Iran to open first quantum physics lab in a year: AEOI head – Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

He added that the country has a bright future in quantum physics as more research centers and labs are being built to encourage young Iranians to enter the field.

Related experts and managers are working day and night to finish this job as soon as possible, said Salehi while addressing a summer course on quantum sciences and technology in Tehran, according to Press TV.

The official said Iran had compiled its own roadmap for development of quantum technologies, saying the document would come into force once it is ratified by the parliament and other related government bodies.

He said Iran was willing to keep its pace with a fast-growing quantum science in the world, saying expert groups had been formed in the AEOI to focus on various fields where quantum sciences are increasingly applied, including in communication, imaging, and in making new computers and sensors.

Salehi said his organization had also launched a public information campaign about quantum physics and its role in the future of the world, saying textbooks were being prepared for schools and universities with a special focus on quantum mechanics.

He said a successful entanglement experiment for photons carried out by AEOI scientists last summer had hugely boosted the morale in the field.

The senior official said that a large research center focused on new fields of science like the stem cells and quantum physics will be built by the AEOI in a near future.

Salehi said Iranian scientists could replicate the quick progress achieved in the field of nuclear technology in the country over the past years.

The quantum technology is moving so fast that if we dont act well regret it, said the official.

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Iran to open first quantum physics lab in a year: AEOI head - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

A New Perspective On Grover’s Search Algorithm — Quantum Physics & DNA – Analytics India Magazine

Photo By Suzanne William For Unsplash

Finding the shortest path or the most optimised path is prevalent in biological systems. Ants dont just fancy a random rendezvous in search for food. Many biological systems barring humans are quite efficient in the conservation of energy, in carrying out their routines.

A close similarity can be found in the way computers work. The task can be as primitive as searching databases for telephone numbers or breaking cryptographic codes, the algorithms try to complete the task as quickly as possible. In fact, many algorithms, directly or indirectly, have taken inspiration from biological systems.

So, a task in the context of machines, is assessed for speed by counting the steps it takes to end. Computer scientists have always considered that a process takes around N steps because in the worst case, the last item on the list could be the one of interest.

However, Lov Grover, a physicist, showed in 1996, how the strange rules of quantum mechanics allowed the search to be done in a number of steps equal to the square root of N.

A classical (or non-quantum) algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions, or a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, where each step or instruction can be performed on a classical computer. Similarly, a quantum algorithm is a step-by-step procedure, where each of the steps can be performed on a quantum computer.

In quantum computing, a quantum algorithm is an algorithm which runs on a realistic model of quantum computation, the most commonly used model being the quantum circuit model of computation.

In computational complexity theory, a problem is NP-complete when it can be solved by a restricted class of brute force search algorithms and it can be used to simulate any other problem with a similar algorithm.

More precisely, each input to the problem should be associated with a set of solutions of polynomial length, whose validity can be tested quickly (in polynomial time), such that the output for any input is yes if the solution set is non-empty and no if it is empty.

Amongst all quantum algorithms, the reasons to focus on the Grover search are as follows:

Imagine a phone directory containing N names arranged in a completely random order. In order to find someones phone number with a 50% probability, any classical algorithm (whether deterministic or probabilistic) will need to look at a minimum of N/2 names.

Quantum mechanical systems can be in a superposition of states and simultaneously examine multiple names. Grover in his paper proposes that by properly adjusting the phases of various operations, successful computations reinforce each other while others interfere randomly.

As a result, the desired phone number can be obtained in only O(sqrt(N)) steps. Grovers algorithm is within a small constant factor, was considered to be the fastest possible quantum mechanical algorithm back then.

Grovers work was an important factor in preparing for the world of quantum computing, which is still in its infancy.

The first quantum computer capable of implementing it appeared in 1998, but the first scalable version didnt appear until 2017.

Today, a team of researchers from France say they have evidence that Grovers search algorithm is a naturally occurring phenomenon. They claim to have observed this behaviour in electrons.

Grovers search algorithm can be reformulated in a variety of ways. One of these is as a quantum walk across a surfacethe way a quantum particle would move randomly from one point to another.

The team focused on simulating the way a Grover search works for electrons exploring triangular and square grids as shown above.

The objective of this study can be summarized as finding how quickly an electron can find the hole in a grid. And the teams big breakthrough is to show that these simulations reproduce the way real electrons behave in real materials.

The researchers at Universite de Toulon based on their observations, say that free electrons naturally implement the Grover search algorithm when moving across the surface of certain crystals. This has immediate implications for quantum computing. For instance, this can be applied to solve correct the errors in a full-scale quantum computer.

The work also has implications for our thinking about the genetic code and the origin of life. Every living creature on Earth uses the same code, in which DNA stores information using four nucleotide bases. The sequences of nucleotides encode information for constructing proteins from an alphabet of 20 amino acids.

Back in 2000, Apoorva Patel of IISc Bengaluru showed how Grovers algorithm could explain the numbers 4 and 20.

Patel showed that when there are four choices, a quantum search can distinguish between four alternatives in a single step. Indeed, four is optimal number.

However, biologists were dismissive of these results, saying that quantum processes couldnt possibly be at work inside living things.

Now, these latest observations of the French researchers, can fortify two decades old observations of Patel and throw some light on how life itself finds a way.

A century ago, no would have believed that atoms can be manipulated to build computers and the algorithms designed to make these computers better can be used to decode how life springs up.

If this algorithm is really what the researchers say it is then we can safely assume that life is just an example of Grovers algorithm at work !

Read the original paper here.

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A New Perspective On Grover's Search Algorithm -- Quantum Physics & DNA - Analytics India Magazine

A quantum computing startup that spun out of a Harvard lab just came out of stealth mode with $2.7 million in seed funding from investors like Samsung…

Earlier this year, a Boston-based startup spun out of a quantum computing lab at Harvard University with the goal of making this new technology more easily available to developers.

This startup, called Aliro Technologies, was cofounded by Prineha Narang, a Harvard assistant professor who also started Harvard's Quantum Information Sciences Lab. Narang had been doing research in quantum computing, a new, powerful way to build computers that are exponentially more powerful than those we have today.

Today, quantum computers are still in their early stages and not yet more capable than the most powerful traditional computers. Eventually, however, they could be used to solve complex problems around evaluating new drugs, calculating efficient routes, or analyzing new materials for building problems that modern computers can't efficiently solve.

As for Aliro, it works to create quantum computing tools for software developers. With Aliro, developers can write code to build software for quantum computers without worrying about setting up or configuring the underlying hardware. The software then runs on a quantum computer, like those of IBM, which is a partner of Aliro.

This platform also includes tools that help developers squeeze the most efficiency out these quantum apps, including by helping pick the appropriate quantum computer for the task.

Aliro CEO Jim Ricotta told Business Insider that Narang had been "percolating on this idea of how can we make quantum computers mainstream, and how do we make them easier to use them right now."

Investors apparently see the potential for this idea: On Wednesday, Aliro announced that it had closed a $2.7 million seed round led by Flybridge Capital Partners and including Crosslink Ventures and Samsung Next's Q Fund.

Read more:Quantum computing could change everything, and IBM is racing with Microsoft, Intel, and Google to conquer it. Here's what you need to know.

"We're going to provide wide access to quantum which doesn't exist right now," Ricotta said. "If we succeed, a lot of people will benefit from quantum computing."

Many of today's tech giants have their own quantum computing endeavors, including IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Intel. Aliro partners with other quantum companies as well, including IBM and Rigetti, which focus on building quantum hardware.

Ricotta says Aliro differentiates itself with its focus on making quantum software more accessible to developers.

"This is the fourth startup I've run as CEO," Ricotta said. "It's always important to create a lead over the competition. There's competition from big companies to small. We run very, very fast and do things first and do things better."

Ajay Singh, the cohead of Samsung Next's Q Fund, says he has been looking into quantum computing for the past three years. He says today's most powerful computers can only go so far, and Aliro piqued his interest with its approach to helping developers sign on with the technology.

"From big companies like Google, IBM, and Rigetti, you see that there are people who are tinkering with this and trying to do something," Singh told Business Insider. "There are positive signs in terms of adoption."

With the funding, Aliro plans to build out its technical staff as well as continue building out its software. Ricotta says Aliro plans to have two kinds of people: quantum computing experts led by Narang as well as people with classical software engineering skills.

"Aliro is the melding of computer science and quantum physics," Ricotta said.

And sometime next year, Aliro plans to launch a beta program for businesses, aimed especially at pharmaceutical companies, to encourage would-be customers to try their hand at quantum computing.

Ricotta had previously worked at IBM as an executive, and seeing his former employer's efforts in quantum computing helped motivate him to eventually work in that area as well.

"Google does moon shots," Ricotta said. "But IBM, they're very practical. The fact they have an entire [quantum computing] unit called Q, that tells you there's important things going on."

Ricotta said he got into quantum computing only recently. He's an electrical engineer by training and has worked in tech companies his entire career. Eventually, he wanted to work in a cutting-edge new industry like quantum computing.

"It's probably going to explode on the scene," Ricotta said. "All of a sudden, you'll be able to use it. You have to be in it to win it, so that's why Samsung invested and my other investors invested and that's why Aliro is here. We want to participate in the beginning. We feel there's going to be an inflection point pretty soon."

Likewise, though experts say that quantum computing won't become mainstream for at least another five to 10 years, Singh said he's bullish it'd happen sooner rather than later.

"What is the timeline?" Singh said. "I don't know. I can't predict it, but it's probably nearer than more people predict."

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A quantum computing startup that spun out of a Harvard lab just came out of stealth mode with $2.7 million in seed funding from investors like Samsung...

Important Quantum Algorithm May Be a Property of Nature – Technology Networks

Back in 1996, a quantum physicist at Bell Labs in New Jersey published a new recipe for searching through a database of N entries. Computer scientists have long known that this process takes around N steps because in the worst case, the last item on the list could be the one of interest.

However, this physicist, Lov Grover, showed how the strange rules of quantum mechanics allowed the search to be done in a number of steps equal to the square root of N.

That was a big deal. Searching databases is a foundational task in computer science, used for everything from finding telephone numbers to breaking cryptographic codes. So any speed-up is a significant advance.

Quantum mechanics provided an additional twist. At the time, Grovers recipe was only the second quantum algorithm that had been proved faster than its classical counterpart. (The first was Peter Shors algorithm for factoring numbers, which he discovered in 1994.) Grovers work was an important factor in preparing the way for the quantum computing revolution that is still ongoing today.

But despite the interest, implementing Grovers algorithm has taken time because of the significant technical challenges involved. The first quantum computer capable of implementing it appeared in 1998, but the first scalable version didnt appear until 2017, and even then it worked with only three qubits. So new ways to implement the algorithm are desperately needed.

Today Stphane Guillet and colleagues at the University of Toulon in France say this may be easier than anybody expected. They say they have evidence that Grovers search algorithm is a naturally occurring phenomenon. We provide the first evidence that under certain conditions, electrons may naturally behave like a Grover search, looking for defects in a material, they say.

That has obvious implications for quantum computing, but its real import may be much more profound. For some time, theorists have debated whether quantum search could explain one of the greatest mysteries about the origin of life. The idea that Grover searches occur in nature could finally solve the conundrum.

First some background. Because it is so fundamental, Grovers search algorithm can be reformulated in a variety of ways. One of these is as a quantum walk across a surfacethe way a quantum particle would move randomly from one point to another.

Clearly, this process is a kind of search of two-dimensional space. But because a quantum particle can explore many paths at the same time, it is much faster than a classical search.

The nature of the surface has an important influence on the search. For example, one type of surface consists of a square grid where the quantum particle has four possible moves at each vertex.

But there are many other possible grids; a triangular one, for example, where the quantum particle has three choices at each vertex. The triangular grid is of particular interest because of its resemblance to several naturally occurring crystal-like materials, say Guillet and co.

The team focused on simulating the way a Grover search works for electrons exploring triangular and square grids, but they also included other physically realistic effects, such as defects in the grid in the form of holes, and quantum properties such as interference effects.

The results are eye-opening. The question they ask is how quickly an electron can find the hole in a grid. And the teams big breakthrough is to show that these simulations reproduce the way real electrons behave in real materials.

In other words, this is evidence that free electrons naturally implement the Grover search algorithm when moving across the surface of certain crystals.

That has immediate implications for quantum computing. [This work] may be the path to a serious technological leap, whereby experimentalist would bypass the need for a full-fledged scalable and error-correcting Quantum Computer, and take the shortcut of looking for natural occurrences of the Grover search instead, say the team.

The work also has implications for our thinking about the genetic code and the origin of life. Every living creature on Earth uses the same code, in which DNA stores information using four nucleotide bases. The sequences of nucleotides encode information for constructing proteins from an alphabet of 20 amino acids.

But why these numbersfour and 20and not some others? Back in 2000, just a few years after Grover published his work, Apoorva Patel at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore showed how Grovers algorithm could explain these numbers.

Patels idea is related to the way DNA is assembled inside cells. In this situation, the molecular machinery inside a cell must search through the molecular soup of nucleotide bases to find the right one. If there are four choices, a classical search takes four steps on average. So the machinery would have to try four different bases during each assembly step.

But a quantum search using Grovers algorithm is much quicker: Patel showed that when there are four choices, a quantum search can distinguish between four alternatives in a single step. Indeed, four is optimal number.

This thinking also explains why there are 20 amino acids. In DNA, each set of three nucleotides defines a single amino acid. So the sequence of triplets in DNA defines the sequence of amino acids in a protein.

But during protein assembly, each amino acid must be chosen from a soup of 20 different options. Grovers algorithm explains these numbers: a three-step quantum search can find an object in a database containing up to 20 kinds of entry. Again, 20 is the optimal number.

In other words, if the search processes involved in assembling DNA and proteins is to be as efficient as possible, the number of bases should be four and the number of amino acids should to be 20exactly as is found. The only caveat is that the searches must be quantum in nature.

When Patel published his idea, quantum physicists immediately pooh-poohed it. At the time, they were bogged down in their own attempts to control quantum processes, which they could do only by isolating quantum particles in extreme environments such as at temperatures close to absolute zero.

The obvious problem, they said, was that living things operate in a warm, messy environment in which quantum states would be immediately destroyed.

Biologists were equally dismissive, saying that quantum processes couldnt possibly be at work inside living things.

Since then, an increasing body of evidence has emerged that quantum processes play an important role in a number of biological mechanisms. Photosynthesis, for example, is now thought to be an essentially quantum process.

The work of Guillet and co throws a new perspective on all this. It suggests that Grovers algorithm is not only possible in certain materials; it seems to be a property of nature. And if thats true, then the objections to Patels ideas start to crumble.

It may be that life is just an example of Grovers quantum search at work, and that this algorithm is itself a fundamental property of nature. Thats a Big Idea if ever there was one.

Reference: Guillet, S., Roget, M., Arrighi, P., & Di Molfetta, G. (2019). The Grover search as a naturally occurring phenomenon. ArXiv:1908.11213 [Cond-Mat, Physics:Quant-Ph]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1908.11213

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Important Quantum Algorithm May Be a Property of Nature - Technology Networks

Iran to open 1st quantum physics lab in a year: AEOI head – Mehr News Agency – English Version

He added that the country has a bright future in quantum physics as more research centers and labs are being built to encourage young Iranians to enter the field.

Related experts and managers are working day and night to finish this job as soon as possible, said Salehi while addressing a summer course on quantum sciences and technology in Tehran, according to Press TV.

The official said Iran had compiled its own roadmap for development of quantum technologies, saying the document would come into force once it is ratified by the parliament and other related government bodies.

He said Iran was willing to keep its pace with a fast-growing quantum science in the world, saying expert groups had been formed in the AEOI to focus on various fields where quantum sciences are increasingly applied, including in communication, imaging, and in making new computers and sensors.

Salehi said his organization had also launched a public information campaign about quantum physics and its role in the future of the world, saying textbooks were being prepared for schools and universities with a special focus on quantum mechanics.

He said a successful entanglement experiment for photons carried out by AEOI scientists last summer had hugely boosted the morale in the field.

The senior official said that a large research center focused on new fields of science like the stem cells and quantum physics will be built by the AEOI in a near future.

Salehi said Iranian scientists could replicate the quick progress achieved in the field of nuclear technology in the country over the past years.

The quantum technology is moving so fast that if we dont act well regret it, said the official.

MNA/Press TV

View original post here:

Iran to open 1st quantum physics lab in a year: AEOI head - Mehr News Agency - English Version

Quantum Computing Breakthrough: New Detection Tool Uncovers Noise That Can Kill Qubits – SciTechDaily

MIT and Dartmouth College researchers developed a tool that detects new characteristics of non-Gaussian noise that can destroy the fragile quantum superposition state of qubits, the fundamental components of quantum computers. Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers

MIT and Dartmouth College researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, a tool that detects new characteristics of environmental noise that can destroy the fragile quantum state of qubits, the fundamental components of quantum computers. The advance may provide insights into microscopic noise mechanisms to help engineer new ways of protecting qubits.

Qubits can represent the two states corresponding to the classic binary bits, a 0 or 1. But, they can also maintain a quantum superposition of both states simultaneously, enabling quantum computers to solve complex problems that are practically impossible for classical computers.

But a qubits quantum coherence meaning its ability to maintain the superposition state can fall apart due to noise coming from environment around the qubit. Noise can arise from control electronics, heat, or impurities in the qubit material itself, and can also cause serious computing errors that may be difficult to correct.

Researchers have developed statistics-based models to estimate the impact of unwanted noise sources surrounding qubits to create new ways to protect them, and to gain insights into the noise mechanisms themselves. But, those tools generally capture simplistic Gaussian noise, essentially the collection of random disruptions from a large number of sources. In short, its like white noise coming from the murmuring of a large crowd, where theres no specific disruptive pattern that stands out, so the qubit isnt particularly affected by any one particular source. In this type of model, the probability distribution of the noise would form a standard symmetrical bell curve, regardless of the statistical significance of individual contributors.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers describe a new tool that, for the first time, measures non-Gaussian noise affecting a qubit. This noise features distinctive patterns that generally stem from a few particularly strong noise sources.

The researchers designed techniques to separate that noise from the background Gaussian noise, and then used signal-processing techniques to reconstruct highly detailed information about those noise signals. Those reconstructions can help researchers build more realistic noise models, which may enable more robust methods to protect qubits from specific noise types. There is now a need for such tools, the researchers say: Qubits are being fabricated with fewer and fewer defects, which could increase the presence of non-Gaussian noise.

Its like being in a crowded room. If everyone speaks with the same volume, there is a lot of background noise, but I can still maintain my own conversation. However, if a few people are talking particularly loudly, I cant help but lock on to their conversation. It can be very distracting, says William Oliver, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, professor of the practice of physics, MIT Lincoln Laboratory Fellow, and associate director of the Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE). For qubits with many defects, there is noise that decoheres, but we generally know how to handle that type of aggregate, usually Gaussian noise. However, as qubits improve and there are fewer defects, the individuals start to stand out, and the noise may no longer be simply of a Gaussian nature. We can find ways to handle that, too, but we first need to know the specific type of non-Gaussian noise and its statistics.

It is not common for theoretical physicists to be able to conceive of an idea and also find an experimental platform and experimental colleagues willing to invest in seeing it through, says co-author Lorenza Viola, a professor of physics at Dartmouth. It was great to be able to come to such an important result with the MIT team.

Joining Oliver and Viola on the paper are: first author Youngkyu Sung, Fei Yan, Jack Y. Qiu, Uwe von Lpke, Terry P. Orlando, and Simon Gustavsson, all of RLE; David K. Kim and Jonilyn L. Yoder of the Lincoln Laboratory; and Flix Beaudoin and Leigh M. Norris of Dartmouth.

Pulse filters

For their work, the researchers leveraged the fact that superconducting qubits are good sensors for detecting their own noise. Specifically, they use a flux qubit, which consists of a superconducting loop that is capable of detecting a particular type of disruptive noise, called magnetic flux, from its surrounding environment.

In the experiments, they induced non-Gaussian dephasing noise by injecting engineered flux noise that disturbs the qubit and makes it lose coherence, which in turn is then used as a measuring tool. Usually, we want to avoid decoherence, but in this case, how the qubit decoheres tells us something about the noise in its environment, Oliver says.

Specifically, they shot 110 pi-pulses which are used to flip the states of qubits in specific sequences over tens of microseconds. Each pulse sequence effectively created a narrow frequency filter which masks out much of the noise, except in a particular band of frequency. By measuring the response of a qubit sensor to the bandpass-filtered noise, they extracted the noise power in that frequency band.

By modifying the pulse sequences, they could move filters up and down to sample the noise at different frequencies. Notably, in doing so, they tracked how the non-Gaussian noise distinctly causes the qubit to decohere, which provided a high-dimensional spectrum of the non-Gaussian noise.

Error suppression and correction

The key innovation behind the work is carefully engineering the pulses to act as specific filters that extract properties of the bispectrum, a two-dimension representation that gives information about distinctive time correlations of non-Gaussian noise.

Essentially, by reconstructing the bispectrum, they could find properties of non-Gaussian noise signals impinging on the qubit over time ones that dont exist in Gaussian noise signals. The general idea is that, for Gaussian noise, there will be only correlation between two points in time, which is referred to as a second-order time correlation. But, for non-Gaussian noise, the properties at one point in time will directly correlate to properties at multiple future points. Such higher-order correlations are the hallmark of non-Gaussian noise. In this work, the authors were able to extract noise with correlations between three points in time.

This information can help programmers validate and tailor dynamical error suppression and error-correcting codes for qubits, which fixes noise-induced errors and ensures accurate computation.

Such protocols use information from the noise model to make implementations that are more efficient for practical quantum computers. But, because the details of noise arent yet well-understood, todays error-correcting codes are designed with that standard bell curve in mind. With the researchers tool, programmers can either gauge how their code will work effectively in realistic scenarios or start to zero in on non-Gaussian noise.

Keeping with the crowded-room analogy, Oliver says: If you know theres only one loud person in the room, then youll design a code that effectively muffles that one person, rather than trying to address every possible scenario.

For more on this breakthrough, see New Advance in Noise Canceling for Quantum Computers.

Reference: Non-Gaussian noise spectroscopy with a superconducting qubit sensor by Youngkyu Sung, Flix Beaudoin, Leigh M. Norris, Fei Yan, David K. Kim, Jack Y. Qiu, Uwe von Lpke, Jonilyn L. Yoder, Terry P. Orlando, Simon Gustavsson, Lorenza Viola & William D. Oliver, 16 September 2019, Nature Communications.DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11699-4

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Quantum Computing Breakthrough: New Detection Tool Uncovers Noise That Can Kill Qubits - SciTechDaily

Many Worlds, But Too Much Metaphor – Forbes

As someone who spends a good deal of time writing, Im generally fond of language and literary devices as part of the science-communication toolkit. Tricks like analogies, similes, metaphors, and all the rest have considerable power when it comes to speaking to people, and not making use of them would be foolish.

That said, there are times when these tools sort of tip over into becoming counterproductive. That is, it can be helpful and vivid to use a metaphor in describing a physical theory, but taken too literally, this can actually create more confusion as people latch on to ancillary features of the metaphor and try to take them too literally. A classic example of this is the rubber sheet analogy for spacetime curvature in General Relativity, where the warping of space by mass is visualized as being like the stretching of an elastic sheet with a mass pulling it down. This is a vivid image and can be useful for getting the basic idea, but some people will take it too far and start thinking that the universe is literally stretched in some other direction, or asking about the elastic properties of the sheet, and so on. (As memorably spoofed in this excellent xkcd cartoon.)

Im increasingly convinced that the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is one of these places. The very name of the theory is derived from a vivid metaphor for its approach, but I think that metaphor is too often taken too literally, in a way that practically begs for unhelpful diversions into arguing about what are really ancillary elements of the metaphor.

Cover of Sean Carroll's SOMETHING DEEPLY HIDDEN

The proximate cause of this is reading Sean Carrolls new book, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime (well, the first two-thirds of it, anyway, which is where the bulk of the MWI description is), and discussions of it on social media, but its not a problem particular to Carroll this is something thats been bugging me since I was writing about it in How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog, a bit over ten years ago. I actually like the start of Carrolls presentation quite a bit, where he casts MWI as Austere Quantum Mechanics, with the only postulates being that the universe is described by a wavefunction, and that the wavefunction evolves according to the Schrdinger equation.

That austerity is the core of MWI, and central to its appeal. Its a theory that avoids the measurement problem of quantum mechanics by pointedly not introducing some new phenomenon that changes the wavefunction in a mysterious way at the instant of a measurement. Quantum wavefunctions evolve smoothly and predictably at all times, and theres an undeniable elegance to that.

The problem is that after that austere beginning, Carroll dives back into the somewhat baroque metaphor thats grown up around the simple initial idea, talking at great length about branches of the wavefunction that contain copies of everything in the universe that differ only in the results of particular measurements. This language is really an additional interpretive superstructure on top of the actual austerity of MWI, an extended metaphor for the experience of observers within the theory. Its also where everything goes wrong, from the standpoint of communication.

Talking about parallel worlds or even branches of the wavefunction as real separate things invites a whole bunch of questions that are really about the metaphor, not the theory, and thus ultimately unproductive. It brings in the fundamentally aesthetic objection that all these extra universes run afoul of Occams razor, and questions about why making copies of everything doesnt violate some other principle of physics, and what triggers the making of copies, etc. These arent dumb questions, given the language in which MWI is often presented, but theyre fundamentally questions about the language in which MWI is presented, not the austerely quantum central idea.

That is, of course, a strong claim for me to be making, and suggests that I have an approach I think would be better, and of course I do. I think that most popular treatments of MWI lean into the parallel universe language way too much, when in fact its just a bookkeeping trick.

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That is, the right way to think about MWI or at least the approach to it that allowed me to make my peace with it is just the Austere Quantum Mechanics approach. You have a collection of quantum things maybe particles, maybe fields, whatever suits your fancy that are described by a wavefunction, and those things evolve according to the Schrdinger equation. As these quantum things evolve and interact, they necessarily end up in complicated superpositions of multiple states, superpositions that are entangled with each other. Its still all one giant wavefunction, though no branches, no copies, no extra universes its just not one that you would want to attempt to write down on a sheet of paper. But thats fine the universe is under no obligation to operate in a manner that allows humans to conveniently write down a description of it.

However, being lazy humans, we often want to write down descriptions of things, and so we use a bookkeeping trick: we choose to pull out pieces of that one giant wavefunction and treat them as if they exist in isolation. This, strictly speaking, isnt a complete and correct description, in the same way that your household budget, strictly speaking, isnt completely separable from the rest of the global financial system if youre making payments on a loan, youre directly or indirectly affected by the complicated assets and obligations of the bank you owe money to. But for the purposes of keeping your household books balanced, you can bracket all the bank stuff off as an external influence whose internal details dont matter, and work only with the tiny piece of the system about which you have direct knowledge.

The same trick works with the giant unwieldy wavefunction of the universe. Strictly speaking, the state of every quantum object is at least potentially bound up with every other one, in a way that defies compact description. Its even worse than accounting, because while banks are classical objects, quantum objects can affect each other in a non-local way. Happily, though, in the same way that you can get away with thinking about only the one set of financial accounts about which you have detailed knowledge, we can carve out a tiny piece of the universal wavefunction and treat it as an isolated system where we have detailed knowledge of the specific outcomes of measurements. We bracket everything else off as the environment which is a black box in the same way that Seventh National Bank is in finance.

Niels Bohr (L) and Werner Heisenberg on vacation (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

How can we get away with this? Ironically, the key to understanding it comes from two guys who come in for a lot of abuse in most pop-quantum books: Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Bohr and Heisenberg get disparaged as anti-realists for running off into a weird does the Moon exist when nobodys looking? land of observer-created reality. While they arguably took it too far, though, their initial insight is a critical one: It makes no sense to talk about the properties of a thing unless you also talk about how you are going to measure those properties.

How does this help with MWI? The problematic aspect here is that the wavefunction of the universe has everything in complicated superposition states, but when we select out a tiny piece of it as our system of interest, we often see that system only in single states, not a superposition of multiple states. The question thats too often un-asked, though is: What measurement would you do to demonstrate that your system is really in a superposition?

The answer to this doesnt need to be a procedure specific enough to actually do the experiment; a general outline would be sufficient. And, in fact, we have a couple of centuries of experience at doing exactly this: When we want to show that something has been in two states at the same time, we do an interference experiment. We put our system of interest in a superposition of two states, arrange for those two states to evolve at slightly different rates for some time, and then bring them back together and measure the final state. If a superposition exists, there will be some oscillation in the probability of a given final state that depends on the differential evolution in the middle. This takes lots of forms if the two states of the superposition correspond to passing through spatially separated slits, itll show up as an interference fringe pattern in space; if theyre two states of a cesium atom in an atomic clock, itll show up as a varying probability of ending up in one of those states as you adjust the frequency of your microwave oscillator.

Quantum physics books with dice.

In every case, though, youre measuring a probability. And not even a Bayesian can accurately measure a probability from a single experiment. To get a good measurement of a probability of some outcome let alone the variation in probability that is the signature of a superposition state you need a large number of repeated measurements. And those measurements have to be made under the same conditions every time.

Thats the key feature that lets you carve out some parts of the giant wavefunction of the universe and choose to treat them as systems in definite states, while others need to be treated as full quantum superpositions. The vast majority of the universe that were bracketing off as the environment affects the measurement conditions, which changes the probabilities youre measuring. If the interaction with the environment is small, though, you can ensure that the conditions are close to identical for enough trials to unambiguously see the changing probabilities that show a superposition exists. That subpart of the universal wavefunction needs to be dealt with as a fully quantum system.

If the interaction with the environment is strong and poorly controlled, though, the conditions of your measurement change enough from one repetition to the next that youre not really doing the same measurement multiple times. If you could know the full state of the environment for a given trial, you would predict one probability, but knowing the full state of the environment for the next trial would lead you to predict a different probability. In the absence of that knowledge, adding together repeated results just gets you junk you wont see a clear dependence on the different evolution of the different states in the superposition, because its swamped by the unknown effect of the environment. If you cant see the interference effect, that system looks classical, and you can treat it as having a definite state.

That process of interaction with the changing state of an unknown environment gets the name decoherence, and its what enables the bookkeeping trick that lets us split off pieces of the wavefunction and consider them in isolation. If the piece youre interested in is big enough and interacts with the environment strongly enough, theres no hope of doing the interference measurement that would show its in a superposition state. If you cant do a measurement that would show the existence of the other piece(s) of the superposition, you can safely treat it as being in a single definite state.

It should be emphasized, though, that this is just bookkeeping, not a real separation between copies of the universe, or even copies of the system of interest. Theres only one universe, in an indescribably complex superposition, and were choosing to carve out a tiny piece of it, and describe it in a simplified way. Its not even true, strictly speaking, that the results of a given experiment for a particular object are unaffected by the presence of the other parts of the superposition for that specific object. If you could do the full probability calculation for the whole wavefunction, including all of the environment, the probability you would predict for that experiment would include a contribution from all the various states that are superposed. In the absence of that complete knowledge, though, you can get away with ignoring them, because youll never be able to repeat the measurements in the way you would need to see the influence.

(If you would like a version of this picture that includes a more detailed physical example, this is essentially the picture I give in How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog That version is more humorous and less exasperated.)

A shopkeeper doing his monthly financial planning and bookkeeping

Thinking about MWI in this way as a bookkeeping trick to simplify an otherwise incomprehensibly vast wavefunction clears up most of the typical objections that arise from taking the separate worlds metaphor too literally. Theres no Occams Razor problem because theres only one wavefunction obeying one set of rules. Theres no issue with creating copies of everything, because there are no copies: theres one universe, with one set of components described by one wavefunction. Its not even a problem that the criteria for splitting are kind of nebulous, because its clear that its a fundamentally arbitrary process the choice of which pieces to isolate and discuss is purely a matter of bookkeeping convention for the convenience of puny human physicists.

So, thats my argument for why the way we talk about the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics sucks, and should be revisited. Please note that Im not saying that Sean Carroll or any of the other super-smart people who spend time and energy thinking about and working with MWI are Doing It Wrong in terms of the physics mathematically, thinking of the different pieces we can carve out of the giant wavefunction of the universe as separate branches works perfectly well. Thats how you keep the books. All Im arguing is that, on a conceptual level and in terms of the language used to communicate to non-experts, we should do a better job of making clear that it is just bookkeeping.

Thats also why, despite a general distaste for the (over)use of abbreviations and acronyms in physics, Ive been using MWI through most of the above. Id suggest that it continues to work perfectly well as a shorthand reference for this particular take on quantum theory, it just needs a slight tweak. Rather than Many-Worlds Interpretation, Id go with Metaphorical Worlds Interpretation, to reflect the fact that all the different ways of cutting up the wavefunction into sub-parts are fundamentally a matter of convenience, a choice to talk about pieces of the wavefunction as if they were separate, because the whole is too vast to comprehend.

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Many Worlds, But Too Much Metaphor - Forbes

A new approach to quantum gravity – Tech Explorist

For decades, physicists have been endeavoring to accommodate quantum mechanics, the physics of the minimal, with gravity, the physics of the very large. While numerous academics are working on quantum gravity, they frequently use models that dont think about specific parts of our own universe, similar to its accelerated expansion.

Now, a team of scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) reports a new approach to quantum gravity using a model that more closely matches our reality.

Scientists scattered matrix for massless fields, or S-matrix, an articulation that predicts what will happen when particles at infinitely far distances meet up, cooperate, and continue on ahead. Meanwhile, the S-matrix uses starting points to foresee results. Significantly, this idea can apply to a de Sitter space, a universe that is growing at an accelerating ratesimply like our own.

In this study, scientists calculated the S-matrix in de Sitter space for the simplest scenario, involving free, non-interacting particles. This expression is known as free S-matrix.

Adrian David, one of the authors of the study, said, The free S-matrix is more than just elegant mathit has the potential to explain more realistic scenarios. We will now start thinking about such scenarios, moving beyond individual fields to explore what happens when those fields interact.

The free S-matrix is like a Hello, World! program used to the math in a simple context.

Like a sanity test in computer programming, the output Hello, World! message is less interesting than the underlying language used to create it. Likewise, the free S-matrix is less appealing by itself, but more in the questions, it might allow us to answer.

Yasha Neiman, head of the Quantum Gravity Group said, We are in a universe that is expanding at an accelerating rate, a de Sitter space, and it appears that these conditions are now permanent. This information must be incorporated as a cornerstone in our description of reality.

Currently, scientists are working on the next step of the problemapplying the free S-matrix to more complicated scenarios that echo reality. Then, they might gain a better understandingis this merely gorgeous math or more than just a pretty face?

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A new approach to quantum gravity - Tech Explorist

A Huge Experiment Has ‘Weighed’ the Tiny Neutrino, a Particle That Passes Right Through Matter – Gizmodo

The KATRIN spectrometer on its way to the experimental hall.Photo: KATRIN

An experiment nearly two decades in the making has finally unveiled its measurements of the mass of the universes most abundant matter particle: the neutrino.

The neutrino could be the weirdest subatomic particle; though abundant, it requires some of the most sensitive detectors to observe. Scientists have been working for decades to figure out whether neutrinos have mass and if so, what that mass is. The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment in Germany has now revealed its first result constraining the maximum limit of that mass. The work has implications for our understanding of the entire cosmos, since these particles formed shortly after the Big Bang and helped shape the way structure formed in the early universe.

You dont get a lot of chances to measure a cosmological parameter that shaped the evolution of the universe in the laboratory, Diana Parno, an assistant research professor at Carnegie Mellon University who works on the experiment, told Gizmodo.

Neutrinos come in three flavors: electron, muon, and tau, based on how they interact with the corresponding electron, muon, and tau particles. Back in 1957, physicist Bruno Pontecorvo predicted that neutrinos would oscillate between these three different flavors, but this oscillation would require the particle to have mass. Experiments have since proven that oscillation exists, a finding that netted Arthur B. McDonald and Takaaki Kajita the 2015 Nobel Prize.

But figuring their mass out is tricky for various reasonsmost importantly, neutrinos only interact with matter via the weak nuclear force, a difficult fundamental force for human-built experiments to access. Then, theres the weirdness of quantum mechanics; each neutrino flavor is composed of a probabilistic combination of three mass states. Due to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, you can measure either the mass state or the flavor of a neutrino, but not both.

Detecting a particle that doesnt interact with typical sensors required scientists to get creative. The KATRIN experiment begins with 25 grams of a kind of radioactive hydrogen gas, called tritium, stored in a 30-foot container held at cryogenic temperaturescold enough such that even neon gas is a liquid. These tritium atoms undergo a kind of radioactive decay called beta decay, where one of their neutrons turns into a proton, spitting out an electron and an electron-antineutrino in the process (which would have the same mass as the electron neutrino). These decay products go into a house-sized detector called a spectrometer that measures the energy of the electrons. The electron and neutrino each carry away some of the energy of the reaction, but how much they take away can vary. Scientists must look at the spectrum of all the different electron energies, focusing particularly on the electrons that have taken away the maximum energy, whose neutrinos would in turn have taken away the minimum energy. Analysis of the shape of the resulting graphs reveals the maximum mass of any of the neutrino mass states.

The mere fact that oscillation exists sets a lowest possible average mass of the three mass states, less than 0.1 electron volts (eV). After a month of operating and 18 years of planning and construction, KATRIN has now predicted an upper limit of any of the three mass states at 1.1 eV, where an electron weighs around 500,000 eV and a proton weighs nearly a billion.

KATRIN scientists announced the results at the 2019 Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics conference in Toyama, Japan, last Friday.

The KATRIN collaboration kicked off in 2001, but its been a long time because its a really complicated experiment, Hamish Robertson, a KATRIN scientist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Washington, told Gizmodo.

The pressure and temperature of the gas source requires precise control, and there are lots of moving parts. It took years to design and build the enormous spectrometer that rejects unwanted electrons and precisely measures the resulting electrons energies.

Its fractal at some level, said Parno. If you zoom in at any part of the experiment and start asking questions, you get the same level of complexity back again.

KATRIN is just one of several different strategies to calculate the neutrinos mass. Just last month, researchers used cosmological data to argue that the sum of the three neutrino masses was at most 0.26 electron volts. Other experiments hope to calculate the neutrino mass using rare atomic decays. But KATRINs findings are valuable because they dont rely on grand theories of how the universe works, noted Duke University associate physics professor Phillip Barbeau, who was not involved in the study.

This most recent limit on the mass halves the maximum mass determined in other experimental setups and comes from just one month of data. Theres a whole lot more to go, including five years worth of data-taking that will further constrain the masses. Scientists ultimately want to know more than just the maximum mass of the states; they want to know the absolute mass of all three states and how they compare to one another. Solving this problem has implications for understanding the early universes behavior, whether the neutrino is its own antiparticle, and why theres more matter than antimatter in the universe. Lots of physicists are interested in the result.

Its a fundamental parameter, Kate Scholberg, Duke University professor of physics not involved in the study, told Gizmodo. If youre trying to develop overall models of fundamental physics, grand unified theories and that kind of thing, then you want all of the information you canlike the masses of all of the particles.

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A Huge Experiment Has 'Weighed' the Tiny Neutrino, a Particle That Passes Right Through Matter - Gizmodo

APS Physics Career Center – Physics

POSITION SUMMARY

The Department of Physics at New York University, jointly with the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) of the Simons Foundations Flatiron Institute, invites applications for a position in the general area oftheoretical/computational quantum condensed matter and atomic molecular and optical physics. The position is a 50-50 joint appointment between New York University and CCQ, with the appointee spending half of her or his effort ineach place. At NYU the opening is at the tenure track Assistant Professor level and, at CCQ, it is at the Associate Research Scientist level. The position is based at the Simons Foundation and NYU offices in New York City. It isexpected that, subject to satisfactory progress in research, the Associate Research Scientist Appointment will continue for the duration of the NYU untenured faculty appointment.The holder of this joint appointment will be considered for promotion to a full time NYU tenured professorship according to NYU's standard policies and procedures.

A Ph.D. in physics or a closely related field is required, and candidates will typically have 1-6 years of postdoctoral research experience, although more senior candidates may be considered in exceptional circumstances. Theresponsibilities for this joint position include but are not limited to: establishing a leading research program with a significant computational component; teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels at NYU; contributing to thescientific activities at the Flatiron Institute by assisting with the organization of CCQ-related conferences, workshops, group seminars, and summer programs, and to supervise research conducted by Flatiron Research Fellows andsummer interns.

In order to be considered for this joint appointment, candidates must submit their application in two places:

to NYU athttps://apply.interfolio.com/67519

and to CCQ at https://simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/simonsfoundationcareers/job/Associate-Research-Scientist--CCQ--Joint-Position-with-NYU-Physics-_R0000423

The application materials should include a curriculum vitae and a list of publications as well as statements, no longer than three pages each, of current and planned research and of teaching activities. The NYU application should include the names and contact information of three scientists who can provide letters of reference. The candidate should also have these three referees email their reference letters directly to CCQ at ccqjobs@simonsfoundation.org.

Because diversity is important to our institutions, the letter describing research and teaching activities should include a brief paragraph telling us how diversity figures into the applicants past and present teaching, research, community engagement, and/or life experience, as well as howthe applicant would bring issues of diversity to bear on the teaching and programming of NYU's Department of Physics.

Review of applications will begin on or about October 28, 2019.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education

Required Experience

More information about NYU Physics Departments research programs can be found athttp://physics.as.nyu.edu.The Faculty of Arts and Science at NYU is at the heart of a leading research university that spans the globe. We seek scholars of the highest caliber, who embody the diversity of the United States as well as the global society in which we live. We strongly encourage applications from women, racial and ethnic minorities, and other individuals who are under-represented in the profession, across color, creed, race, ethnic and national origin, physical ability, gender and sexual identity, or any other legally protected basis. NYU affirms the value of differing perspectives on the world as we strive to build the strongest possible university with the widest reach. To learn more about the FAS commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion, please read here. (http://as.nyu.edu/facultydiversity.html)

Directed by Antoine Georges and co-directed by Andrew Millis, the CCQ is a leading international center for the study of quantum physics and its applications to condensed matter physics, materials science, chemistry and related fields. The development of the concepts, algorithms and code libraries needed to advance the field is fundamental to the work of the center. The CCQ is expected to grow to about 50 staff members, comprising scientists at various career stages, from recent Ph.Ds. through senior scientists, software engineers and support staff.The institute has a vigorous visitor program and interacts strongly with scientists from neighboring institutions. Additional information about CCQ is available at https://www.simonsfoundation.org/flatiron/center-for-computational-quantum-physics/.

The Simons Foundations Diversity CommitmentMany of the greatest ideas and discoveries come from a diverse mix of minds, backgrounds and experiences, and we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment. The Simons Foundation provides equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic disposition, neurodiversity, disability, veteran status or any other protected category under federal, state and local law.

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APS Physics Career Center - Physics

Assistant Professor of Physics, Employment – Physics

The Physics Department at the University of Rhode Island (URI) invites applications for a full-time academic year tenure-track position of an Assistant Professor of Physics beginning in the fall of 2020, specifically for a theorist with expertise in the general area of nanophysics.

Considerations will be given to applicants with expertise in the broad area of nanophysics including but not limited to nanostructures, quantum dots, nanofluidics, nanorobotics, nanosensors, and quantum computing. Complementing contact points with research programs in the Physics Department (biological physics, medical physics, surface and thin film physics, ultrafast spectroscopy, nonlinear optics, statistical physics) or at URI more generally will be a factor in the selection process.

The Physics Department is in the process of developing, with support by a committed partner from industry, an MS degree in Applied Quantum Technology. Demonstrated expertise that naturally aligns with this initiative is a plus.

The successful candidate will teach undergraduate and graduate physics courses, advise undergraduate and graduate students in the research component toward BS, MS, and PhD degrees, and be active in service at the levels of Department, College, and University.

The position comes with funds to support a postdoc for the second year of appointment to help jump start a strong and externally funded research program.

Visit the URI jobs website at https://jobs.uri.edu to apply and view complete details for posting (F00159). Please attach the following 5 (PDF) documents to your online Faculty Employment Application: (#1) Cover letter (1 pdf page max), (#2) Curriculum vitae (education, previous appointments, publications, talks, presentations, lectures, conferences, awards, special skills), as one complete pdf doc, (#3) Statement on teaching approach and emphasis in undergraduate and graduate courses (1 pdf page max), (#4) Outline of planned research program backed up by demonstrated expertise (4 pages max, as one complete pdf doc), and (#5) Other Document the names and contact information of three professional references.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please have three Letters of Recommendation sent directly by email to: searchphysics@etal.uri.edu

APPLICATION DEADLINE: The search will remain open until the position is filled. First consideration will be given to applications received by October 31, 2019. Second consideration may be given to applications received by November 30, 2019. Applications received subsequent to second consideration date (November 30, 2019) may not be given full consideration.

APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED ONLINE ONLY.

The University of Rhode Island is an AA/EEOD employer. Women, persons of color, protected veterans, individuals with disabilities, and members of other protected groups are encouraged to apply.

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Assistant Professor of Physics, Employment - Physics

The key to bigger quantum computers could be to build them like Legos – MIT Technology Review

Visit any startup or university lab where quantum computers are being built, and its like entering a time warp to the 1960sthe heyday of mainframe computing, when small armies of technicians ministered to machines that could fill entire rooms.

All manner of equipment, from super-accurate lasers to supercooled refrigerators, is needed to harness the exotic forces of quantum mechanics for the task of processing data. Cables connecting various bits of gear form multicolored spaghetti that spills over floors and runs across ceilings. Physicists and engineers swarm around banks of screens, constantly monitoring and tweaking the performance of the computers.

Mainframes ushered in the information revolution, and the hope is that quantum computers will prove game-changers too. Their immense processing power promises to outstrip that of even the most capable conventional supercomputers, potentially delivering advances in everything from drug discovery to materials science and artificial intelligence.

The big challenge facing the nascent industry is to create machines that can be scaled up both reliably and relatively cheaply. Generating and managing the quantum bits, or qubits, that carry information in the computers is hard. Even the tiniest vibrations or changes in temperaturephenomena known as noise in quantum jargoncan cause qubits to lose their fragile quantum state. And when that happens, errors creep into calculations.

The most common response has been to create quantum computers with as many qubits as possible on a single chip. If some qubits misfire, others holding copies of the information can be called upon as backups by algorithms developed to detect and minimize errors. The strategy, which has been championed by large companies such as IBM and Google, as well as by high-profile startups like Rigetti Computing, has spawned complex machines evocative of those room-sized mainframes.

The problem is, the error rates are extreme. Todays largest chips have fewer than a hundred qubits, but thousands or even tens of thousands may be needed to produce the same result as a single error-free qubit. Each qubit needs its own control wiring, so the more that are added, the more complex a system becomes to manage. More gear will also be needed to monitor and manage rapidly expanding qubit counts. That could drive up the complexity and cost of the computers dramatically, limiting their appeal.

Robert Schoelkopf, a professor at Yale, thinks theres a better way forward. Instead of trying to cram ever more qubits onto a single chip, Quantum Circuits, a startup he cofounded in 2017, is developing what amount to mini quantum machines. These can be networked together via specialized interfaces, a bit like very high-tech Lego bricks. Schoelkopf says this approach helps produce lower error rates, so fewer qubitsand therefore less supporting hardwarewill be needed to create powerful quantum machines.

Julie Bidwell

Skeptics point out that unlike rivals such as IBM, Quantum Circuits has yet to publicly unveil a working computer. But if it can deliver one that lives up to Schoelkopfs claims, it could help bring quantum computing out of labs and into the commercial world much faster.

The drive to create longer-lasting qubits

The idea of bolting together smaller quantum building blocks to create bigger computers has been around for years, but its never quite caught on. Theres not been a great, fault-tolerant machine thats been built yet using the modular approach, explains Jerry Chow, who manages the experimental quantum computing team at IBM Research. Still, adds Chow, if anyone can pull it off it will be Schoelkopf and his colleagues.

After training as an engineer and a physicist, including stints at NASA and Caltech, Schoelkopf joined Yales faculty in 1998 and began to work on quantum computing. He and his colleagues pioneered the use of superconducting circuits on a chip to create qubits. By pumping electrical current through specialized microchips held inside fridges that are colder than deep space, they are able to coax particles into the quantum states that are key to the computers immense power.

Unlike bits in ordinary computers, which are streams of electrical or optical pulses representing either a 1or a 0, qubits are subatomic particles such as photons or electrons that can be in a kind of combination of both 1and 0a phenomenon known as superposition. Qubits can also become entangled with one another, which means that a change in the state of one can instantaneously change the state of others even when theres no physical connection between them.

Julie Bidwell

Theres more background on this in our quantum computing explainer. The main thing to know, though, is that this allows qubits to act as if they are performing many calculations simultaneously that an ordinary computer would have to perform sequentially. Which means that adding additional qubits to a quantum machine boosts its processing capacity exponentially.

Schoelkopf has also won plaudits for his work on the problem of noise. The coherence times of qubitsthat is, how long they can run calculations before noise disrupts their delicate quantum statehave been improving by a factor of 10 roughly every three years. (Researchers have dubbed this trend Schoelkopfs Law in a nod to classical computings Moores Law, which holds that the number of transistors on a silicon chip doubles roughly every two years.) Brendan Dickinson of Canaan Partners, one of Quantum Circuits investors, says Schoelkopfs impressive track record in superconducting qubits is one of the main reasons it decided to back the business, which has raised $18 million so far.

Ironically, some of the students mentored by Schoelkopf and his cofounders from Yale, Michel Devoret and Luigi Frunzio, are now at companies like IBM and Rigetti that compete with their startup. Schoelkopf is clearly proud of the quantum diaspora thats come out of the Yale lab. He told me that a few years ago he had looked at all the organizations around the world working on superconducting qubits and found that more than half of them were run by people who had spent time there. But he also believes a kind of groupthink has set in.

The advantages of modular machines

Most researchers working on superconducting machines focus on creating as many qubits as possible on a single chip. Quantum Circuits approach is very different from that standard. The core of its system is a small aluminum module containing superconducting circuits that are made on silicon or sapphire chips. Each module contains what amounts to five to 10 qubits.

To network these modules together into larger computers, the company uses what sounds like something out of Star Trekquantum teleportation. Its a method thats been developed for shipping data across things like telecom networks. The basic idea involves entangling a microwave photon in one module with a photon in another one and then using the link between them as a bridge for transferring data. (Weve got a quantum teleportation explainertoo.) Quantum Circuits has used this approach to teleport a quantum version of a logic gate between its modules.

Schoelkopf says there are several reasons that networking modules together is better than cramming as many qubits as possible onto a single chip. The smaller scale of each unit makes it easier to control the system and to apply error correction techniques. Moreover, if some qubits go haywire in an individual module, the unit can be removed or isolated without affecting others networked with it; if theyre all on a single chip, the entire thing may have to be scrapped.

Julie Bidwell

Looking ahead, Quantum Circuits modular machines will still need some of the same gear as rival ones, including the supercooling refrigerators and monitoring gear. But as they scale, they shouldnt require anywhere near the same kind of control wiring and other paraphernalia needed to master individual qubits. So while rival devices could look ever more like those massive early mainframes, the startups machines should remain akin to the slimmed-down ones that appeared as conventional computing advanced into the 1970s and beyond.

Listening to Schoelkopf talk through the technology, an image crept into my head: my kids playing with plastic Lego bricks when they were young, bolting them together to build castles and forts.

When I suggested the comparison, Schoelkopf was initially a little wary but then became quite enthusiastic. In general, every complex device I know, he said, is based on having the equivalent of Lego blocks, and you define the interfaces and how they fit together [Lego bricks] are really cheap. They can be mass-produced. And they always plug together the right way.

Schoelkopfs quantum modules have another key advantage. Each contains a three-dimensional cavity that traps a number of microwave photons. These form what are known as qudits, and theyre like qubits, except they store more information. While a qubit represents a combination of 1 and0, a qudit can exist in more than two statessay, 0, 1, and 2 at the same time. Quantum computers with qudits can crunch through even more information simultaneously.

Scientists have been experimenting with qudits for some time, but they are tricky to generate and control. Schoelkopf says Quantum Circuits has found ways to create high-quality ones consistently and to reduce errors significantly. (The company claims its achieved coherence times using its cavities that are ten to 100 times longer than for superconducting qubits, which makes it easier to correct errors.) Some qubits are still needed to perform operations on the qudits, and to extract information from them, but his approach requires fewer of these qubits. That, in turn, means less hardware is needed overall.

Quantum computing is a wide-open field

Courtesy of Quantum Circuits

Quantum Circuits approach sounds compelling, but Schoelkopf refuses to say exactly when the company will unveil a fully functioning computer. Nor will he disclose how many qubits and qudits his team has managed to get working together in total.

The longer it takes, the more his startup risks being overshadowed by its rivals. IBM and Rigetti are already giving companies and researchers access to their quantum computers via the computing cloud, and Google is rumored to be close to being the first to achieve quantum supremacyor the point at which a quantum computer can perform a task beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputer.

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Schoelkopf says organizations that want to try out algorithms on Quantum Circuits system will be able to do so very soon, and that at some point it will connect machines to the cloud as IBM and Rigetti have done. The startup isnt just building computers; its also working on software that will help users get the most out of the underlying hardware.

Besides, its early days. The quantum algorithms being run on cloud services like IBMs today are still pretty basic, Schoelkopf notes. The field is wide open for quantum computers and associated software that can really make a difference in a broad range of areas, from turbocharging artificial-intelligence applications to modeling molecules for chemists.

Lots of questions remain. Will Quantum Circuits be able to keep producing robust qubits and qudits as it builds much bigger machines? Can it get its quantum teleportation method to work reliably as it connects more modules together? And will its systems, when they are rolled out for sale, be more cost-effective to operate than those of rivals? Significant physics and engineering challenges still lie ahead. But if Schoelkopf and his colleagues can overcome them, they could prove that the key to getting very big in quantum computing is to think small.

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The key to bigger quantum computers could be to build them like Legos - MIT Technology Review

Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash – The Economist

SEEK HARMONY but not sameness, advised the Chinese philosopher Confucius 2,500 years ago. Neither quality was on display when Chinese nationalists violently disrupted a rally at the University of Queensland in July in support of anti-government demonstrators in Hong Kong. Since then Drew Pavlou, one of the organisers of the sympathy rally, says he has received a litany of threats from Chinese patriots. The passport details of another participant in the rally, who is from the Chinese mainland, have been disseminated on social media. A third says authorities in China visited his family there, to warn them of the consequences of dissent.

Mr Pavlou claims his university has since tried to squelch protests that might upset China, a charge it firmly denies. It is one of 13 campuses in Australia to host a Confucius Institute, a language school and cultural centre funded by the Chinese government. Some students worry about the universitys cosy ties with China. Peter Hoj, its vice-chancellor, has worked as a consultant to the Chinese state agency responsible for Confucius Institutes. Recently he quietly made a Chinese diplomat, Xu Jie, a visiting professor. Many Australians were outraged when Mr Xu praised the spontaneous patriotic behaviour of the Chinese students who instigated the scuffle.

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Other Australians are dazzled by the money to be made teaching Chinese students. Relative to the size of its population, Australia now hosts more international students than any other country. Just over a third of themaround 150,000come from China. In the universities most eager to woo them, Chinese students now fill about a quarter of all places, says Salvatore Babones of the University of Sydney. This has turned tertiary education into Australias third-biggest export, enabling administrators to pump cash into new facilities and research. But the conservative coalition government seems increasingly worried about the implications for free speech and security.

Lecturers gripe about complaints from Chinese students who bristle at criticism of their government. Some have apologised publicly for supposedly hurting students feelings; one was suspended in 2017 after he claimed that ordinary Chinese believe that government officials only ever speak the truth by accident.

Last year Victoria University cancelled a screening of a film criticising Confucius Institutes after Chinese diplomats expressed misgivings about the event. Some academics complain that administrators have encouraged them to keep awkward opinions to themselves. One grumbles that his freedom of speech was egregiously compromised when a panel discussion on Chinese politics was suddenly cancelled ahead of a Chinese state visit to Australia.

Students police each other as well as their teachers. Officially Chinese Students and Scholars Associations, which are backed by the Chinese state, run social events and help newcomers. But they are also assumed to snitch on dissenters, leaving many Chinese students afraid to speak their minds.

By courting controversy, these organisations may have done more harm than good to Chinas interests, says Mark Harrison, a Chinese-studies lecturer at the University of Tasmania. So have the Confucius Institutes, which are accused of stifling academic freedom by discouraging students from discussing sensitive topics. It is completely inappropriate for universities to host what amount to arms of the Chinese Communist Party on their campuses, argues Kevin Carrico of Monash University.

Universities dont think they need to register the institutes under a new law that requires agents of foreign governments attempting to influence politics to declare themselves. The attorney-generals office is mulling whether they should. A separate government taskforce is investigating whether universities are doing enough to prevent sensitive research from reaching foreign governments. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank, reckons 300-odd scientists tied to Chinas armed forces have visited Australia since 2007, studying subjects such as quantum physics and navigation technology. In one particularly worrying case, a professor at the University of New South Wales worked with a Chinese general to develop supercomputers used in nuclear-weapons tests, notes Alex Joske of ASPI.

Australian universities say they are working with the government to safeguard security without undermining the invaluable asset of global collaboration. But few seem keen to reduce their dependency on a continuing influx of Chinese students. This amounts to a crisis of leadership, a conservative senator recently asserted. If universities do not change their tack, says Mr Harrison, they may find that federal agencies do it for them.

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Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash - The Economist

Strong LightMatter Coupling in Molecular and Material Engineering – Advanced Science News

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Very recently it was pointed out that strong coupling (SC) could affect a host of significant phenomena at the material and molecular level, which were thought to be independent of the light environment. These include phase transitions, conductivity, chemical reactions, and quantum coherence, among others.

The primary focus of Professor Branko Kolarics group is to attract the interest of the materials science community in SC, which he hopes will open a new avenue in chemical and material research.

Besides the practical applications in material science, were emphasizing the importance of SC concept for achieving macroscopic quantum coherence at ambient condition for the future quantum technologies and significance of quantum entanglement, an essential trait of quantum mechanics for modern research in material science and spectroscopy.

In contemporary materials research, properties of matter cannot be dissociated from the quantum vacuum, and in the case of light-matter entanglement, the states of matter and the electromagnetic field cannot be defined independently. In quantum language, the system states are not factorable.

The artistic beauty of the surrealist masterpiece, Les Amants II (1928), by Ren Magritte visualizes two entities, locked in an ambiguous setting and unable to truly communicate or touch but essentially entangled. This piece of art reveals a couple (like entangled entities) separated by the veil of physical realm, entities distinct yet connected.

Up until now, applications concerning the SC concept in materials science were at the infant stage, but presently, many new possibilities have opened up to boost research in this field.

As stated in the study, SC profoundly binds the material science with a fundamental physics and science of quantum information. The general application of this SC concept will lead to a new scientific revolution, with applications in engineering novel complex materials such as high-temperature superconductors, topological materials, semiconductors, and materials to control biological dynamics in an unprecedented way.

Professor Branko Kolaric and Bojana Bokic are involved in different research areas, ranging from classical nanoplasmonics and photonics to the physics of weak values and foundations of quantum mechanics. Achieving control of quantum coherence under ambient conditions and harnessing quantum entanglement is one of the most significant goals of the scientific domains mentioned above, with substantial potential for technological applications.

The SC research discussed in this study will have a significant social and economic impact. However, the next big challenge will be to apply the concept of strong coupling for future quantum and emerging technologies and make a substantial leap towards a new quantum society.

In the end, as scientists, we often have make compromises between beauty and practicality, between dreams and reality, but SC unifies these things, being a magnificent dream inside physics.

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Strong LightMatter Coupling in Molecular and Material Engineering - Advanced Science News

Become the physicists the world needs with the help of a physics degree – Study International News

If youre looking to carve yourself a rewarding career in the sciences, why not consider studying physics?

Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Stephen Hawking are just some of the giants in the field whose work has had a profound impact on improving our understanding of the world, inspiring many other scientists in their wake.

Physics is a stimulating area of study; an undergraduate or graduate degree in the field can open the door to a myriad of careers across a range of industries, be it in research, academia, business, IT or engineering, among others. Physicists can find employment in both private and government sectors and often work in offices or laboratories, depending on their role.

While popular culture such as TV series The Big Bang Theory may depict physics as a nerdy endeavor, the work and discoveries of professionals in the field have paved the way for improvements in our world, be it through the understanding of gravity, improving space flight, among many others.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of physicists will grow by 14 percent between 2016 and 2026, faster than the average for all occupations. Modern physics will continue to be a driving force in the changes happening in the world today, calling for professionals in the field to tackle 21st century challenges and continue to evolve and meet future demands.

If youre keen on becoming the physicists the world needs, here are four universities in the US and Canada worth considering:

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY (GWU)

This private research university is strategically located in Washington DC, in proximity to major organisations and research centres that act as a platform for internship and career opportunities post-graduation.

George Washington University

Faculty scholars at GWUs Physics Department are among the nations top scientists and researchers, conducting research in a variety of areas includingAstrophysics,Experimental Nuclear Physics and Experimental Biophysics.

The GWU Astrophysics Group strives to excel in high-energy astrophysics research, as well as to advance astronomy and astrophysics education, exploring matter and physics under the most extreme conditions by using world-class telescopes and NASA satellites.

GWU has one of the largest university-based nuclear physics groups in the nation. Projects extend from the universitys campuses to collaborations in Virginias Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Germanys Mainz Microtron Facility and Switzerlands Paul Scherrer Institute. Experiments focus on the understanding strong interactions within the nuclear medium.

Biophysics applies the theories and methods of physics to understand how biological systems work. The GWU biophysics research lab brings together faculty, postdoctoral associates, graduate students and undergraduates to examine biophysics in theoretically and experimentally.

GWUs Department of Physics undergraduate programmes include a BA or BS in Physics, BS in Astronomy and Astrophysics or a BS in Biophysics, while graduate students can choose from advanced electives including Quantum Field Theory, Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics.

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

This public universitys Department of Physics and Astronomy is renowned for the breadth and quality of its research. The faculty includes two Nobel Prize winners, three National Academy of Science members and twelve University Distinguished Professors.

The department prides itself on its research prowess, with many of its research areas covering a range of phenomena that humans are trying to understand. The departments research groups also collaborate with other departments on campus, and with collaborators at the many US and international universities and labs.

Undergraduate students can choose from their BA in Physics or BSc in Physics. Those keen on pursuing an advanced degree in physics or who wish to gain employment as a professional physicist in an industrial setting may want to opt for the latter, which is more rigorous in its physics and mathematics course requirements.

Conversely, the BA curriculum allows students to explore other interests as it provides them with a strong foundation in physics and with the flexibility to choose from a large number of elective courses. Students can also customise their programme in preparation for a career in any science-related or science-required field, and can become directly involved in any of the active research programmes in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Meanwhile, graduate students have the opportunity to participate in cutting-edge research in their area of choice. Graduates go on to carve themselves careers as professors, research staff at national laboratories, teachers in higher education or even in high paying jobs outside academia. To boot, nearly all graduate students are fully supported by teaching or research assistantships throughout their graduate career.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE

This public university is located in the coastal city of Irvine, California. UCI was founded in 1965 and is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities.

Its physics undergraduate programmes under the Department of Physics and Astronomy include the Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics and Applied Physics. Students can choose to focus their area of study from several specialisations to give them an edge in graduate school or to develop for their future career. This includes Astrophysics, Business/Law, Engineering Physics, Biomedical Physics, Computational Physics, Philosophy of Physics and Physics Education.

Undergraduate students also have opportunities to engage in research or independent study under the direction of a faculty member.

The Department also offers a programme of graduate study leading to a PhD degree in Physics. The graduate course curriculum provides students with a foundation in fundamental physics and elective courses in a broad range of topical areas. Students will also conduct original research in diverse areas of experimental and theoretical physics and astrophysics, under the guidance of members of our departmental faculty.

The university also offers a graduate programme in Chemical and Materials Physics as a joint programme with the UCI Department of Chemistry. PhD graduates are well prepared for careers in scientific research, teaching and industry.

Research areas include Astrophysics, Biological Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Medical Physics, Particle Physics and Plasma Physics.

QUEENS UNIVERSITY

Queens is a public university located in Ontario, Canada. Its Department of Physics is one of the countrys leading teaching and research institutes in Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy. Faculty include high-profile, world-class physicists who work on cutting-edge areas of theoretical, computational, applied and experimental physics.

At Queens, students have the chance to engage in international collaboration, as well as inter-disciplinary research with other departments within the university, in addition to working in state-of-the-art laboratories.

Their undergraduate programmes include Physics and Astronomy and Engineering Physics. In the former, students will study topics such as classical mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, advanced laboratory, relativity and quantum mechanics during their second and third year of studies. In their fourth year, students can take specialised courses in current, modern subjects such as nanoscience, medical physics, lasers, nuclear and particle physics, solid state physics and general relativity.

Conversely, the Engineering Physics programme allows students to apply the knowledge of fundamental physical principles underlying modern technology and processes. Students will study a strategic combination of math, physics and engineering courses from a chosen specialty area.

Graduate students can pursue MSc or MASc programs at Queens, or even a PhD in physics.

*Some of the institutions featured in this article are commercial partners of Study International

Make a difference with a science degree from the University of Oregon

Physics degrees that direct future scientists to the forefront of innovation

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Become the physicists the world needs with the help of a physics degree - Study International News

Imec and NUS working on chip-based quantum cryptography – Optics.org

17Sep2019

Aim is to develop and integrate all QKD key components in a single silicon-photonics chip to counter quantum-based threats.

In the frame of this five-year agreement, the partners will jointly develop scalable, robust and efficient technologies for quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum random number generation (QRNG), which are some of the building blocks of the emerging secure Quantum Internet.

The partners commented, "Research in quantum information science has indicated that large-scale quantum computers, when realized, will render most of todays encryption techniques insecure."

'Situation is urgent'

The partnership launch announcement added that, although such a large-scale quantum computer is still some time away, this situation is nevertheless an urgent one; two broad directions have been pursued globally, namely a software-based approach called post-quantum cryptography and a hardware-based approach called quantum cryptography.

Post-quantum cryptography is essentially about updating existing cryptographic algorithms and standards so that current infrastructures would be ready for a post-quantum digital world. It however maintains a security profile that is still based on unproven assumptions.

Quantum cryptography, on the other hand, offers a much stronger security guarantee: its security is solely based on the laws of quantum physics and thus is in principle unbreakable.

Considering critical information infrastructures with long-term security needs such as healthcare, government and banking, the partners believe that quantum cryptography is the safer way to go.

With this approach, two essential building blocks are QKD and QRNG. At present, however, the methods and processes enabling these quantum technologies are limiting and expensive. Consequently, these bottlenecks have made quantum cryptography unattractive for wide-spread deployment. The research collaboration is supported by the National Research Foundation of Singapore under the Quantum Engineering Programme.

Silicon photonics chip

Joris Van Campenhout, R&D Program director at imec, explained, Our approach consists of developing and integrating all QKD key components in a single silicon-photonics based chip, which ensures a cost-effective solution.

As a first deliverable, we will jointly develop an ultrafast quantum random number generation (QRNG) chip, a key component for generating the secret keys. Secondly, we will work on a compact, fully integrated photonic quantum transmitter prototype chip. In these efforts, we will strongly leverage imecs deep expertise in silicon photonics technology, originally developed for conventional datacom and telecom applications.

Dr. Charles Lim, Assistant Professor at NUS, commented, The development of chip-based prototypes will allow us to turn todays QKD technologies into an efficient communication networking solution. Our team at NUS will bring in expertise on the theory, protocol design, and proof-of-concept experiments of the quantum random number generator and QKD systems.

Were very excited to collaborate with imec, as their expertise will allow us to translate these solutions into real silicon-photonics based chips by using imecs process design kits and re-usable IP blocks.

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Imec and NUS working on chip-based quantum cryptography - Optics.org

Faculty Opening, Quantum Information and Condensed Matter Experiment – Physics

The Department of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis invites applications to fill anexperimentaltenure-track faculty opening at the Assistant Professor level,in the areas ofquantum information and condensed matterphysics. This is an open search in all areas related to quantum information, simulation, and metrology, as well as condensed matter and quantum materials research. We are particularly interested in candidates who use experimental techniques that overlap with our newly established Center for Quantum Sensors quantumsensors.wustl.edu and the Institute for Materials Science and Engineering imse.wustl.edu. The appointment will begin Fall 2020. Information on our department can be found at physics.wustl.edu.

Candidates should have a Ph.D. in physics or a closely related field at the time of appointment, significant research achievements and an aptitude for teaching physics at graduate and undergraduate levels. Duties will include, but are not limited to: conducting original research and writing for publication, teaching courses, advising students, and service to the Physics Department and University as well as service to the research community. The typical teaching load for research-active faculty is one course per semester on average. Applications should be submitted electronically to quantumsearch@physics.wustl.edu and should consist of a single file in PDF format containing (1) a cover letter, (2) a current resume including publication record, (3) a statement of research interests and plans (up to 4 pages), (4) a teaching, outreach, and diversity statement (up to 2 pages), and (5) names and contact information of three references. Applications received by November 22, 2019 will receive full consideration.

Washington University in St. Louis is committed to the principles and practices of equal employment opportunity and especially encourages applications by those underrepresented in their academic fields. It is the Universitys policy to recruit, hire, train, and promote persons in all job titles without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or genetic information.

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Faculty Opening, Quantum Information and Condensed Matter Experiment - Physics

The Ultimate Mystery? Consciousness May Exist in the Absence of Matter (Weekend Feature) – The Daily Galaxy –Great Discoveries Channel

I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness, says Edward Witten, theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey who has been compared to Isaac Newton and Einstein.

Are humans just one among a billion species that evolved over billions of years on one rocky planet among trillions of planets circling hundreds of billions of stars in a galaxy that is just one among hundreds of billions of galaxies that, for all we know contain billions of unimaginable life forms, all located in an expanding cosmic bubble that is only one among an enormous number of bubble universes. Is it possible that this entire multiverse is the result of one species of conscious creatures we intimately know as Homo sapiens?

It seems unlikely. But

Ultimate Mystery of the Universe Human Consciousness: Were Like Neanderthals Trying to Understand Astronomy

It is possible that consciousness may exist by itself, even in the absence of matter, just like gravitational waves, -excitations of space- that may exist in the absence of protons and electrons, suggests Stanford Universitys Russian-American theoretical physicist, Andrei Linde in Life, Universe, Consciousness, about the central mystery of our time. Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?

The universe and the observer exist as a pair. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of the universe that ignores consciousness, Linde concluded.

Human Consciousness The Big Bang is Easier to Comprehend

In our recent The Galaxy Report Alien Worlds to Are Humans a Genetic Accident? we observed that are we the only species of the billions of species that have existed on Earth that has shown an aptitude for radios and even we failed to build one during the first 99% of our 7 million year history, says Australia National Universitys Charley Lineweaver.

For what purpose did the human brain evolve? It is a question that has puzzled scientists for decades, and was answered in 2010 by Colin Blakemore, an Oxford University neurobiologist who argued that a mutation in the brain of a single human being 200,000 years ago turned intellectually able primates into a super-intelligent species that would conquer the world. Homo sapiens appears to be genetic accident. Or are we?

The Galaxy Report Alien Worlds to Are Humans a Genetic Accident?

On Jul 20, 2019 The Galaxy posted The Cosmos Is a Conscious Universe Without consciousness, the universe would vanish in a puff of smoke, according to MD Deepak Chopra and Chapman University physicist Menas Kafatos in You Are the Universe, like a dream, leaving nothing behind and no one to know that it ever existed. Even to say that the universe is conscious doesnt go far enough. The universe is consciousness itself.

The Cosmos Is a Conscious Universe

You Are the Universe, a collaboration between Chopra and Kafatos, offers a scientific argument for what they call the participatory universe, the proposition that the universe and human consciousness are inextricably linked.

Life would be robotic, Chopra and Kafatos continued, if we didnt have flashes of emotion that come of their own accord, along with bright ideas of every kind. What if this everyday fact of life turns out to be the key to the cosmos? Human beings might be a bright idea the universe had, and once the idea occurred to it, cosmic mind decided to run with it. Why? Whats so enticing about human beings, troublesome and pained as we are? Only one thing. We allowed the universe to be aware of itself in the dimension of time and space.

The cosmos is thinking through you. Whatever you happen to be doing is a cosmic activity. Take away any stage in the evolution of the universe, and this very moment vanishes into thin air. As astounding as such a claim may be, this book has been building up to it all along. Quantum physics makes it undeniable that we live in a participatory universe. Therefore, its only a small step to say that the participation is total.

This is the question that intrigued the great American quantum physicist, John Archibald Wheeler in the last decades of his life was: Are life and mind irrelevant to the structure of the universe, or are they central to it? Wheeler originated the notion of a participatory, conscious universe, a cosmos in which all of us are embedded as co-creators, replacing the accepted universe out there, which is separate from us.

Wheeler was a major influence on Chopra and Kafatos to explore some of the most important and baffling questions about human existence. What happens when modern science reaches a crucial turning point that challenges everything we know about reality? In the coming era, they suggest, the universe will be completely redefined as a human universe radically unlike the cold, empty void where human life and our planet is a mere mote of dust in the cosmos

Consciousness cannot be fabricated, they continue, which makes it possible to reinvent the universe, not as a place where consciousness somehow got cobbled together on lucky planet Earth two-thirds of the way out from the center of a galaxy called the Milky Way, but as a place where consciousness is everywhere. There are many fence-sitters in physics who will concede that nature acts in mind-like ways, but they cannot swallow the proposition thatthe universe behaves exactly like a mind.

Chopra and Kafatos conclude that to allow the human mind to fuse with cosmic mind, they must address the mystery of how the brain is related to the mind: The first person who called the human brain the three and a half pound universe created an indelible image. If the brain is a unique physical object that functions like a supercomputer, then the physicalists have won. But there is no reason to elevate the atoms and molecules inside our brains to special status. If every particle in the cosmos is governed, created, and controlled by the mind, the brain also functions as the mind dictates. Thats the key to solving this, our last mystery.

The Daily Galaxy Read more in the links above and You Are the Universe. Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

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The Ultimate Mystery? Consciousness May Exist in the Absence of Matter (Weekend Feature) - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

What is quantum theory? – Definition from WhatIs.com

Quantum theory is the theoretical basis of modern physics that explains the nature and behavior of matter and energy on the atomic and subatomic level.The nature and behavior of matter and energy at that level is sometimes referred to as quantum physics and quantum mechanics.

In 1900, physicist Max Planck presented his quantum theory to the German Physical Society. Planck had sought to discover the reason that radiation from a glowing body changes in color from red, to orange, and, finally, to blue as its temperature rises. He found that by making the assumption that energy existed in individual units in the same way that matter does, rather than just as a constant electromagnetic wave - as had been formerly assumed - and was therefore quantifiable, he could find the answer to his question. The existence of these units became the first assumption of quantum theory.

Planck wrote a mathematical equation involving a figure to represent these individual units of energy, which he called quanta. The equation explained the phenomenon very well; Planck found that at certain discrete temperature levels (exact multiples of a basic minimum value), energy from a glowing body will occupy different areas of the color spectrum. Planck assumed there was a theory yet to emerge from the discovery of quanta, but, in fact, their very existence implied a completely new and fundamental understanding of the laws of nature. Planck won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory in 1918, but developments by various scientists over a thirty-year period all contributed to the modern understanding of quantum theory.

The two major interpretations of quantum theory's implications for the nature of reality are the Copenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds theory. Niels Bohr proposed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which asserts that a particle is whatever it is measured to be (for example, a wave or a particle), but that it cannot be assumed to have specific properties, or even to exist, until it is measured. In short, Bohr was saying that objective reality does not exist. This translates to a principle called superposition that claims that while we do not know what the state of any object is, it is actually in all possible states simultaneously, as long as we don't look to check.

To illustrate this theory, we can use the famous and somewhat cruel analogy of Schrodinger's Cat. First, we have a living cat and place it in a thick lead box. At this stage, there is no question that the cat is alive. We then throw in a vial of cyanide and seal the box. We do not know if the cat is alive or if the cyanide capsule has broken and the cat has died. Since we do not know, the cat is both dead and alive, according to quantum law - in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and see what condition the cat is that the superposition is lost, and the cat must be either alive or dead.

The second interpretation of quantum theory is the many-worlds (or multiverse theory. It holds that as soon as a potential exists for any object to be in any state, the universe of that object transmutes into a series of parallel universes equal to the number of possible states in which that the object can exist, with each universe containing a unique single possible state of that object. Furthermore, there is a mechanism for interaction between these universes that somehow permits all states to be accessible in some way and for all possible states to be affected in some manner. Stephen Hawking and the late Richard Feynman are among the scientists who have expressed a preference for the many-worlds theory.

Although scientists throughout the past century have balked at the implications of quantum theory - Planck and Einstein among them - the theory's principles have repeatedly been supported by experimentation, even when the scientists were trying to disprove them. Quantum theory and Einstein's theory of relativity form the basis for modern physics. The principles of quantum physics are being applied in an increasing number of areas, including quantum optics, quantum chemistry, quantum computing, and quantum cryptography.

See Brian Greene's introduction to quantum theory on Nova:

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What is quantum theory? - Definition from WhatIs.com

Quantum mind – Wikipedia

The quantum mind or quantum consciousness[1] group of hypotheses propose that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness. It posits that quantum mechanical phenomena, such as quantum entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function and could contribute to form the basis of an explanation of consciousness.

Hypotheses have been proposed about ways for quantum effects to be involved in the process of consciousness, but even those who advocate them admit that the hypotheses remain unproven, and possibly unprovable. Some of the proponents propose experiments that could demonstrate quantum consciousness, but the experiments have not yet been possible to perform.

Quantum mechanical terms are commonly misinterpreted to enable pseudoscience. Phenomena such as nonlocality and the observer effect are vaguely attributed to consciousness, resulting in quantum mysticism. According to Sean Carroll, "No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatansand misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas."[2] Prominent scientific skeptic Lawrence Krauss also conveyed that "No area of physics stimulates more nonsense in the public arena than quantum mechanics."[3]

Eugene Wigner developed the idea that quantum mechanics has something to do with the workings of the mind. He proposed that the wave function collapses due to its interaction with consciousness. Freeman Dyson argued that "mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron."[4]

Other contemporary physicists and philosophers considered these arguments to be unconvincing.[5] Victor Stenger characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having "no scientific basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and dragons."[6]

David Chalmers argued against quantum consciousness. He instead discussed how quantum mechanics may relate to dualistic consciousness.[7] Chalmers is skeptical of the ability of any new physics to resolve the hard problem of consciousness.[8][9]

David Bohm viewed quantum theory and relativity as contradictory, which implied a more fundamental level in the universe.[10] He claimed both quantum theory and relativity pointed towards this deeper theory, which he formulated as a quantum field theory. This more fundamental level was proposed to represent an undivided wholeness and an implicate order, from which arises the explicate order of the universe as we experience it.

Bohm's proposed implicate order applies both to matter and consciousness. He suggested that it could explain the relationship between them. He saw mind and matter as projections into our explicate order from the underlying implicate order. Bohm claimed that when we look at matter, we see nothing that helps us to understand consciousness.

Bohm discussed the experience of listening to music. He believed the feeling of movement and change that make up our experience of music derive from holding the immediate past and the present in the brain together. The musical notes from the past are transformations rather than memories. The notes that were implicate in the immediate past become explicate in the present. Bohm viewed this as consciousness emerging from the implicate order.

Bohm saw the movement, change or flow, and the coherence of experiences, such as listening to music, as a manifestation of the implicate order. He claimed to derive evidence for this from Jean Piaget's[11] work on infants. He held these studies to show that young children learn about time and space because they have a "hard-wired" understanding of movement as part of the implicate order. He compared this "hard-wiring" to Chomsky's theory that grammar is "hard-wired" into human brains.

Bohm never proposed a specific means by which his proposal could be falsified, nor a neural mechanism through which his "implicate order" could emerge in a way relevant to consciousness.[10] Bohm later collaborated on Karl Pribram's holonomic brain theory as a model of quantum consciousness.[12]

According to philosopher Paavo Pylkknen, Bohm's suggestion "leads naturally to the assumption that the physical correlate of the logical thinking process is at the classically describable level of the brain, while the basic thinking process is at the quantum-theoretically describable level."[13]

Theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff collaborated to produce the theory known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR). Penrose and Hameroff initially developed their ideas separately and later collaborated to produce Orch-OR in the early 1990s. The theory was reviewed and updated by the authors in late 2013.[14][15]

Penrose's argument stemmed from Gdel's incompleteness theorems. In Penrose's first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind (1989),[16] he argued that while a formal system cannot prove its own consistency, Gdels unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians.[17] He took this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not formal proof systems and are not running a computable algorithm. According to Bringsjorg and Xiao, this line of reasoning is based on fallacious equivocation on the meaning of computation.[18] In the same book, Penrose wrote, "One might speculate, however, that somewhere deep in the brain, cells are to be found of single quantum sensitivity. If this proves to be the case, then quantum mechanics will be significantly involved in brain activity."[16]:p.400

Penrose determined wave function collapse was the only possible physical basis for a non-computable process. Dissatisfied with its randomness, Penrose proposed a new form of wave function collapse that occurred in isolation and called it objective reduction. He suggested each quantum superposition has its own piece of spacetime curvature and that when these become separated by more than one Planck length they become unstable and collapse.[19] Penrose suggested that objective reduction represented neither randomness nor algorithmic processing but instead a non-computable influence in spacetime geometry from which mathematical understanding and, by later extension, consciousness derived.[19]

Hameroff provided a hypothesis that microtubules would be suitable hosts for quantum behavior.[20] Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimer subunits. The dimers each have hydrophobic pockets that are 8nm apart and that may contain delocalized pi electrons. Tubulins have other smaller non-polar regions that contain pi electron-rich indole rings separated by only about 2nm. Hameroff proposed that these electrons are close enough to become entangled.[21] Hameroff originally suggested the tubulin-subunit electrons would form a BoseEinstein condensate, but this was discredited.[22] He then proposed a Frohlich condensate, a hypothetical coherent oscillation of dipolar molecules. However, this too was experimentally discredited.[23]

However, Orch-OR made numerous false biological predictions, and is not an accepted model of brain physiology.[24] In other words, there is a missing link between physics and neuroscience,[25] for instance, the proposed predominance of 'A' lattice microtubules, more suitable for information processing, was falsified by Kikkawa et al.,[26][27] who showed all in vivo microtubules have a 'B' lattice and a seam. The proposed existence of gap junctions between neurons and glial cells was also falsified.[28] Orch-OR predicted that microtubule coherence reaches the synapses via dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs), however De Zeeuw et al. proved this impossible,[29] by showing that DLBs are located micrometers away from gap junctions.[30]

In January 2014, Hameroff and Penrose claimed that the discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules by Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan in March 2013[31] corroborates the Orch-OR theory.[15][32]

Although these theories are stated in a scientific framework, it is difficult to separate them from the personal opinions of the scientist. The opinions are often based on intuition or subjective ideas about the nature of consciousness. For example, Penrose wrote,

my own point of view asserts that you can't even simulate conscious activity. What's going on in conscious thinking is something you couldn't properly imitate at all by computer.... If something behaves as though it's conscious, do you say it is conscious? People argue endlessly about that. Some people would say, 'Well, you've got to take the operational viewpoint; we don't know what consciousness is. How do you judge whether a person is conscious or not? Only by the way they act. You apply the same criterion to a computer or a computer-controlled robot.' Other people would say, 'No, you can't say it feels something merely because it behaves as though it feels something.' My view is different from both those views. The robot wouldn't even behave convincingly as though it was conscious unless it really was which I say it couldn't be, if it's entirely computationally controlled.[33]

Penrose continues,

A lot of what the brain does you could do on a computer. I'm not saying that all the brain's action is completely different from what you do on a computer. I am claiming that the actions of consciousness are something different. I'm not saying that consciousness is beyond physics, either although I'm saying that it's beyond the physics we know now.... My claim is that there has to be something in physics that we don't yet understand, which is very important, and which is of a noncomputational character. It's not specific to our brains; it's out there, in the physical world. But it usually plays a totally insignificant role. It would have to be in the bridge between quantum and classical levels of behavior that is, where quantum measurement comes in.[34]

In response, W. Daniel Hillis replied, "Penrose has committed the classical mistake of putting humans at the center of the universe. His argument is essentially that he can't imagine how the mind could be as complicated as it is without having some magic elixir brought in from some new principle of physics, so therefore it must involve that. It's a failure of Penrose's imagination.... It's true that there are unexplainable, uncomputable things, but there's no reason whatsoever to believe that the complex behavior we see in humans is in any way related to uncomputable, unexplainable things."[34]

Lawrence Krauss is also blunt in criticizing Penrose's ideas. He said, "Well, Roger Penrose has given lots of new-age crackpots ammunition by suggesting that at some fundamental scale, quantum mechanics might be relevant for consciousness. When you hear the term 'quantum consciousness,' you should be suspicious.... Many people are dubious that Penrose's suggestions are reasonable, because the brain is not an isolated quantum-mechanical system."[3]

Hiroomi Umezawa and collaborators proposed a quantum field theory of memory storage.[35][36] Giuseppe Vitiello and Walter Freeman proposed a dialog model of the mind. This dialog takes place between the classical and the quantum parts of the brain.[37][38][39] Their quantum field theory models of brain dynamics are fundamentally different from the Penrose-Hameroff theory.

Karl Pribram's holonomic brain theory (quantum holography) invoked quantum mechanics to explain higher order processing by the mind.[40][41] He argued that his holonomic model solved the binding problem.[42] Pribram collaborated with Bohm in his work on the quantum approaches to mind and he provided evidence on how much of the processing in the brain was done in wholes.[43] He proposed that ordered water at dendritic membrane surfaces might operate by structuring Bose-Einstein condensation supporting quantum dynamics.[44]

Although Subhash Kak's work is not directly related to that of Pribram, he likewise proposed that the physical substrate to neural networks has a quantum basis,[45][46] but asserted that the quantum mind has machine-like limitations.[47] He points to a role for quantum theory in the distinction between machine intelligence and biological intelligence, but that in itself cannot explain all aspects of consciousness.[48][49] He has proposed that the mind remains oblivious of its quantum nature due to the principle of veiled nonlocality.[50] He has also proposed a model for biological quantum memories. [51]

Henry Stapp proposed that quantum waves are reduced only when they interact with consciousness. He argues from the Orthodox Quantum Mechanics of John von Neumann that the quantum state collapses when the observer selects one among the alternative quantum possibilities as a basis for future action. The collapse, therefore, takes place in the expectation that the observer associated with the state. Stapp's work drew criticism from scientists such as David Bourget and Danko Georgiev.[52] Georgiev[53][54][55] criticized Stapp's model in two respects:

Stapp has responded to both of Georgiev's objections.[56][57]

British philosopher David Pearce defends what he calls physicalistic idealism (""Physicalistic idealism" is the non-materialist physicalist claim that reality is fundamentally experiential and that the natural world is exhaustively described by the equations of physics and their solutions [...],") and has conjectured that unitary conscious minds are physical states of quantum coherence (neuronal superpositions).[58][59][60][61] This conjecture is, according to Pearce, amenable to falsification unlike most theories of consciousness, and Pearce has outlined an experimental protocol describing how the hypothesis could be tested using matter-wave interferometry to detect nonclassical interference patterns of neuronal superpositions at the onset of thermal decoherence.[62] Pearce admits that his ideas are "highly speculative," "counterintuitive," and "incredible."[60]

These hypotheses of the quantum mind remain hypothetical speculation, as Penrose and Pearce admitted in their discussion. Until they make a prediction that is tested by experiment, the hypotheses aren't based on empirical evidence. According to Lawrence Krauss, "It is true that quantum mechanics is extremely strange, and on extremely small scales for short times, all sorts of weird things happen. And in fact we can make weird quantum phenomena happen. But what quantum mechanics doesn't change about the universe is, if you want to change things, you still have to do something. You can't change the world by thinking about it."[3]

The process of testing the hypotheses with experiments is fraught with problems, including conceptual/theoretical, practical, and ethical issues.

The idea that a quantum effect is necessary for consciousness to function is still in the realm of philosophy. Penrose proposes that it is necessary. But other theories of consciousness do not indicate that it is needed. For example, Daniel Dennett proposed a theory called multiple drafts model that doesn't indicate that quantum effects are needed. The theory is described in Dennett's book, Consciousness Explained, published in 1991.[63] A philosophical argument on either side isn't scientific proof, although the philosophical analysis can indicate key differences in the types of models, and they can show what type of experimental differences might be observed. But since there isn't a clear consensus among philosophers, it isn't conceptual support that a quantum mind theory is needed.

There are computers that are specifically designed to compute using quantum mechanical effects. Quantum computing is computing using quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement.[64] They are different from binary digital electronic computers based on transistors. Whereas common digital computing requires that the data be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1), quantum computation uses quantum bits, which can be in superpositions of states. One of the greatest challenges is controlling or removing quantum decoherence. This usually means isolating the system from its environment as interactions with the external world cause the system to decohere. Currently, some quantum computers require their qubits to be cooled to 20 millikelvins in order to prevent significant decoherence.[65] As a result, time consuming tasks may render some quantum algorithms inoperable, as maintaining the state of qubits for a long enough duration will eventually corrupt the superpositions.[66] There aren't any obvious analogies between the functioning of quantum computers and the human brain. Some of the hypothetical models of quantum mind have proposed mechanisms for maintaining quantum coherence in the brain, but they have not been shown to operate.

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon often invoked for quantum mind models. This effect occurs when pairs or groups of particles interact so that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the other(s), even when the particles are separated by a large distance. Instead, a quantum state has to be described for the whole system. Measurements of physical properties such as position, momentum, spin, and polarization, performed on entangled particles are found to be correlated. If one of the particles is measured, the same property of the other particle immediately adjusts to maintain the conservation of the physical phenomenon. According to the formalism of quantum theory, the effect of measurement happens instantly, no matter how far apart the particles are.[67][68] It is not possible to use this effect to transmit classical information at faster-than-light speeds[69] (see Faster-than-light Quantum mechanics). Entanglement is broken when the entangled particles decohere through interaction with the environment; for example, when a measurement is made[70] or the particles undergo random collisions or interactions. According to David Pearce, "In neuronal networks, ion-ion scattering, ion-water collisions, and long-range Coulomb interactions from nearby ions all contribute to rapid decoherence times; but thermally-induced decoherence is even harder experimentally to control than collisional decoherence." He anticipated that quantum effects would have to be measured in femtoseconds, a trillion times faster than the rate at which neurons function (milliseconds).[62]

Another possible conceptual approach is to use quantum mechanics as an analogy to understand a different field of study like consciousness, without expecting that the laws of quantum physics will apply. An example of this approach is the idea of Schrdinger's cat. Erwin Schrdinger described how one could, in principle, create entanglement of a large-scale system by making it dependent on an elementary particle in a superposition. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a locked steel chamber, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a radioactive atom, whether it had decayed and emitted radiation or not. According to Schrdinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state has been observed. Schrdinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics.[71] However, since Schrdinger's time, other interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real.[72][73] Schrdinger's famous thought experiment poses the question, "when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?" In the same way, it is possible to ask whether the brain's act of making a decision is analogous to having a superposition of states of two decision outcomes, so that making a decision means "opening the box" to reduce the brain from a combination of states to one state. But even Schrdinger didn't think this really happened to the cat; he didn't think the cat was literally alive and dead at the same time. This analogy about making a decision uses a formalism that is derived from quantum mechanics, but it doesn't indicate the actual mechanism by which the decision is made. In this way, the idea is similar to quantum cognition. This field clearly distinguishes itself from the quantum mind as it is not reliant on the hypothesis that there is something micro-physical quantum mechanical about the brain. Quantum cognition is based on the quantum-like paradigm,[74][75] generalized quantum paradigm,[76] or quantum structure paradigm[77] that information processing by complex systems such as the brain can be mathematically described in the framework of quantum information and quantum probability theory. This model uses quantum mechanics only as an analogy, but doesn't propose that quantum mechanics is the physical mechanism by which it operates. For example, quantum cognition proposes that some decisions can be analyzed as if there are interference between two alternatives, but it is not a physical quantum interference effect.

The demonstration of a quantum mind effect by experiment is necessary. Is there a way to show that consciousness is impossible without a quantum effect? Can a sufficiently complex digital, non-quantum computer be shown to be incapable of consciousness? Perhaps a quantum computer will show that quantum effects are needed. In any case, complex computers that are either digital or quantum computers may be built. These could demonstrate which type of computer is capable of conscious, intentional thought. But they don't exist yet, and no experimental test has been demonstrated.

Quantum mechanics is a mathematical model that can provide some extremely accurate numerical predictions. Richard Feynman called quantum electrodynamics, based on the quantum mechanics formalism, "the jewel of physics" for its extremely accurate predictions of quantities like the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the Lamb shift of the energy levels of hydrogen.[78]:Ch1 So it is not impossible that the model could provide an accurate prediction about consciousness that would confirm that a quantum effect is involved. If the mind depends on quantum mechanical effects, the true proof is to find an experiment that provides a calculation that can be compared to an experimental measurement. It has to show a measurable difference between a classical computation result in a brain and one that involves quantum effects.

The main theoretical argument against the quantum mind hypothesis is the assertion that quantum states in the brain would lose coherency before they reached a scale where they could be useful for neural processing. This supposition was elaborated by Tegmark. His calculations indicate that quantum systems in the brain decohere at sub-picosecond timescales.[79][80] No response by a brain has shown computational results or reactions on this fast of a timescale. Typical reactions are on the order of milliseconds, trillions of times longer than sub-picosecond timescales.[81]

Daniel Dennett uses an experimental result in support of his Multiple Drafts Model of an optical illusion that happens on a time scale of less than a second or so. In this experiment, two different colored lights, with an angular separation of a few degrees at the eye, are flashed in succession. If the interval between the flashes is less than a second or so, the first light that is flashed appears to move across to the position of the second light. Furthermore, the light seems to change color as it moves across the visual field. A green light will appear to turn red as it seems to move across to the position of a red light. Dennett asks how we could see the light change color before the second light is observed.[63] Velmans argues that the cutaneous rabbit illusion, another illusion that happens in about a second, demonstrates that there is a delay while modelling occurs in the brain and that this delay was discovered by Libet.[82] These slow illusions that happen at times of less than a second don't support a proposal that the brain functions on the picosecond time scale.

According to David Pearce, a demonstration of picosecond effects is "the fiendishly hard part feasible in principle, but an experimental challenge still beyond the reach of contemporary molecular matter-wave interferometry. ...The conjecture predicts that we'll discover the interference signature of sub-femtosecond macro-superpositions."[62]

Penrose says,

The problem with trying to use quantum mechanics in the action of the brain is that if it were a matter of quantum nerve signals, these nerve signals would disturb the rest of the material in the brain, to the extent that the quantum coherence would get lost very quickly. You couldn't even attempt to build a quantum computer out of ordinary nerve signals, because they're just too big and in an environment that's too disorganized. Ordinary nerve signals have to be treated classically. But if you go down to the level of the microtubules, then there's an extremely good chance that you can get quantum-level activity inside them.

For my picture, I need this quantum-level activity in the microtubules; the activity has to be a large scale thing that goes not just from one microtubule to the next but from one nerve cell to the next, across large areas of the brain. We need some kind of coherent activity of a quantum nature which is weakly coupled to the computational activity that Hameroff argues is taking place along the microtubules.

There are various avenues of attack. One is directly on the physics, on quantum theory, and there are certain experiments that people are beginning to perform, and various schemes for a modification of quantum mechanics. I don't think the experiments are sensitive enough yet to test many of these specific ideas. One could imagine experiments that might test these things, but they'd be very hard to perform.[34]

A demonstration of a quantum effect in the brain has to explain this problem or explain why it is not relevant, or that the brain somehow circumvents the problem of the loss of quantum coherency at body temperature. As Penrose proposes, it may require a new type of physical theory.

Can self-awareness, or understanding of a self in the surrounding environment, be done by a classical parallel processor, or are quantum effects needed to have a sense of "oneness"? According to Lawrence Krauss, "You should be wary whenever you hear something like, 'Quantum mechanics connects you with the universe' ... or 'quantum mechanics unifies you with everything else.' You can begin to be skeptical that the speaker is somehow trying to use quantum mechanics to argue fundamentally that you can change the world by thinking about it."[3] A subjective feeling is not sufficient to make this determination. Humans don't have a reliable subjective feeling for how we do a lot of functions. According to Daniel Dennett, "On this topic, Everybody's an expert... but they think that they have a particular personal authority about the nature of their own conscious experiences that can trump any hypothesis they find unacceptable."[83]

Since humans are the only animals known to be conscious, then performing experiments to demonstrate quantum effects in consciousness requires experimentation on a living human brain. This is not automatically excluded or impossible, but it seriously limits the kinds of experiments that can be done. Studies of the ethics of brain studies are being actively solicited[84] by the BRAIN Initiative, a U.S. Federal Government funded effort to document the connections of neurons in the brain.

An ethically objectionable practice by proponents of quantum mind theories involves the practice of using quantum mechanical terms in an effort to make the argument sound more impressive, even when they know that those terms are irrelevant. Dale DeBakcsy notes that "trendy parapsychologists, academic relativists, and even the Dalai Lama have all taken their turn at robbing modern physics of a few well-sounding phrases and stretching them far beyond their original scope in order to add scientific weight to various pet theories."[85] At the very least, these proponents must make a clear statement about whether quantum formalism is being used as an analogy or as an actual physical mechanism, and what evidence they are using for support. An ethical statement by a researcher should specify what kind of relationship their hypothesis has to the physical laws.

Misleading statements of this type have been given by, for example, Deepak Chopra. Chopra has commonly referred to topics such as quantum healing or quantum effects of consciousness. Seeing the human body as being undergirded by a "quantum mechanical body" composed not of matter but of energy and information, he believes that "human aging is fluid and changeable; it can speed up, slow down, stop for a time, and even reverse itself," as determined by one's state of mind.[86] Robert Carroll states Chopra attempts to integrate Ayurveda with quantum mechanics to justify his teachings.[87] Chopra argues that what he calls "quantum healing" cures any manner of ailments, including cancer, through effects that he claims are literally based on the same principles as quantum mechanics.[88] This has led physicists to object to his use of the term quantum in reference to medical conditions and the human body.[88] Chopra said, "I think quantum theory has a lot of things to say about the observer effect, about non-locality, about correlations. So I think theres a school of physicists who believe that consciousness has to be equated, or at least brought into the equation, in understanding quantum mechanics."[89] On the other hand, he also claims "[Quantum effects are] just a metaphor. Just like an electron or a photon is an indivisible unit of information and energy, a thought is an indivisible unit of consciousness."[89] In his book Quantum Healing, Chopra stated the conclusion that quantum entanglement links everything in the Universe, and therefore it must create consciousness.[90] In either case, the references to the word "quantum" don't mean what a physicist would claim, and arguments that use the word "quantum" shouldn't be taken as scientifically proven.

Chris Carter includes statements in his book, Science and Psychic Phenomena,[91] of quotes from quantum physicists in support of psychic phenomena. In a review of the book, Benjamin Radford wrote that Carter used such references to "quantum physics, which he knows nothing about and which he (and people like Deepak Chopra) love to cite and reference because it sounds mysterious and paranormal.... Real, actual physicists I've spoken to break out laughing at this crap.... If Carter wishes to posit that quantum physics provides a plausible mechanism for psi, then it is his responsibility to show that, and he clearly fails to do so."[92] Sharon Hill has studied amateur paranormal research groups, and these groups like to use "vague and confusing language: ghosts 'use energy,' are made up of 'magnetic fields', or are associated with a 'quantum state.'"[93][94]

Statements like these about quantum mechanics indicate a temptation to misinterpret technical, mathematical terms like entanglement in terms of mystical feelings. This approach can be interpreted as a kind of Scientism, using the language and authority of science when the scientific concepts don't apply.

Perhaps the final question is, what difference does it make if quantum effects are involved in computations in the brain? It is already known that quantum mechanics plays a role in the brain, since quantum mechanics determines the shapes and properties of molecules like neurotransmitters and proteins, and these molecules affect how the brain works. This is the reason that drugs such as morphine affect consciousness. As Daniel Dennett said, "quantum effects are there in your car, your watch, and your computer. But most things most macroscopic objects are, as it were, oblivious to quantum effects. They don't amplify them; they don't hinge on them."[34] Lawrence Krauss said, "We're also connected to the universe by gravity, and we're connected to the planets by gravity. But that doesn't mean that astrology is true.... Often, people who are trying to sell whatever it is they're trying to sell try to justify it on the basis of science. Everyone knows quantum mechanics is weird, so why not use that to justify it? ... I don't know how many times I've heard people say, 'Oh, I love quantum mechanics because I'm really into meditation, or I love the spiritual benefits that it brings me.' But quantum mechanics, for better or worse, doesn't bring any more spiritual benefits than gravity does."[3]

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Quantum mind - Wikipedia