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Stephen Hawking once suggested Albert Einsteins assertion that God does not play dice with the universe was wrong. In Hawkings view, the discovery of black hole physics confirmed that not only did God play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they cant be seen.

Are we here by chance or design?

A more pragmatic approach to the question, considering the subject matter, would be to assume that all answers are correct. In fact, thats the basis of quantum physics.

Heres the simplest explanation of how it all works that youll ever read: imagine flipping a coin and then walking away secure in the knowledge that it landed on heads or tails.

If we look at the entire universe and start zooming in until you get down to the tiniest particles, youll see the exact same effect in their interactions. Theyre either going to do one thing or another. And, until you observe them, that potential remains.

With all that potential out there in the universe just waiting to be observed, were able to build quantum computers.

However, like all things quantum, theres a duality involved in harnessing Gods dice for our own human needs. For every mind-blowing feat of quantum engineering we come up with just wait until you read about laser tweezers and time crystals we need some grounded technology to control it.

In reality, theres no such thing as a purely-quantum computer and there probably never will be. Theyre all hybrid quantum-classical systems in one way or another.

Lets start off with why we need quantum computers. Classical (or binary, as theyre often called) computers the kind youre reading this on complete goals by solving tasks.

We program computers to do what we want by giving them a series of commands. If I press the A key on my keyboard, then the computer displays the letter A on my screen.

Somewhere inside the machine, theres code telling it how to interpret the key press and how to display the results.

It took our species approximately 200,000 years to get that far.

In the past century or so, weve come to understand that Newtonian physics doesnt apply to things at very small scales, such as particles, or objects at particularly massive scales such as black holes.

The most useful lesson weve learned in our relatively recent study of quantum physics is that particles can become entangled.

Quantum computers allow us to harness the power of entanglement. Instead of waiting for one command to execute, as binary computers do, quantum computers can come to all of their conclusions at once. In essence, theyre able to come up with (nearly) all the possible answers at the same time.

The main benefit to this is time. A simulation or optimization task that might take a supercomputer a month to process could be completed in mere seconds on a quantum computer.

The most commonly cited example of this is drug discovery.In order to create new drugs, scientists have to study their chemical interactions. Its a lot like looking for a needle in a never-ending field of haystacks.

There are near-infinite possible chemical combinations in the universe, sorting out their individual combined chemical reactions is a task no supercomputer can do within a useful amount of time.

Quantum computing promises to accelerate these kinds of tasks and make previously impossible computations commonplace.

But it takes more than just expensive, cutting-edge hardware to produce these ultra-fast outputs.

Hybrid quantum computing systems integrate classical computing platforms and software with quantum algorithms and simulations.

And, because theyre ridiculously expensive and mostly experimental, theyre almost exclusively accessed via cloud connectivity.

In fact, theres a whole suite of quantum technologies out there aside from hybrid quantum computers, though theyre the technology that gets the most attention.

In a recent interview with Neural, the CEO of SandboxAQ (a Google sibling company under the Alphabet umbrella), Jack Hidary, lamented:

For whatever reason, the mainstream media seems to only focus on quantum computing.

There are also quantum sensing, quantum communications, quantum imaging, and quantum simulations although, some of those overlap with quantum hybrid computing as well.

The point is, as Hidary also told Neural, were at an inflection point. Quantum tech is no longer a far-future technology. Its here in many forms today.

But the scope of this article is limited to hybrid quantum computing technologies. And, for that, were focused on two things:

There are two kinds of problems in the quantum computing world: optimization problems and the kind that arent optimization problems.

For the former, you need a quantum annealing system. And, for everything else, you need a gate-based quantum computer probably. Those are still very much in the early stages of development.

But companies such as D-Wave have been building quantum annealing systems for decades.

Heres how D-Wave describes the annealing process:

The systems starts with a set of qubits, each in a superposition state of 0 and 1. They are not yet coupled. When they undergo quantum annealing, the couplers and biases are introduced and the qubits become entangled. At this point, the system is in an entangled state of many possible answers. By the end of the anneal, each qubit is in a classical state that represents the minimum energy state of the problem, or one very close to it.

Heres how we describe it here at Neural: have you ever seen one of those 3-D pin art sculpture things?

Thats pretty much what the annealing process is. The pin art sculpture thing is the computer and your hand is the annealing process. Whats left behind is the minimum energy state of the problem.

Gate-based quantum computers, on the other hand, function entirely differently. Theyre incredibly complex and there are a number of different ways to implement them but, essentially, they run algorithms.

These include Microsofts new cutting-edge experimental system which, according to a recent blog post, is almost ready for prime time:

Microsofts approach has been to pursue a topological qubit that has built-in protection from environmental noise, which means it should take far fewer qubits to perform useful computation and correct errors. Topological qubits should also be able to process information quickly, and one can fit more than a million on a wafer thats smaller than the security chip on a credit card.

And even the most casual of science readers have probably heard about Googles amazing time crystal breakthrough.

Last year, here on Neural, I wrote:

Googles time crystals could be the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetimes.

A time crystal is a new phase of matter that, simplified, would be like having a snowflake that constantly cycled back and forth between two different configurations. Its a seven-pointed lattice one moment and a ten-pointed lattice the next, or whatever.

Whats amazing about time crystals is that when they cycle back and forth between two different configurations, they dont lose or use any energy.

Heck, even D-Wave, the company that put quantum annealing on the map, has plans to introduce cross-platform hybrid quantum computing to the masses with an upcoming gate-based model of its own.

The quantum computing industry is already thriving. As far as were concerned here at Neural, the mainstream is just now starting to catch a whiff of what the 2030s are going to look like.

As Bob Wisnieff, CTO of IBM Quantum, told Neural back in 2019 when IBM unveiled its first commercial quantum system:

We get to be in the right place at the right time for quantum computing, this is a joy project This design represents a pivotal moment in tech.

According to Wisnieff and others building the hybrid quantum computer systems of tomorrow, the timeline from experimental to fully-implemented is very short.

Where annealing and similar quantum optimization systems have been around for years, were now seeing the first generation of gate-based models of quantum advantage come to market.

You might remember reading about quantum supremacy a few years back. Quantum advantage is the same thing but, semantically speaking, its a bit more accurate. Both terms represent the point at which a quantum computer can perform a given function in a reasonable amount of time that would take a classical computer too long to do.

The reason supremacy quickly went out of favor is because quantum computers rely on classical computers to perform these functions, so it makes more sense to say they give an advantage when used in tandem. Thats the very definition of hybrid quantum computing.

As for whats next? Its unlikely youll see a ticker-tape parade for quantum computing any time soon. There wont be an iPhone of quantum computers, or a cultural zeitgeist surrounding the launch of a particular processor.

Instead, like all great things in science, over the course of the next five, 10, 100, and 1,000 years, scientists and engineers will continue to pass the baton from one generation to the next as they stand upon the shoulders of giants to see into the future.

Thanks to their continuing work, in our lifetimes were likely to see vast improvements to power grids, a resolution to mass scheduling conflicts, dynamic shipping optimizations, pitch-perfect quantum chemistry simulations, and even the first inklings of far-future tech such as warp engines.

These technological advances will improve our quality of life, extend our lives, and help us to reverse human-caused climate change.

Hybrid quantum computing is, in our humble opinion here at Neural, the single most important technology humankind has ever endeavored to develop. We hope youll stick with us as we continue to blaze a trail of coverage at the frontier of this new and exciting realm of engineering.

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A regular person's guide to the mind-blowing world of hybrid quantum computing - The Next Web

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From the discovery of the first subatomic particle to the confirmation of the Higgs boson in 2012, Suzie Sheehy's account of experiments that changed our world is detailed but lively

By Elle Hunt

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland

Maximilien Brice/CERN

The Matter of Everything

Suzie Sheehy

Bloomsbury

IN 1930, Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli set out to solve a mystery. The variability of energy values for beta particles, defying the basic scientific principles of conservation of energy and momentum, had been confounding physicists since the turn of the century.

Pauli a physicist so rigorous in his approach that he had been called the scourge of God seemed well-placed to address it. And yet, when he put his mind to finding a theoretical solution for the problem of beta decay, Pauli created only further ambiguity.

He proposed the existence of an entirely new, chargeless and near-massless particle that would allow for energy and momentum to be conserved, but would be almost impossible to find. I have done a terrible thing, he wrote. I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.

Pauli, a pioneer of quantum physics, is one of many names to cross the pages of The Matter of Everything, Suzie Sheehys lively account of experiments that changed our world. Through 12 significant discoveries over the course of the 20th century, Sheehy shows how physics transformed the world and our understanding of it in many cases, as a direct result of the curiosity and dedication of individuals.

Sheehy is an experimental physicist in the field of accelerator physics, based at the University of Oxford and the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her own expertise makes The Matter of Everything a more technical book than the framing of 12 experiments might suggest, and certainly more so than the average popular science title, but it is nonetheless accessible to the lay reader and vividly described.

From experiments with cathode rays in a German lab in 1895, leading to the detection of X-rays and to the discovery of the first subatomic particle, to the confirmation of the Higgs boson in 2012, The Matter of Everything is an opportunity to learn not just about individual success stories, but the nature of physics itself.

Sheehy does well to set out the questions that these scientists wanted to answer and what lay at stake with their discoveries, on the macro level as well as the micro one, showing how physics not only helped us to understand the world, but shaped it. These early firsts came from small-scale experiments, with researchers operating their own equipment and even building it from scratch.

The Matter of Everything also highlights those whose contributions might have historically been overlooked, such as Lise Meitner, dubbed the German Marie Curie by Albert Einstein. Her work on nuclear fission went unacknowledged for some 50 years after her colleague Otto Hahn was solely awarded the Nobel prize in 1944.

The commitment and collaboration of physicists and engineers through the second world war showed what was possible for good and evil. Sheehy describes how the development of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki awakened a social conscience in the field, paving the way to the international cooperation we see today, such as on the Large Hadron Collider.

United behind a common goal, and with cross-government support, answers that had never before seemed possible suddenly appeared within grasp. To Sheehy, this is evidence of the potential for physics to overcome the challenges that face science and society now from the nature of dark matter to tackling the climate crisis.

At the start of the 20th century, she points out, it was said that we knew everything there was to know about the universe; by the end of the century, the world had changed beyond recognition.

The terrible particles Pauli proposed which he called neutrons, but we now know as neutrinos were finally confirmed in 1956. His response was quietly triumphant: Everything comes to him who knows how to wait.

A sweeping but detailed and pacy account of 100 years of scientific advancement, The Matter of Everything has a cheering takeaway. What such leaps lie ahead? What questions seem intractable now that we wont give a thought to in the future?

Sheehy mounts the case that with persistence, curiosity and collaboration we may yet overcome challenges that now seem impossible.

More on these topics:

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The Matter of Everything review: A pacy look at 20th-century physics - New Scientist

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An experiment has been designed that could confirm the fifth state of matter in the universe and change physics as we know it. If proven correct, it would show that information is the fifth form of matter, alongside solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. In fact, information could be the elusive dark matter that makes up almost a third of the universe.

An experiment that could confirm the fifth state of matter in the universe and change physics as we know it has been published in a new research paper from the University of Portsmouth in England.

Dr. Melvin Vopson, a physicist, has already published findings indicating that information has mass and that all elementary particles, the universes smallest known building blocks, store information about themselves, similar to the way humans have DNA.

Now he has designed an experiment which if proved correct means he will have discovered that information is the fifth form of matter, alongside solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.

Dr. Vopson said: This would be a eureka moment because it would change physics as we know it and expand our understanding of the universe. But it wouldnt conflict with any of the existing laws of physics.

It doesnt contradict quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, or classical mechanics. All it does is complement physics with something new and incredibly exciting.

Dr. Vopsons previous research suggests that information is the fundamental building block of the universe and has physical mass.

He even claims that information could be the elusive dark matter that makes up almost a third of the universe.

He said: If we assume that information is physical and has mass, and that elementary particles have a DNA of information about themselves, how can we prove it? My latest paper is about putting these theories to the test so they can be taken seriously by the scientific community.

Dr. Vopsons experiment proposes how to detect and measure the information in an elementary particle by using particle-antiparticle collision.

He said: The information in an electron is 22 million times smaller than the mass of it, but we can measure the information content by erasing it.

We know that when you collide a particle of matter with a particle of antimatter, they annihilate each other. And the information from the particle has to go somewhere when its annihilated.

The annihilation process converts all the remaining mass of the particles into energy, typically gamma photons. Any particles containing information are converted into low-energy infrared photons.

In the study, Dr. Vopson predicts the exact energy of the infrared photons resulting from erasing the information.

Dr. Vopson believes his work could demonstrate how information is a key component of everything in the universe and a new field of physics research could emerge.

The paper is published in the journal AIP Advances.

Reference: Experimental protocol for testing the massenergyinformation equivalence principle by Melvin M. Vopson, 4 March 2022, AIP Advances.DOI: 10.1063/5.0087175

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An Experiment That Could Confirm the Fifth State of Matter in the Universe And Change Physics As We Know It - SciTechDaily

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Quantum theory has predicted many phenomena that are difficult, if not impossible, to observe in practice. One particularly tricky example is the Unruh effect, which would take longer than the age of the universe to reveal itself in straightforward experiments. However, a team of physicists have argued it is theoretically possible to shorten this process to a few hours. They're now working on ways to actually carry the idea out, hopefully catching a thermal glow that will confirm one part of our understanding of the basic laws of the universe.

The Unruh (or Fulling-Davies-Unruh) effect is thought to cause accelerating objects to be bathed in a thermal bath of electromagnetic radiation. If some immense power allowed a spacecraft to rapidly approach light speed, passengers not squashed by the extreme g forces would witness a warm glow around them. As envisaged, it's a counterpart to Hawking radiation produced by black holes, and observing either would help confirm the other. The problem for experimentalists is the amount of radiation produced under most circumstances is so low as to be effectively undetectable.

However, in Physical Review Letters physicists note you can stimulate the Unruh effect by accelerating your object in the presence of electromagnetic radiation. Although this light would normally induce other effects that would once again make the Unruh radiation undetectable, they claim to have found ways around this.

One of the mind-bending consequences of quantum theory is that there are no true vacuums pairs of subatomic virtual particles are constantly fluctuating into existence before almost immediately annihilating each other. Unruh's theory postulates objects with mass amplify these quantum fluctuations when accelerating, warming themselves and creating a thermal glow that others should be able to see.

Most acceleration simply isn't large enough to produce anything noticeable, however, and even when we apply all the power we can muster in a particle accelerator we're unlikely to witness anything. However, every photon of light passing through a vacuum increases the density of quantum fluctuations, making it more likely an accelerated particle will experience a noticeable Unruh effect.

However, an atom can also absorb the light used to stimulate Unruh radiation, raising its energy level enough to overwhelm something so subtle. This is just one of three resonant effects light can have on an atom. Observing the effect becomes a little like trying to spot a planet by the reflected light of its star. Extra starlight makes the planet brighter, but also makes it harder to see in the star's glare.

Just as astronomers mask stars to let us see their planets, University of Waterloo PhD student Barbara Sodaargues it is possible to make the atom invisible to the light so it cannot absorb any of the photons. This would prevent the absorption from obscuring our view of the Unruh radiation. Soda and co-authors call this acceleration-induced transparency.

Provided the accelerating object's path through a field of photons is right, the authors conclude we can get the Unruh effect without the absorption. We show that by engineering the trajectory of the particle, we can essentially turn off [the resonant] effects, Soda said in a statement.

Co-author Dr Vivishek Sudhir of MIT is working on designing a practical experiment to implement the idea by firing electrons at close to the speed of light through a microwave laser at the appropriate angle.

Now we have this mechanism that seems to statistically amplify this effect via stimulation, Sudhir said. Given the 40-year history of this problem, weve now in theory fixed the biggest bottleneck.

Unexpected acceleration of certain spacecraft as they flew by Earth has been attributed to the Unruh effect, but competing explanations exist. If the Unruh effect actually is the cause it would reveal a real-world influence, one we might even be able to harness.

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There May Be A Fast Way To Observe This Never-Before-Seen Quantum Effect - IFLScience

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On a Friday afternoon in April 1979, John Mainstone, a physics professor at the University of Queensland, rang his wife at home. He wouldnt be back that evening, he told her. For the previous 18 years, Mainstone had looked after the pitch drop experiment, a long-form demonstration of the extreme viscosity of pitch. For the first time since August 1970, the pitch was about to drip from its funnel, and Mainstone didnt want to miss it.

Pitch is a resin a viscoelastic substance derived from petroleum or coal tar, used in bitumen, and for waterproofing. Which is ironic, for as solid as it appears, pitch is fluid: at least, it is when you put it in a funnel, the sloping sides of which create a pressure gradient.

Mainstone stayed up all that Friday night. He continued to keep watch on the Saturday, eventually ringing his wife back to tell her he wouldnt be home that night, either. Still, the globule of (literally) pitch-black liquid hung by a thread from the bottom of its funnel. On Sunday evening, exhausted by his vigil, he went home. By the time he returned to work on a sleep-deprived Monday morning, the pitch had dropped into its beaker.

The pitch drop experiment,was set up by Mainstones predecessor Thomas Parnell. In 1927 Parnell heated and liquefied some pitch, poured it into a sealed funnel, and set it over the beaker inside a large bell jar. In 1930, he cut the stem of the funnel and waited.

Nearly a century later, the original experiment which has become the longest running laboratory experiment in the world stands in the foyer of the physics building in the Great Court. The jar is set inside a protective plastic cube, with an analogue Casio desk clock observing each moment as students and staff wander past. The funnel is held aloft by a brass tripod; at the bottom, a shiny black balloon of pitch hovers above the empty beaker.

It was Mainstone, taking the experiment on in 1961, who brought the pitch drop to popular attention. He also mentored its third and current custodian, Professor Andrew White, who has watched over it since Mainstones death in 2013. Like Parnell, Mainstone died without ever seeing a single drop fall. I am in no way filling Johns shoes, White insists. He was the heart and soul of this.

Mainstones dedication was legendary. In 2005, he and (posthumously) Parnell were awarded the Ig Nobel prize a satirical award noting arcane and trivial achievements in scientific research. The Ig Nobel prize aims to honour work that makes people laugh, but also makes them think.

Author Nick Earls first encountered the experiment as a medical student at UQ in the early 1980s, later writing about it in his novel Perfect Skin. It was a demonstration that all is not necessarily as it seems, he says. There is pitch something that goes into the making of roads, something we think of as totally solid and it turns out its not. Its just 230m times more viscous than water, and it flows, albeit very slowly.

How slowly? Far slower than grass growing, far slower than paint drying, White says, mock-offended by such banal comparisons (and the suggestion that this could be, well, a rather dull experiment to watch). Were talking more than 10 times slower than continental drift!

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He directs my attention to the joining of four tiles on the floor. Those tiles are moving north at 68 millimetres a year, because Australia is moving north at 68 millimetres a year. Its one of the fastest continents, as far as continental drift goes. The pitch drop is moving at least 10 times slower than that! So its literally slower than watching Australia drift north, and people log in live on the internet to watch it. Which I find really fascinating.

Its true. More than 35,000 people in 160 countries are sweating on the 10th drop of pitch. Theyll be waiting a while yet. Since Parnell cut the stem of the funnel in 1930, just nine drops have fallen: in December 1938, February 1947, April 1954, May 1962, August 1970, April 1979, July 1988 (when it became a popular exhibit at Brisbanes generation-defining Expo 1988), November 2000 and April 2014.

White prefers to call the pitch drop a demonstration, rather than an experiment, as it has never been controlled, and thus has been subject to environmental fluctuations. For its first 30 years, it sat in a cool dark cupboard. Mainstone put it on display, and the pitch maintained its average of one drop every eight years until, in the 80s, the physics building (which is named after Parnell) was air-conditioned, which blew it out to every 13 years or so.

Sometimes, the sensitivity of the pitch to environmental conditions was forgotten. At one stage, someone swapped the fluorescent lights above the display, which were very cool, to halogens, which are very hot, White says, shaking his head. No one asked anyone to change it, it was just done, and I realised that the pitch which is normally at room temperature was sitting at 60 degrees. The halogens are about 120, so it was flowing like a tap.

And yet, to this day, no one has seen a drop fall. Not at Expo (White: There were four or five people watching it, it was a hot day, I think they went out for five minutes to get some cordial), not even when a live stream was first set up for the millennial event in 2000. Mainstone was watching from London at the time.On that occasion a classic Brisbane thunderstorm disrupted the power supply, cutting the lights and camera feed.

Mainstone died of a stroke in 2013. In a cruel twist, the last drop fell in April 2014, a few months after his death. Except, it didnt technically drop. It just sort of oozed into the eight drops that had already fallen and solidified in the small beaker sitting under the funnel in a bell jar, without breaking away. Reluctantly, White swapped the beaker over, managing to source an old imperial-measurement model to match the original.

Since then, the beaker has sat in place clean, empty, yet to be blackened by a single drop of goo. The lights have been replaced with LEDs. We had a very fresh start, White says. And so, when anyone asks me when it will drop, I can genuinely say that I have no idea. Because the conditions have changed, as they have throughout most of the last 95 years. Its never been kept constant.

Just a few meters below the pitch drop experiment is a basement dedicated to quantum technology. There, White says, a lab makes pulses of light that are one hundred million billionth of a second long. And here in front of us, he says proudly, we have something that has an event every 10 to 20 years! It really captures the different timescales of the physical world around us.

He looks at the funnel. There is still quite a bit of pitch in there. The experiment, he says, will long outlive all of us. Quantum mechanics is as far as you can get from bits of coal that have been heated up and are slowly pouring through a glass tube as you can get, he says. I am glad that we got a new beaker in there, that will be good for another 100 years or so. Two, three keepers from now, itll be their problem what to do next.

The rest is here:

Its literally slower than watching Australia drift north: the laboratory experiment that will outlive us all - The Guardian

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