ZDNet reports: Scientists from quantum computing company D-Wave have demonstrated that, using a method called quantum annealing, they could simulate some materials up to three million times faster than it would take with corresponding classical methods. Together with researchers from Google, the scientists set out to measure the speed of simulation in one of D-Wave’s quantum annealing processors, and found that…
Tag: wave
Fry’s Electronics Going Out of Business, Shutting Down All Stores
UnknowingFool and scores of other readers have shared this report: Fry’s Electronics, the decades-old superstore chain with locations in nine American states, appears to have gone defunct. Bay Area TV station KRON-4 was the first press outlet to confirm the news late Tuesday, saying that Fry’s will shut down all 30 of its American locations. The retailer will reportedly make an…
Merging boson stars could explain massive black hole collision and prove existence of dark matter
An international team of scientists led by the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics (IGFAE) and the University of Aveiro shows that the heaviest black hole collision ever observed, produced by the gravitational-wave GW190521, might actually be something even more mysterious: the merger of two boson stars. This would be the first evidence of the existence of these hypothetical objects, which…
Nearby black hole Cyg X-1 more massive than thought
New research suggests that the famous black hole Cygnus X-1 – first black hole ever detected and one of the closest to Earth – is farther away and much more massive than previously believed. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/cygnus-x-1-black-hole-more-massive-farther…
Elon Musk Co-Authors COVID-19 Paper Accepted For Publication In ‘Nature’
Slashdot reader Rei writes: On 15 February, 2021, the paper Discrete SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers track with functional humoral stability was accepted for publication by the prestigious journal Nature — interesting not only for being a large-cohort study on COVID-19 reinfection, but for the presence of one of its coauthors: one Elon Reeve Musk. According to reporting, Musk — concerned in April…
Why hasn’t India had a second wave of the coronavirus?
Covid-19 cases and deaths are falling in India and there are no signs of a second wave yet, which could be due to exposure to other seasonal coronaviruses Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2268688-why-hasnt-india-had-a-second-wave-of-the-coronavirus/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Investigating the wave properties of matter with vibrating molecules
The working group led by Prof. Stephan Schiller, Ph.D. from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has used a novel, high-precision laser spectroscopic experiment to measure the internal vibration of the simplest molecule. This allowed the researchers to investigate the wave character of the motion of atomic nuclei with unprecedented accuracy. They present their findings in the current edition of Nature Physics….
D-Wave demonstrates performance advantage in quantum simulation of exotic magnetism
D-Wave Systems Inc. today published a milestone study in collaboration with scientists at Google, demonstrating a computational performance advantage, increasing with both simulation size and problem hardness, to over 3 million times that of corresponding classical methods. Notably, this work was achieved on a practical application with real-world implications, simulating the topological phenomena behind the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics. This…
Can Dark Matter Be Explained By a Link to a Fifth Dimension?
The standard model of physics can’t accommodate some observed phenomena, notes Popular Mechanics. Yet “In a new study, scientists say they can explain dark matter by positing a particle that links to a fifth dimension.” While the “warped extra dimension” (WED) is a trademark of a popular physics model first introduced in 1999, this research, published in The European Physical Journal…
The Rich Got Richer: GameStop’s Trading Frenzy Benefited Wall Street’s Elite
While GameStop’s surge has been heralded as a victory for underdogs, “Growing evidence casts doubt on the idea that the episode mostly benefited small-time investors…” reports the Washington Post. (Alternate URLs here and here “And, in at least some cases, novice investors lost their shirts.” Giant mutual funds that own the largest stakes in GameStop saw the biggest gains in value….