle.

When Er revived, he told the other soldiers, When you die, you will see all the important things in your life flashing in front of your eyes. The most important thing I learned from retrospect is that we exist to love each other.

After exploring this, we believe that the power of the divine is absolutely real. From a scientific and philosophical point of view, materialism was already outdated 80 years ago.

However, I am not exploring religious beliefs. From 2002 until my coma, my soul was lost for many years. I gave up my faith in God, I gave up praying, I stopped taking my sons to church, and I stopped praying for them at night. However, my near death experience proved to me forever and without question that the power of Gods mercy is absolutely real in this universe.

Similar experiences from many other people have also proven this: the most important thing we learn from near death experiences is that do unto others as you would have them do unto you, a truth that is built into the very foundation of the universe.

If we cause suffering to others without reason, we will pay the price in our passing. When passing through a dimension with life reviews, like the valley I passed through, we experience the same pain as the persons we hurt. So for some people who have hurt others, their life review experience will be hellish.

In the midst of all the light and compassion, the pain and suffering is particularly visible. There are also a series of corrections to help us repay, so that in the next life we are kinder and more lovingthats the ultimate destination of consciousness through this process.

I would say that it changed everything. It changed my perception of the existence of the soul, my relationship with the universe, and my relationship with others.

Im not the only one. Over 90 percent to 95 percent of people who experienced near-death experiences woke up more compassionate, less materialistic, and more focused on helping others, showing kindness and affection.

I came back from my journey with the realization that one of our greatest challenges is how to love ourselvesto enrich our understanding of Gods compassionate providence, which is what we really need to do.

The most profoundly difficult part of this experience is not what happens after we die, but how we live this life soberly and meaningfully. We need to recognize that our souls are connected to God and to the lives of the universe, and to use that to guide our lives.

I also believe that the source of life is not evolutionary, as Darwin believed. Even so, this misinterpretation has permeated our economic, political, and social systems, and has evolved into the so-called survival of the fittest, every man for himself, and elimination of those who compete with you. This is not right. Modern biology has found many examples to prove the existence of intraspecies and interspecies cooperation and communication, such as dolphins helping whales deliver, and different species helping each other.

When we are born into this world in a physical body, we seem to be abandoned by the spiritual world. Nevertheless, what people forget is that we are not really abandoned, we just need to rediscover the connections. In particular, we need to experience our world fully so that we can live it more meaningfully.

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Doctor on Verge of Death Fell in Coma, 'Saw Heaven' and Recovered in 2 Months - The Epoch Times