Tag: quantum physics

How people solve problems

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 15.24.39Scientists at Aarhus University have devised a computer game that they say has given insight into the way people solve problems.

The game – called Quantum Moves – has been played 400,000 times by regular people. It involves moving atoms around a screen and scoring points for the best moves.

And that means ordinary people are helping research into quantum physics, according to research director Jacob Sherson. He said that a human’s way of solving a problem is very different than a computer’s approach to similar problems.

The whole idea is to help build quantum computers by providing data. Sheraton said: “The players showed us that there’s an unexploited capacity for ingenuity in the human brain. We see solutions that a computer would never have allowed, and which optimise the process.”

Initial research said that females are better at solving problems than males.

“It would be very interesting to find that the feminine brain has a different – and more efficient approach than the masculine,” said Sherson.

The insights from Quantum Moves means that the university has developed another game called Quantum Minds, which the team hopes will give even better insight into the way our brains work.

And you can try it out yourself, by going to this web page.

Speed limits of quantum computing found

Posted on January 23, 2015 by - News

Swiss Watches the BrandScientists at the University of California, Berkeley, claim to have proved a relationship between energy and time that lets people calculate the “quantum speed limit”.
The scientists said that while the energy-time uncertainty relationship is the flip side of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
K Birgitta Whaley, director of the Quantum Unit at Berkeley, said: “This is the first time the energy-time uncertainty principle has been put on a rigorous basis – our arguments don’t appeal to experiment but come directly from the structure of quantum mechanics.”
She said the derivations has  implications for any measurement involving time, and certainly does for quantum computing.
Graduate student Ty Volkoff, said the uncertainty principle limits how precise your clocks can be. “In a quantum computer, it limits how fast you can go from one state to the other, so it puts limits on the clock speed of your computer.”

Quantum theory may help net security

Posted on January 7, 2015 by - News

National-Security-Agency--008Scientists at the Griffith University in Queensland claim quantum physics will help protect data on the internet.
The researchers said that so-called “quantum steering” can be used to improve data security over long distances.
Project leader Professor Geoff Pryde boasts that the method his team are engineering promises “absolutely secure information transfer”.
He said: “Your credit card details or other personal data sent over the internet could be completely isolated from hackers.”
The scientists used special photon quantum states to program a measurement device at each step of sending code.
He said that quantum systems would secure long distance comms by generating random and uncrackable code.
But that would rely on both parties sharing systems.  But his team has invented something called quantum steering, which is used to maintain communication security and removing trust in third party devices.

 

Parallel worlds really do exist

Posted on October 30, 2014 by - News

saturnIt seems that the dreams of sci-fi writers have a basis in science because academics have come up with a new theory based on the existence of parallel universes.

The scientists, at Griffith University, claim that they’ve taken interacting parallel worlds out of the realm of science fiction and into that of hard science.

The team of academics says that parallel universes interact with nearby worlds influencing each other by a subtle force of repulsion.

This theory, the team avers, explains the anomalistic and strange phenomena in quantum mechanics.

Professor Howard Wiseman says: “The universe we experience is just one of a gigantic number of worlds. Some are almost identical to ours while most are very different.”

He added: “All of these worlds are equally real, exist continuously through time, and possess precisely defined properties.”

The theory predicts something new that isn’t Newtonian nor confirms to quantum theory.  He believes that it will be possible to test for the existence of such worlds.