Category Archives: Quantum Physics

The power of quantum computers creates an unprecedented threat to the security of our data through its potential to break the cryptography that underpins our digital ecosystem. The technology community can address and manage this risk that has the potential to act as a strategic blocker to the wider adoption of Quantum technology; doing so will help unlock the trillion-dollar potential value of quantum technology to the global economy.

For all the dramatic advances they will offer, quantum computers could threaten our ability to encrypt information and exchange it securely. While this development has the potential for significant economic and geopolitical disruption, the technology to mitigate this risk exists today and it also presents a transformative opportunity to deliver a new level of digital trust and security.

What the world needs is a quantum security coalition, a global community of those who are committed to promoting the safe and secure adoption of new quantum applications, promoting better quantum literacy among global leaders, and accelerating a secure global ecosystem, including quantum security technology, that will be able to unlock the true value and potential of this technology securely.

Quantum science is now being harnessed to build a strong cybersecurity response to both a future as well as the current threat landscape. The resultant technologies can provide the basis for a new security foundation that will offer a step-change in our ability to secure our digital infrastructure but we need action now to incentivize their widespread adoption across the digital ecosystem.

Leveraging the laws of physics, quantum-enabled technologies, such as quantum key distribution and quantum random number generation, are not susceptible to attacks from either quantum computers or powerful mathematical techniques. As such they can provide robust and future-proof security and potentially a new paradigm of trust not currently available using traditional approaches.

These physics-based approaches, based on advanced cybersecurity software and next-generation cryptographic strategies (known as post-quantum algorithms), deliver resilient cybersecurity infrastructure capable of safeguarding our digital lives and connected societies today and into the future. Quantum-enabled technologies form the core of the quantum principles that can be employed to assure the security of digital communications. The following examples of potential applications will play a critical role in building trust in the digital ecosystem.:

1. Quantum key distribution technology uses quantum effects to protect the most critical and vulnerable link in the security chain: the exchange of encryption keys between parties. The diagram below illustrates a quantum key distribution system using an optical fibre-based channel to exchange key material, protected by the laws of quantum physics. Adaptations to other channels such as 'over-the-air' quantum key distribution are also maturing.

Quantum key distribution (QKD)

Image: Quintessence Labs

2. Quantum effects can also be harnessed to deliver high-speed streams of truly random (known as full entropy) bits, which can be used to construct high-quality encryption keys. By virtue of being truly random, and thus unpredictable, such keys are more secure. Devices capturing these quantum effects are now mature and are today being deployed in existing technology and infrastructure.

The importance of entropy in security is well illustrated by cautionary tales of what has happened when too much reliance has been placed on deterministic or algorithmic approaches to generating random numbers.

In 2017, Russian hackers cheated casinos out of millions of dollars by targeting weak (software-based) pseudo-random number generation algorithms in slot machines. They used smartphones to record the patterns of the spins of slot machine wheels and then reverse-engineered the underlying random number-generation algorithm. This enabled the hackers to predict the spins and monetize this predictability. As a consequence, the gaming industry has been one of the first to start realizing the potential power of quantum-enabled true random number generation.

The foundations of this new security paradigm are firmly in place; however more work is needed to drive broad adoption. This is a new technology, and within the security ecosystem progress is being made within the academic, innovation labs and specialist technical communities. But within the security field we see two main barriers that the wider community needs to address:

Barrier 1: Maturity and standards

While quantum entropy is a known, highly capable technology for generating encryption keys that is also ready for broad implementation, there still remain barriers to the deployment of other components of the quantum principles, specifically post-quantum algorithms and quantum key distribution. This includes determining which of the proposed post-quantum algorithms will provide the most robust and durable security while minimizing operational impacts and costs. Similarly, there are multiple different types of quantum key distribution under development that meet a range of needs, and potentially causing confusion among early adopters.

Barrier 2: Building the quantum security ecosystem

Currently, there is a major gap in both awareness of and information about the potential applications, risks and security solutions associated with quantum technology. For leaders charged with ensuring the security and integrity of the systems on which businesses rely, there is still hyperbole in the quantum security debate. The community can change this by building quantum literacy at the board and CEO level. This will require actions at the individual as well as the collective leadership level from gaining an inventory of information assets (including shared infrastructure) and developing a comprehensive understanding of risks potentially impacted by quantum technology to building a roadmap identifying key milestones and trigger events.

In parallel, this technology transition requires the urgent development of a pipeline of professionals to implement these principles effectively. The quantum security market alone is expected to grow to globally to $25 billion in just a few short years. The community needs to start investing in skills and the supply ecosystem must start preparing for a quantum-enabled safe and digitally secure posture. The acceleration of government-led initiatives such as those announced in the US, EU, India, Japan, and Australia will also help.

It is imperative that the cybersecurity community begins to build and accelerate its adoption of quantum security technology, and to move its value from the technical to the transformative space. This emerging technology is already being implemented to build a strong cybersecurity response to the potential cryptographic threat, but these new quantum-enabled technologies provide the basis for a new security foundation that will offer a step-change in our ability to secure digital infrastructure.

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Here's why we need to build a quantum security coalition - World Economic Forum

By Deepak Chopra,TM MD and Menas C. Kafatos, PhD

As we go about everyday life, we are embedded in a mystery no one has ever solved. The mystery was voiced by one of the most brilliant quantum pioneers, Werner Heisenberg: Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think. (There are variants of the quote that use reality for universe, and the remark has also been attributed to other famous scientists, but the gist is always the same.)

If we take this remark seriously, it turns out to be truer today than it was in 1900 when the quantum revolution began and the revolutionary new theory of quantum mechanics was put together. How can reality be stranger than we could possibly think? Look at the framework of your life. You pick up your morning coffee, and instantly you are acting in space and time. Your perception of the cup in your hand depends upon the five senses as communicated through the brain. You can think about anything you fancy as you sip your coffee.

These might not seem so mysterious, but there is one mystery after another nested inside everyday experience. Science can reach no consensus on the following:

Where did time come from? Why do properties of physical objects have their origin in invisible waves of probability of observation? Where does a thought come from? How did matter transform into mind? Is consciousness solely a human trait or is it everywhere in the universe?

The pioneers of quantum physics werent the first to ask such questions, but quantum physics got to the nub of how the physical universe is constructed. Everything in existence emerges from ripples in the quantum field, and underlying these ripples is an invisible or virtual domain that goes beyond spacetime, matter, and energy. In the virtual domain, the universe and everything in it is a field of infinite possibilities, and yet the virtual domain cannot be observed directly. As a result, contemporary physics can take us to the horizon of reality, the womb of creation, but it cannot cross the boundary between us and our source of existence.

Almost all the recent models that have gained popularity, including superstrings, the multiverse, and dark matter and energy, exist in so-called mathematical space, or Hilbert space, in recognition that they are not going to yield direct empirical evidence that can be perceived with our senses. Astrophysics had already gotten used to the fact that just 4% of the created universe is accounted for by the matter and energy visible to the eye or to telescopes. With dark matter and energy added in, most of what we see is not really what the universe consists of.

Leaving the technicalities aside, it has become far more difficult to foresee that the human mind can fully comprehend the nature of reality when so many crucial aspects are beyond the setup that our brains can grasp. The thinking mind needs the brain in order to operate, and the brain is a creation in spacetime consisting of matter and energy, that are in spacetime. We wear mind-made manacles. When this fact dawned on the late Stephen Hawking, he ruefully conceded that scientific models might no longer describe reality in any reliable or complete way.

When we discussed these issues in our book, You Are the Universe, the title reflected another approach entirely. Instead of founding the universe on physical things, however small, or even ripples in the quantum field, which are knowable only through advanced mathematics, reality can be grounded in experience. Everything we call real is an experience in consciousness, including the experience of doing science. Mathematics is a very refined, complex language, but there is no language, simple or complex, without consciousness.

The vast majority of scientists will continue to engage in experimentation and theoretical modeling without this venture into metaphysics, which is a no-no word in science (a famous put down when things get to speculative is Shut up and calculate). But it was quantum physics that brought the mystery of reality into the laboratory in modern terms, even though Plato and Aristotle also wondered about what is real.

A younger generation has proved more open-minded, and a growing cadre of cosmologists now hold to the notion of panpsychism, which holds that mind is built into reality from the start. This is a huge turn-around from the view that mind evolved out of matter here on Earth as a unique creation. The fact is that nobody in the physicalist camp could explain how atoms and molecules learned to thinkcreating mind out of matter was dead on arrival, even though the vast majority of scientists still hold on to this view as an assumption or superstition.

Ironically, to say that reality is stranger than we can think isnt confined to the queer behavior of atoms and subatomic particles. You cannot think about consciousness, either, any more than the eye can see itself or the brain know that it exists (without cutting through the skull to seethe brain from the outside). A fish cannot know that water is wet unless it jumps out of the sea and splashes back down again. We cannot think about consciousness without a place to stand outside consciousness, and such a place doesnt exist in the entire cosmos.

The source of space isnt inside space; the source of time isnt in time. Likewise, the source of mind isnt inside the mind. The ceaseless stream of sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts that run through your mind are the products of consciousness. Consciousness itself has no location. It is infinite, without dimensions in space and time, unborn and undying. Can you really think about such a thing as consciousness? And yet you know without a doubt that you are conscious. This is what allows us to make peace with reality being too strange to think about.

We can simply drop the strange part. Reality can be founded on knowing that you exist and that you are aware. Existence is consciousness. If science is dedicated to the simplest, most complete explanation of things, existence = consciousness is the simplest and most complete explanation. There is no need for religious or spiritual beliefs in order to accept this foundation for reality, since it is based on what science has arrived at. By removing our outdated allegiance to things existing independently of consciousness, the basis of reality can be seen clearly. In our everyday life we navigate with existence and consciousness at our side, indivisible, secure, inviolate, and unchallengeable. A whole new future may spring from accepting this simple but awe-inspiring fact.

DEEPAK CHOPRATM MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 89 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers.His 90th book, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.

Menas C. Kafatos is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics at Chapman University. Author, physicist and philosopher, he works in quantum mechanics, cosmology, the environment and climate change and extensively on philosophical issues of consciousness, connecting science to metaphysical traditions. Member or candidate of foreign national academies, he holds seminars and workshops for individuals, groups and corporations on the universal principles for well-being and human potential. His doctoral thesis advisor was the renowned M.I.T. professor Philip Morrison who studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer. He has authored 334 articles, is author or editor of 20 books, including The Conscious Universe, Looking In, Seeing Out, Living the Living Presence (in Greek and in Korean), Science, Reality and Everyday Life (in Greek), and is co-author with Deepak Chopra of the NY Times Bestseller You are the Universe (Harmony Books), translated into many languages and at many countries. You can learn more at http://www.menaskafatos.com

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The Spread of 'Stranger Than We Can Think' - SFGate

Physics professorsNuh GedikandPablo Jarillo-Herrerohave been named Experimental Investigators in Quantum Materials by theGordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The two are among 20 winners nationwide of the foundation's Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems (EPiQS) Initiative. Each will receive a five-year, $1.6 million unrestricted grant to support their research in quantum materials.

Gediks research centers on using advanced optical techniques for probing and controlling properties of quantum materials. He will use his grant to search for novel, light-induced phases in these systems.

These materials display fascinating but poorly understood properties, such as high-temperature superconductivity or topological protection, says Gedik. We use ultrafast laser pulses to make femtosecond movies of electrons and atoms inside these systems to understand the mechanism behind their exotic behavior. Our ultimate goal isto use light as a controllable tuning parameter (just as magnetic field orpressure) to switch between equilibrium phases and to engineer newlight-induced stateswith no equilibrium counterparts.

Jarillo-Herrero, theCecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics,leads a laboratory that uses quantum electronic transport and optoelectronic techniques to investigate novel 2D materials and heterostructures, with a focus on emergent correlated and topological phenomena/phases resulting from the interplay between unusual electronic structures and electron interaction effects.

This Moore Foundation award will allow my group to focus on a novel experimental platform called twistronics, where a new degree of freedom, namely the twist angle between two stacked 2D crystalline lattices, enables the exploration of a plethora of intriguing quantum mechanical effects, such as superconductivity. This emergent platform may provide important clues about the origin of many of the most fascinating phases of matter present in the universe, as well as the potential engineering of these phases to create new quantum technologies.

The EPiQS Initiative of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation aims to stimulate experimental research in the physics of quantum materials by providing some of the fields most creative scientists with freedom to take risks and flexibility for agile change of research direction. The collective impact of these investigators will produce a more comprehensive understanding of the fundamental organizing principles of complex quantum matter in solids.

The Experimental Investigator awards are the largest grant portfolio within the EPiQS initiative, says Amalia Fernandez-Paella, program officer of the EPiQS Initiative. We expect that such substantial, stable, and flexible support will propel quantum materials research forward and unleash the creativity of the investigators.

The cohorts research will cover a broad spectrum of research questions, types of materials systems, and complementary experimental approaches. The investigators will advance experimental probes of quantum states in materials; elucidate emergent phenomena observed in systems with strong electron interactions; investigate light-induced states of matter; explore the vast space of two-dimensional layered structures; and illuminate the role of quantum entanglement in exotic systems such as quantum spin liquids. In addition, the investigators will participate in EPiQS community-building activities, which include investigator symposia, topical workshops, and theQuantEmX scientist exchange program.

Since 2013, EPiQS has supported an integrated research program that includes materials synthesis, experiment, and theory, and that crosses the boundaries between physics, chemistry, and materials science. Thesecond phaseof the initiative was kicked off earlier this year with the launch of two major grant portfolios:Materials Synthesis Investigators and Theory Centers. The 20 newly inaugurated experimental investigators will join these grantees to form a vibrant, collaborative community that strives to push the entire field toward a new frontier.

The first cohort of EPiQS Experimental Investigators made advances that changed the landscape of quantum materials, and I expect no less from this second cohort. Emergent phenomena appear when a large number of constituents interact strongly, whether these constituents are electrons in materials, or the brilliant scientists trying to crack the mysteries of materials. says Duan Pejakovi, director of the EPiQS Initiative. Gedik and Jarillo-Herrero were also part of the first cohort of EPIQS awardees.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation fosters pathbreaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements, and preservation of the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Nuh Gedik and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero are 2020 Moore Experimental Investigators in Quantum Materials - MIT News

An Indiana native has been named a Fulbright Scholar.

The U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board have announced that Dr. Thomas E. Baker, who studies at University de Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to the United Kingdom.

Baker will research and provide mentorship at the University of York as part of a project to study the exact properties of density functional theory. Density functional theory was discovered in 1964 and has provided a way to simulate the quantum physics of large systems, especially to simulate materials. While density functional theory is proven to be exact, the theory requires approximations to use and approximations can give inaccurate results. Baker seeks to improve the theory by discovering more with modern methods from the broader field of condensed matter physics.

The son of John and Kathy Baker, of Indiana, he is a 2005 graduate of Indiana Area Senior High School.

The Fulbright program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to forge lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries, counter misunderstandings, and help people and nations work together toward common goals. The program was established in 1946.

The following Indiana County-area graduates were recognized as members of the class of 2020 of Edinboro University:

Julie E. Shirley, of Blairsville, who earned a Bachelor of Arts in criminal justice, with honors

Teresa A. Shields, of Clarksburg, who earned a Bachelor of Science in education middle level education, with honors

Makayla Dawn Murray, of Dayton, who earned a Master of Arts in communication studies

Nearly 1,200 students were named to the spring 2020 deans list at Edinboro University. The following Indiana County-area students are among them:

Ashleigh P. Bowman, of Indiana

Julie E. Shirley, of Blairsville

Rachael Duncan, of Blairsville

Teresa A Shields, of Clarksburg

Aubrie R. Putt, of Home

Matthew Anthony Wehrle, of Rossiter

Gabrielle M. LaBovick, of Saltsburg

In order to attain this academic honor, students must maintain a quality-point average of 3.4 or higher, complete a minimum of 12 semester hours of credit and receive no grade lower than a C in any course.

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Students in the news | Announcements - Indiana Gazette

An Indian American aerospace engineer at the University of Southern California was an integral part of helping NASA land Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity on the red planet.

Anita Sengupta, a NASA engineer and adjunct professor at USC, helped develop the parachute that assisted the $2.5 billion Curiosity hardware in making a successful touchdown on Mars, according to a USC report.

Sengupta, who graduated from USC with a masters degree in 2000 and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering in 2005, developed the supersonic parachute that slowed the spacecrafts blistering descent onto Mars, the report said.

The parachute deployed 7 miles above the surface of the planet while Curiosity was careening toward the ground at 900 miles per hour at Mach 2.

At 70 feet in diameter, it was the largest parachute opening at the highest speed ever on Mars, it said.

Sengupta teaches spacecraft design in the Department of Astronautical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Shes also an expert in Entry, Descent and Landing at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, according to the university report.

Her career at JPL began with the design of ion engines, a type of spacecraft propulsion system that generates thrust by accelerating a plasma, but she switched to EDL to broaden her knowledge and join the team that would land Curiosity on Mars, the report adds.

As an aerospace engineer, the more areas of expertise you have, the better able you are to work on a variety of mission types, Sengupta told the university.

Tests done in the 1960s and 70s in support of the Viking Lander mission have showed that, at speeds greater than 1.5 times the speed of sound on Mars, parachutes tend to inflate and collapse over and over, reducing their ability to effectively slow down falling payloads and in some cases resulting in the failure of the parachute, it said.

It kind of looks like crazy jellyfish. But with Mars EDL you only get one parachute so it has to work and survive, Sengupta added.

No one bothered to figure out why, until now when, due to the size of Curiosity, a 2,000-pound behemoth rover encapsulated inside a 15.5-ft. diameter entry capsule, it became necessary to design a massive parachute to survive at in excess of two times the speed of sound on Mars, the USC report continued.

Sengupta and her colleagues discovered that the turbulent wake from the falling entry capsule would modify the bow shock and pressure distribution in front of the parachute, causing the collapsing or deflating cycle that had been observed.

Armed with this knowledge, the team was able to design a parachute that was similar to ones used in the past but strong enough to survive flight through the Martian atmosphere, the report said.

Through careful ground testing in a vacuum chamber to simulate the Martian environment, Sengupta also analyzed how the engine plumes from the sky crane that lowered Curiosity to the ground would affect the terrain around the rover.

Though the landing parachute, sky crane and all was a huge success, Senguptas work is far from over. Up next shes designing a quantum physics experiment that could launch to the International Space Station as early as 2015, and then a spacecraft to explore the habitability of Europa, one of Jupiters moons that is covered in ice, possibly with an ocean beneath the surface, the university said.

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Indian American Engineer Develops Parachute That Helped Curiosity Land on Mars - India West

Richard Feynman once said, If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you dont understand quantum mechanics. While that may be true, it certainly doesnt mean we cant try. After all, where would we be without our innate curiosity?

To understand the power of the unknown, were going to untangle the key concepts behind quantum physics two of them, to be exact (phew!). Its all rather abstract, really, but thats good news for us, because you dont need to be a Nobel-winning theoretical physicist to understand whats going on. And whats going on? Well, lets find out.

Well start with a brief thought experiment. Austrian physicist Erwin Schrdinger wants you to imagine a cat in a sealed box. So far, so good. Now imagine a vial containing a deadly substance is placed inside the box. What happened to the cat? We cannot know to a certainty. Thus, until the situation is observed, i.e. we open the box, the cat is both dead and alive, or in more scientific terms, it is in a superposition of states. This famous thought experiment is known as the Schrdingers cat paradox, and it perfectly explains one of the two main phenomena of quantum mechanics.

Superposition dictates that, much like our beloved cat, a particle exists in all possible states up until the moment it is measured. Observing the particle immediately destroys its quantum properties, and voil, it is once again governed by the rules of classical mechanics.

Now, things are about to get more tricky, but dont be deterred even Einstein was thrown-back by the idea. Described by the man himself as spooky action at a distance, entanglement is a connection between a pair of particles a physical interaction that results in their shared state (or lack thereof, if we go by superposition).

Entanglement dictates that a change in the state of one entangled particle triggers an immediate, predictable response from the remaining particle. To put things into perspective, lets throw two entangled coins into the air. Subsequently, lets observe the result. Did the first coin land on heads? Then the measurement of the remaining coin must be tales. In other words, when observed, entangled particles counter each others measurements. No need to be afraid, though entanglement is not that common. Not yet, that is.

Whats the point of all this knowledge if I cant use it?, you may be asking. Whatever your question, chances are a quantum computer has the answer. In a digital computer, the system requires bits to increase its processing power. Thus, in order to double the processing power, you would simply double the amount of bits this is not at all similar in quantum computers.

A quantum computer uses qubits, the basic unit of quantum information, to provide processing capabilities unmatched even by the worlds most powerful supercomputers. How? Superposed qubits can simultaneously tackle a number of potential outcomes (or states, to be more consistent with our previous segments). In comparison, a digital computer can only crunch through one calculation at a time. Furthermore, through entanglement, we are able to exponentially amplify the power of a quantum computer, particularly when comparing this to the efficiency of traditional bits in a digital machine. To visualise the scale, consider the sheer amount of processing power each qubit provides, and now double it.

But theres a catch even the slightest vibrations and temperature changes, referred to by scientists as noise, can cause quantum properties to decay and eventually, disappear altogether. While you cant observe this in real time, what you will experience is a computational error. The decay of quantum properties is known as decoherence, and it is one of the biggest setbacks when it comes to technology relying on quantum mechanics.

In an ideal scenario, a quantum processor is completely isolated from its surroundings. To do so, scientists use specialised fridges, known as cryogenic refrigerators. These cryogenic refrigerators are colder than interstellar space, and they enable our quantum processor to conduct electricity with virtually no resistance. This is known as a superconducting state, and it makes quantum computers extremely efficient. As a result, our quantum processor requires a fraction of the energy a digital processor would use, generating exponentially more power and substantially less heat in the process. In an ideal scenario, that is.

Weather forecasting, financial and molecular modelling, particle physics the application possibilities for quantum computation are both enormous and prosperous.

Still, one of the most tantalising prospects is perhaps that of quantum artificial intelligence. This is because quantum systems excel at calculating probabilities for many possible choices their ability to provide continuous feedback to intelligent software is unparalleled in todays market. The estimated impact is immeasurable, spanning across fields and industries from AI in the automotive all the way to medical research. Lockheed Martin, American aerospace giant, was quick to realise the benefits, and is already leading by example with its quantum computer, using it for autopilot software testing. Take notes.

The principles of quantum mechanics are also used to address issues in cybersecurity. RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) cryptography, one of the worlds go-to methods of data encryption, relies on the difficulty of factoring (very) large prime numbers. While this may work with traditional computers, which arent particularly effective at solving multi-factor problems, quantum computers will easily crack these encryptions thanks to their unique ability to calculate numerous outcomes simultaneously.

Theoretically, Quantum key distribution takes care of this with a superposition-based encryption system. Imagine youre trying to relay sensitive information to a friend. To do so, you create an encryption key using qubits, which are then sent to the recipient over an optical cable. Had the encoded qubits been observed by a third party, both you and your friend will have been notified by an unexpected error in the operation. However, to maximise the benefits of QKD, the encryption keys would have to maintain their quantum properties at all times. Easier said than done.

It doesnt stop there. The brightest minds around the globe are constantly trying to utilise entanglement as a mode of quantum communication. So far, Chinese researchers were able to successfully beam entangled pairs of photons through their Micius satellite over a record-holding 745 miles. Thats the good news. The bad news is that, out of the 6 million entangled photons beamed each second, only one pair survived the journey (thanks, decoherence). An incredible feat nonetheless, this experiment outlines the kind of infrastructure we may use in the future to secure quantum networks.

The quantum race also saw a recent breakthrough advancement from QuTech, a research centre at TU Delft in the Netherlands their quantum system operates at a temperature over one degree warmer than absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius).

While these achievements may seem insignificant to you and I, the truth is that, try after try, such groundbreaking research is bringing us a step closer to the tech of tomorrow. One thing remains unchanged, however, and that is the glaring reality that those who manage to successfully harness the power of quantum mechanics will have supremacy over the rest of the world. How do you think they will use it?

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How Quantum Mechanics will Change the Tech Industry - Unite.AI

The global economic machine has taken a battering from the lockdown, and part of the recovery will involve inflation. How well placed are engineers and technologists to ride out the chaos?

Economists used to model their systems like engineers designed refineries, with money flowing around piping, through valves, and in and out of tanks. Its a handy metaphor, but it belongs in its time.

These days it might be better to update the model to our understanding (or lack of it) of quantum physics. Schrdingers cat makes for a good model of the global economy because right now it is both alive and dead at the same time and its going to be a while before we open the box and find the definitive answer.

However you measure the effect of the global lockdown, the economic losses of the last few weeks have been colossal. Sales tax measures suggest a near 50 per cent drop; overall taxes point to 28 per cent, while CO2 emissions show an 18 per cent drop off. So even with a stunningly strong recovery, the net loss to tax revenues in the UK will be hundreds of billions. If the budget is not slashed and the government has promised it wont be those losses will balloon into a bigger and bigger national debt.

The upshot of all this is that the UK, and for that matter pretty much every country on Earth, is going to balloon its public debt to levels that will make a mockery of previous attempts at controlling expenditure so that, for example, the UKs finances next year will look like Italys national debt of last year. All those economic benefits of those years of austerity have gone up in smoke in a few short weeks.

While the UK and Europe have been working flat out to ameliorate their economic woes by exploding their budgets into a series of bailouts, the US has gone all in on a scale only matched by World War Two budgets and it has boosted its money supply at an annualised rate of 100 per cent in the last three months, already banking in an over-30 per cent rise in M1 cash in that time.

As any of us who took GCSE or O-Level Economics will recall, a boost of money supply means a boost in inflation, unless more goods are made to quench the demand triggered by the boosted supply of buying power. Well its a certainty that fewer goods have been made during the lockdown, so a 30 per cent-plus increase in money supply in a few weeks has a South American hyperinflation ring to it. The US is also on the brink of monetising corporate debt the amount that added nine zeros to a German postage stamp in the 1920s. The Germans, if not licking their stamps, are still licking the wounds from that experience, which many blame for the rise of a certain moustachioed landscape painter to power.

Many economists disagree; they say that the money will be stashed just like the cash of the last ten years of QE. The money will be sequestered in ultra-valued bonds, stocks and houses and it wont leak into the hands of the wider population to flush into a buying frenzy that will drive a price rise spiral. That sounds good until you realise that much of the stimulus has gone into the hands of the public in the form of boosted social security payments. The US unemployment payout has been increased by $600 a week, making many people temporarily better off on their sofa watching Netflix or punting stocks on the zero-fee stock trading apps, rather than in their old jobs.

Its a mess, and to my mind it is an inflationary mess, with inflation being the only natural lubricator of the changes ahead for our societies.

Governments cant afford deflation. Recoveries dont happen quickly under deflation. The necessary redistribution of resources that has to now happen doesnt pan out smoothly under deflation. Inflation is the classic path of governance under pressure when crisis strikes, it is the get out of jail free card for rulers since antiquity. However, it is a crazy orthodoxy that inflation is ever so difficult to create, but you can discount that nonsense. If that isnt a huge lie, someone needs to tell Iran, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

A more nuanced version of the inflation lie is that inflation is caused by the expectation of inflation, and once sparked, its a self-fulfilling loop. That sounds credible until you ask how come they always have banknotes with more zeros to hand as hyperinflation strikes. As the monetarists that killed the inflation of the 1970s tell us: Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

We are certainly entering into a period of monetary phenomena.

The next few years are going to be grim, but the strategy is the same as in every crisis. Stay employed, be working in the latest thing, buy assets when you see them super cheap.

Engineers and technologists are fortunately at the tip of the value chain and will miss the worse of whats ahead, while Aesops grasshoppers are in for a pretty nasty surprise.

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Money & Markets: After the virus, make sure you've read the inflationary playbook - E&T Magazine

"Neither," Lee said. "I think of myself as a human being."

Forty-three years after his sudden death in July of 1973, more people are starting to think of Lee as something else: A profound thinker whose mind was as supple as his body.

That may seem like an odd claim. Lee was a fighter, not a philosopher, according to popular perception. He left behind some of the most exhilarating fight scenes ever captured on film in movies such as "Enter the Dragon" and "The "Chinese Connection."

But his legacy also includes a revolutionary book on the martial arts and Eastern philosophy, and seven volumes of writings on everything from Taoism, quantum physics, psychotherapy and the power of positive thinking.

John Little, who examined Lee's papers after the actor's death, says he was stunned when he first entered Lee's library. He had at least 1,700 heavily annotated books. That's when he realized that Lee sharpened his mind as much as his body.

"The philosophy of Lee is more powerful than the martial arts of Lee," says Little, author of "The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee." "Everything that Bruce Lee did flowed from his mind and his thinking."

And it flowed from his pride in his Chinese heritage as well.

Lee was a devotee of Alan Watts, a 20th century British philosopher who introduced Eastern thought to Western audiences. Lee would tape Watts' lectures and play them back to his martial arts students in class.

Lee, too, saw himself as bridge between the East and the West. He wanted to show Americans the beauty of Chinese philosophy and its culture, his friends and biographers say.

"He told me that he could educate people about the East more in films than in books," says Dan Inosanto, one of Lee's closest friends and his training partner. Inosanto filmed an insanely exciting fight scene with Lee in "Game of Death" where both battled one another using Lee's signature weapon, nunchakus, a weapon that consists of two sticks connected by a short chain.

Muscles like warm marble

Of course, those old enough to remember when Lee was alive didn't go to his films to learn about esoteric Eastern teachings. They wanted to see him kick butt.

And Lee obliged. He hit the American movie screens in the early 1970s like a tsunami.

American audiences had never seen an action star like him before. The liquid grace of his movements; his feline quickness; the weird, high-pitched shrieks he gave off during combat. People squealed in delight so much during his films that a viewer rarely heard all the dialogue.

Lee was a racial pioneer, too. Here was an Asian man who wasn't depicted as a bucktoothed buffoon or fortune-cookie-quoting sage. He was an unabashed sex symbol. Women marveled over his lithe physique; one person said touching his hardened muscles was like touching "warm marble."

But Lee's mind -- his grasp of philosophy and his willpower -- was the engine that powered his physical prowess, says Bruce Thomas, author of "Bruce Lee: Fighting Words."

"What Lee did was harness energies outside the ordinary energies that are used for daily life," Thomas says. "The martial arts were a way a life for him, a genuine path, a means of psychological development and spiritual development."

Lee's 'go-to' philosopher

Another thinker who helped Lee harness those energies was Jiddu Krishnamurti, a philosopher born in India who taught that truth can't be found through any religious tradition or dogma.

"In oneself lies the world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand," he wrote. Krishnamurti's emphasis on self-reliance and disdain for mindlessly following tradition shaped Lee's approach to the martial arts.

When Lee was alive, the martial arts world was rigidly divided by different fighting styles. He borrowed from virtually all of them to create his own revolutionary fighting called "Jeet Kune Do," which he later turned into a book.

Today, Lee is often called the father of MMA, or mixed martial arts, for his willingness to be, as he once said, "not one style, but all styles."

"Krishnamurti was his go-to thinker," Thomas says. "He taught that one must come to the present moment and not be tainted by rituals and dogmas. He took everything Krishnamurti said about religion and applied it to the martial arts."

How Lee's mind helped him survive a crisis

Lee's devotion to philosophy could have just remained an abstract pursuit. But it was also key to his physical speed and power. One martial artist said that Lee had the ability to move from perfect stillness and "explode like a firecracker."

Lee could do that because he was able to tap into what ancient Chinese philosophers called "chi."

In his book, "The Warrior Within," Little described chi as a "vast reservoir of free-flowing energy" within all people that "when channeled to our muscles, can give us great strength and, when channeled to our brain, can give us great insight and understanding."

Lee's ability to summon chi at will was the culmination of years of philosophical contemplation and physical training, his biographers and students say.

Lee once described what it felt like to summon these energies within himself:

"I feel I have this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence... Whether it is the Godhead or not, I feel this great force, this untapped power, this dynamic something within me."

Lee also unleashed those energies through positive thinking. He was a fan of Norman Vincent Peale and read books such "As a Man Thinketh," by James Allen. He would also jot down homespun aphorisms in his spare time like, "Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed."

Lee's philosophical beliefs could have been confined to books, but they were refined by events in his life that would have broken lesser people.

First, he had to deal with racism -- from both sides.

He was born in San Francisco, but grew up in Hong Kong in an affluent family. His father was an opera star and Lee became a childhood actor who appeared in at least 20 Chinese films. Lee started studying martial arts when he was 13 but his instructor stopped personally teaching him when he learned that Lee's mother was part White, biographers say.

That experience shaped in part his decision to teach the martial arts to Westerners after he moved to America when he turned 18, some say. Teaching the martial arts to Westerners was taboo at the time, but Lee didn't care, says Doug Palmer, who was one of Lee's first students in America.

"I think the fact that he [Lee] was part white had something to do with it," Palmer says about Lee's decision to teach Westerners. "He himself had to overcome obstacles in Hong Kong because he was part white."

Lee then encountered racism from Hollywood.

He had gone to Hollywood with an idea for a television drama about the martial arts. They took his idea but rejected him for a role in the series because they thought he looked too Chinese for an America audience. They gave his role to an American actor and dancer. The drama would eventually become a hit television show called "Kung Fu."

Lee also suffered a crippling back injury during training. Doctors told him he would never walk properly again and could never practice the martial arts. It was a low moment in his life. He was bedridden with a wife and two young children to support. At one point he only had $50 in the bank. He could have fallen into a debilitating depression but he overcame his injury through positive visualization, and he used that time to write his groundbreaking book, "Jeet Kune Do," says Thomas, one of his biographers.

"He healed himself," Thomas says.

Lee's belief in the power of positive thinking comes through in a letter he wrote to a friend during that shaky period in his life.

He wrote:

"I mean who has the most insecure job than I have? What do I live on? My faith in my ability that I'll make it. Sure my back injury screwed me up good for a year but with every adversity comes a blessing... Look at a rain storm; after its departure everything grows.

Lee's legacy today

Lee eventually broke through. He went to Hong Kong to make a series of films that caught Hollywood's attention. He then returned to Hollywood to make "Enter the Dragon," which became a huge hit.

But Lee never lived long enough to see the culmination of all of his work.

Just days before the American release of "Enter the Dragon," in 1973, Lee died in Hong Kong from an allergic reaction to pain medication he had taken. He was 32. Lee's son, Brandon, who would follow him into the martial arts and film, would later die in 1993 from a freak accident with a prop gun on a movie set.

Lee's friends still miss him. They talk less about his fighting ability and more about what fun he was to be around: his restless questioning, his optimism, his goofy sense of humor and his loyalty to friends.

"He was a very charismatic person," says Palmer, who is now an attorney in Seattle. "He could dominate most situations. You walk into a room and in most cases he would dominating the conversation."

Lee's influence transcends the martial arts, Inosanto says.

"I got letters after he died from people from almost all walks of life, from musicians to skateboarders -- they all said he influenced him," Inosanto says.

Lee's global popularity is matched by only one other person, Inosanto says.

"Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee are the most recognizable faces in the world," Inosanto says. "I was very lucky to have stumbled onto him. I never had a dull moment with him."

Lee's family is introducing the martial artist to a new generation today.

Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, and his daughter, Shannon Lee, established the Bruce Lee Foundation "to share the art and philosophy" of Lee. It gives out scholarships to students who embody Lee's passion for learning and provides martial arts training to underprivileged youth.

Lee's legacy is expanding in other ways too. There are now more authors writing not so much about Lee's fighting ability but his resilience as an example to anyone who wants to express their individuality and overcome obstacles in life.

At the foot of Lee's grave site in Seattle is a stone tablet with an inscription that reads: "Your inspiration continues to guide us toward personal liberation."

Lee's legacy is now bigger than any punch he ever threw.

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Bruce Lee: Inside the mind of the martial arts icon - CNN

Quantum technology and quantum computing more specifically has become quite the popular topic in national security circles. The extraordinary level of interest emerges from the potential impacts of quantum computers on information security and general issues of international strategic technological advantage. While academic strength in quantum computing research is globally distributed, U.S. industry maintains substantive international leadership. The most significant technical demonstration of state-of-the-art quantum computing was reported by Google this year, and the first cloud-based quantum-as-a-service offerings are available from IBM and Rigetti, with forthcoming services announced by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

With these developments, quantum computing has been identified as a possible target technology for export controls as well as foreign-investment review in emerging tech companies. And the new U.S. National Quantum Initiative is framed around strategic competition and even directly addresses the notion of a technological race with China.

And so now, you Madam, Mister, or Doctor National Security Professional need to understand and speak intelligently about how this technology impacts your portfolio. Where should you begin and how? What are the important lessons to embrace and pitfalls to avoid as you begin your educational journey?

It is easy to find yourself going down the wrong path; there are many new analysts offering expert advice on the technology underlying quantum computing. Many of them merit your skepticism. A combination of technical complexity and competitive media positioning has led to a wide variety of pervasive misconceptions in the field. Watching these flawed and false narratives take off in the national security world that I have worked in for years at DARPA, working with the intelligence community, and now at my own company has been frustrating. And so, as someone with 20 years of experience designing, building, and optimizing quantum computing hardware, I aim to offer friendly advice and insights that arent readily available otherwise.

Learn the Basics

Following many years in which information was found only in specialist technical journals, high-quality educational resources supporting new entrants to the field are finally emerging. I offer some of the better ones below. Turn to them in order to gain proficiency in the underlying technology at either a contextual or technical level, no matter what level of technical expertise you have (or lack).

Q-CTRL the organization I founded and lead has produced an introductory video series for those who have limited background knowledge and are seeking to orient themselves in the field. This is a great place to start if youve encountered various keywords in quantum computing such as qubit, NISQ, or quantum advantage and now want to understand their meaning and context at a high level.

Quantum Computing for the Very Curious is an excellent online e-book introducing quantum computing in an accessible but technical fashion. Its prepared by Michael Nielsen, one of the most recognized textbook authors in the field, and covers material from qubits to universal quantum computing.

The online Qiskit textbook from IBM provides a detailed technical overview of this material, with a focus on programming quantum computers for future quantum developers.

Various supporting tools exist to help build intuition for quantum computing, including BLACK OPAL from my organization, the IBM Quantum Experience, and the Quantum User Interface from the University of Melbourne.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technologys xPRO offers an online course in quantum computing built and taught by actual leading practitioners, such as Peter Shor, Will Oliver, and Isaac Chuang (not consultants, dabblers, or marketers).

Finally, if youd like a broader overview of the intersection between quantum technology and national security, I wrote a primer on quantum technology for national security professionals with Richard Fontaine in these virtual pages.

Start with the History

Many in national security circles became familiar with quantum information and quantum technologies only in the last few years. Understanding the origins of U.S. government activity in the field is essential to evaluating the national security landscape around quantum computing today.

The history of the field is traced back to early intelligence community investments in open university research, following public announcements surrounding the development of Shors algorithm (an algorithm potentially enabling quantum computers to attack public key cryptosystems, named after Peter Shor). Since the late 1990s, the vast majority of participants in the international research field has been supported by competitive programs sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Office and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (and its predecessor organizations, the Advanced Research and Development Activity and the Disruptive Technology Office). Ultimately, this targeted, highly competitive funding has been foundational to the development of the international quantum computing research community.. Very broadly, this technical leadership (as measured by recognizable research programs and/or publicly acknowledged funding) has come from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, the Netherlands, and Canada. Much more recently, China has risen independently as it has made quantum information matter of national priority. Singapore and Russia have also made strategic investments in quantum technology.

What should we take from this history? First, openness, collaboration, and international engagement with allied nations have been central to the success we have seen in building this technological discipline. This success, a global public good, is the result of American international leadership. And it therefore risks being undermined by aggressive actions to curtail international collaboration, especially as so much exploratory science remains to be undertaken. Emerging nationalist sentiment seeking to limit international support for research among allies or to add new export control regimes on immature technologies are regressive. Second, the U.S. defense and intelligence communities have played a critical and irreplaceable role in the field. Todays U.S. National Quantum Initiative is seeking to establish expanded research activity through programs administered by new organizations, including the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy through the national labs. The foundational leadership from within the Department of Defense and the intelligence community places the United States at a strategic advantage in knowledge and internal capability within government. Finally, aside from long-term research and development efforts at industrial organizations such as IBM, large-scale industry-led programs have only emerged since about 2013 at Microsoft, Google, and other tech giants, often grown by acquiring academic research teams. Similarly, the boom in quantum technology startups largely derived from academic programs has been growing for about five years. Notably, all of the relevant industrial research leaders and efforts have had substantial overlap with Army Research Office and IARPA programs. This makes clear both the connectivity of personnel running these programs with research leaders, and demonstrates how these government funding initiatives have been instrumental in seeding todays quantum industry.

True Technical Expertise Is Out There, So Reach Out

Maybe youve been asked to write a memo on something at the intersection of national security and quantum technology. Or maybe youre an international security scholar looking to research and write about the implications of the second quantum revolution. Why not collaborate with, or at least reach out to, someone with technical expertise? Quantum computing is not an easy field to understand, even for sharp minds with a deep understanding of other technical topics. So, look (and ask) before you leap.

Most contemporary leaders in the field have built their entire careers in quantum computing and have come up through advanced Ph.D.-level training programs at major universities around the world. Looking across the growing quantum computing startup ecosystem, almost every chief executive officer, chief technology officer, or other sort of senior executive has come from a senior academic appointment. Similarly, the broad U.S. industrial sector in quantum computing is heavily populated with seasoned experts in the field. Many of us have worked with the U.S. defense and the intelligence communities for years. And this cross-sector collaboration means there are a number of practitioner-experts working in government. Substantive expertise exists within various organizations, including the National Security Agencys Laboratory for Physical Sciences, the Sandia National Laboratories, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (having generated multiple Nobel laureates in quantum physics), the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and the Army Research Office.

Unfortunately, growth in the field has led to a commensurate growth in the number of consultants and analysts claiming to be experts in quantum computing. Most of these voices are amateur observers, although there are a small number of formally trained experts who have crossed into analytical positions in defense contracting, management consulting, or the like. Third-party business analysts can bring valuable insights into the shape of emerging commercial markets or opportunities for quantum computing to contribute in novel sectors. Use caution when looking to such consultants for expert technical advice on the utility or functionality of quantum computers. As a general matter, beware the LinkedIn profile claiming expertise in quantum computing without evidence!

How to See Through the Hype

The level of true potential for quantum technology in national security and more broadly is profound and fully justifies major investments such as the U.S. National Quantum Initiative. However, this level of promise has inevitably led to hype in the popular media, company press releases, venture-capital newsletters, and (international) government program announcements. It is essential that in making an informed assessment you seek the truth beyond the hype.

The most important leading message is that quantum technology is a deep-tech field and represents a long-term strategic play; the benefits may be enormous in the national security space, but timescales to delivery remain measured in years and decade. We have recently seen an acceleration of commercial and public-sector interest and activity and there is no doubt that this is furthering progress but there has not been an obvious fundamental change in the pace of technological development. Quantum computing has been described erroneously as just engineering at this stage, where all we need to do to realize quantum advantage for useful problems is execute. While there is much room to incorporate lessons from the engineering community, creativity and serendipity remain essential.

Expert leaders in our community feel confident that within five to 10 years we may realize quantum advantage for a problem of general commercial interest. This would certainly be a profound demonstration, but it is supported by the (consistent) rate of progress since the early 2000s and the relatively small scale of machine we believe is needed to achieve this goal. By contrast, codebreaking using Shors algorithm remains a multi-decadal play because the scale of the system required is likely to be gigantic (thousands of high-performing logical qubits, each capable of performing billions of operations).

This highlights another essential piece of advice for quantum novices: caveat emptor. Question the messenger when reading media reports about technological breakthroughs. In many cases commercial and nationalist motives have clouded the landscape of media reporting on the true state of progress in the field. This is especially true at the intersection of quantum computing and national security for obvious reasons. For instance, in their excellent report, Elsa B. Kania and John Costello explain that quantum technology has clearly become a matter of national priority in China, but that it has become difficult to discern real progress from strategic hyperbole in state media. Unfortunately, the same can be true for corporate media releases closer to home. Many journalists have repeated press-release pronouncements without applying the skepticism the topic demands. National security professionals might then use such articles as a source, leaving an important debate ill-served. It is therefore important that such professionals seek validation of claims via primary-source information. This is of utmost importance in understanding the intersection between national security and quantum technology, as misunderstandings of the capabilities of the underlying technology can completely change the associated security implications.

As an example of such a negative impact on national security assessments, the combination of a rise in corporate and nationalist marketing and credulous media reporting has led to many misleading lay descriptions of how quantum technology operates in the security space. The research area perhaps most subject to misrepresentation is quantum communications, which has become an area of major Chinese investment and clear technical leadership. Quantum communications uses concepts of quantum physics (such as the destructive nature of measurement) in order to offer information security. In particular, these systems are theoretically provably secure a term that has a specific quantitative technical definition relating to the probability of eavesdropping in a nominally successful round of communication. This suggestive nomenclature has led to the broad use of popular terms such as unhackable communications or unbreakable quantum security. But these claims are specious. People have translated a technical definition (provably secure) into an accessible but incorrect lay term (unhackable or unbreakable) when, in fact, there is an entire subfield dedicated to cryptographic attacks on quantum communications systems. None of this means that advances in quantum communications wouldnt be enormously valuable, but it does reveal the shallow nature of some aspects of the popular narrative.

On a final and lighter note, its my pleasure to inform you that quantum radar is not likely to be an imminent threat to stealth technology as is sometimes claimed by Chinese media. There is global research interest in the application of quantum illumination to suppress certain kinds of technical noise in radar systems. It is possible that China has built functional prototypes and could in principle be far ahead of the United States and its allies, but there is no evidence that this has made Chinas radars able to detect stealthy or low-observable aircraft in ways they could not before. Public-domain, state-of-the art research from a Canadian team also publicly claiming they hope to defeat stealth technology does not support such claims. Demonstrated benefits show approximately two times improvement in imaging quality using quantum illumination at one-meter imaging distance in a laboratory. This is far from field-deployable, and a factor of two times improvement in imaging even if it did carry over to realistic distances and conditions does not necessarily render low-observable aircraft vulnerable. Nonetheless, media reporting on this topic has been breathless, even within national security publications. Unfortunately, the primary source material which could be used to raise doubts about claims surrounding quantum radar is highly technical and inaccessible to most analysts. While highly specific, this example illustrates how a lack of understanding of the technical material coupled with nationalistic media releases and credulous journalists can produce deleterious strategic assessments.

The advice I offer here is broad and aims to help national security professionals seeking to build a knowledge base in quantum technology. This is an essential undertaking for anyone seeking to engage meaningfully with this emerging and high-impact field.

Michael J. Biercuk is a professor of quantum physics and quantum technology at the University of Sydney and a chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems. In 2017, he founded Q-CTRL, a quantum technology company for which he serves as CEO.

Image: Department of Defense (Photo by Nancy Wong, University of Chicago)

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Read Before Pontificating on Quantum Technology - War on the Rocks

The smallest conceivable length of time might be no larger than a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. That's according to a new theory describing the implications of the universe having a fundamental clock-like property whose ticks would interact with our best atomic timepieces.

Such an idea could help scientists get closer to doing experiments that would illuminate a theory of everything, an overarching framework that would reconcile the two pillars of 20th-century physics quantum mechanics, which looks at the smallest objects in existence, and Albert Einstein's relativity, which describes the most massive ones.

Related: The 18 biggest unsolved mysteries in physics

Most of us have some sense of time's passage. But what exactly is time?

"We don't know," Martin Bojowald, a physicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, told Live Science. "We know that things change, and we describe that change in terms of time."

Physics presents two conflicting views of time, he added. One, which stems from quantum mechanics, speaks of time as a parameter that never stops flowing at a steady pace. The other, derived from relativity, tells scientists that time can contract and expand for two observers moving at different speeds, who will disagree about the span between events.

In most cases, this discrepancy isn't terribly important. The separate realms described by quantum mechanics and relativity hardly overlap. But certain objects like black holes, which condense enormous mass into an inconceivably tiny space can't be fully described without a theory of everything known as quantum gravity.

In some versions of quantum gravity, time itself would be quantized, meaning it would be made from discrete units, which would be the fundamental period of time. It would be as if the universe contained an underlying field that sets the minimum tick rate for everything inside of it, sort of like the famous Higgs field that gives rise to the Higgs boson particle which lends other particles mass. But for this universal clock, "instead of providing mass, it provides time," said Bojowald.

By modeling such a universal clock, he and his colleagues were able to show that it would have implications for human-built atomic clocks, which use the pendulum-like oscillation of certain atoms to provide our best measurements of time. According to this model, atomic clocks' ticks would sometimes be out of sync with the universal clock's ticks.

This would limit the precision of an individual atomic clock's time measurements, meaning two different atomic clocks might eventually disagree about how long a span of time has passed. Given that our best atomic clocks agree with one another and can measure ticks as small as 10^(minus19) seconds, or a tenth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, the fundamental unit of time can be no larger than 10^(minus 33)seconds, according to the team's paper, which appeared June 19 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"What I like the most about the paper is the neatness of the model," Esteban Castro-Ruiz, a quantum physicist at the Universit Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium who was not involved in the work, told Live Science. "They get an actual bound that you can in principle measure, and I find this amazing."

Research of this type tends to be extremely abstract, he added, so it was nice to see a concrete result with observational consequences for quantum gravity, meaning the theory could one day be tested.

While verifying that such a fundamental unit of time exists is beyond our current technological capabilities, it is more accessible than previous proposals, such as the Planck time, the researchers said in their paper. Derived from fundamental constants, the Planck time would set the tiniest measureable ticks at 10^(minus 44) seconds, or a ten-thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, according to Universe Today.

Whether or not there is some length of time smaller than the Planck time is up for debate, since neither quantum mechanics nor relativity can explain what happens below that scale. "It makes no sense to talk about time beyond these units, at least in our current theories," said Castro-Ruiz.

Because the universe itself began as a massive object in a tiny space that then rapidly expanded, Bojowald said that cosmological observations, such as careful measurements of the cosmic microwave background, a relic from the Big Bang, might help constrain the fundamental period of time to an even smaller level.

Originally published on Live Science.

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The universe's clock might have bigger ticks than we imagine - Livescience.com