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Category: computing – Page 184

Creating a quantum computer powerful enough to tackle problems we cannot solve with current computers remains a big challenge for quantum physicists. A well-functioning quantum simulator – a specific type of quantum computer – could lead to new discoveries about how the world works at the smallest scales. Quantum scientist Natalia Chepiga from Delft University of Technology has developed a guide on how to upgrade these machines so that they can simulate even more complex quantum systems. The study is now published in Physical Review Letters.

“Creating useful quantum computers and quantum simulators is one of the most important and debated topics in quantum science today, with the potential to revolutionize society,” says researcher Natalia Chepiga. Quantum simulators are a type of quantum computer, Chepiga explains: “Quantum simulators are meant to address open problems of quantum physics to further push our understanding of nature. Quantum computers will have wide applications in various areas of social life, for example in finances, encryption, and data storage.”

Steering Wheel

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“The fact that the groundwater isn’t as big of a process could mean that other things are,” said Eric Hiatt. “It might magnify the importance of runoff, or it could mean that it just didn’t rain as much on Mars. But it’s just fundamentally different from how we think about [water] on Earth.”

How much water on ancient Mars fell into aquifers to refill groundwater? This is what a recent study published in Icarus hopes to address as a team of international researchers led by The University of Texas at Austin (UTA) used computer models to calculate groundwater recharge rates in the southern highlands of ancient Mars. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the amount of water that potentially existed on ancient Mars and what this could mean for finding ancient life on the Red Planet.

For the study, the researchers used a combination of previously used and new computer modeling techniques to estimate how much groundwater recharge occurred in the Martian southern highlands, since most of the liquid water that existed on Mars billions of years ago resided in a vast ocean in the northern lowlands. In the end, the researchers found the aquifers in the southern highlands on Mars experienced an average groundwater recharge of only 0.03 millimeters (0.001 inches) per year. For context, the Trinity and Edwards-Trinity Plateau aquifers that are responsible for providing water for the city of San Antonio range between 2.5 to 50 millimeters (0.1 inches to 2 inches) per year, or between 80 and 1,600 times that of the Martian aquifers.

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Forward-looking: As consumers increasingly turn toward digital distribution and data center operators try various storage methods, optical discs haven’t stopped evolving. A recently published paper explains how manufacturers could make DVD-like discs that hold the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of Blu-rays.

Researchers at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have developed an optical disc with a capacity of over a petabit of data, equivalent to well over 100 terabytes. Although the technology is primarily proposed for enterprise use, it could potentially become accessible to consumers after overcoming significant obstacles.

The scientists were able to significantly increase the capacity of an optical disc by implementing a 3D planar recording architecture. The technology uses a highly transparent, uniform photoresist film doped with aggregation-induced emission dye and stimulated by femtosecond lasers.

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Dr. Jean Ristaino: “We searched those descriptions by keywords, and by doing that we were able to recreate the original outbreak maps using location coordinates mentioned in the documents. We were also trying to learn what people were thinking about the disease at the time and where it came from.”

Can plant diseases be tracked through analyzing past reports? This is what a recent study published in Scientific Reports hopes to address as a team of researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU) attempted to ascertain the causes behind blight disease on plants, known as Phytophthora infestans, that resulted in the Irish potato famine during the 1840s. This study holds the potential to help scientists and farmers not only better understand the causes of blight disease in plants, but also how they might be able to predict them in the future.

Image of a blight lesion on a potato leaf. (Credit: Jean Ristaino, NC State University)

For the study, the researchers analyzed United States farm reports from 1,843 to 1,845 by searching for keywords, including “evil”, “murrain”, “rot”, “black spots”, and “decay”, just to name a few, within the scanned documents using the computer programming language, Python. In the end, the researchers discovered a notable increase in the usage of the keywords, “disease”, “blight”, and “rot” within the reports between 1,843 and 1,845, with the researchers noting the usage of these keywords began occurring in 1,844, indicating the disease began in 1843.

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The electron is the basic unit of electricity, as it carries a single negative charge. This is what we’re taught in high school physics, and it is overwhelmingly the case in most materials in nature.

But in very special states of matter, electrons can splinter into fractions of their whole. This phenomenon, known as “fractional charge,” is exceedingly rare, and if it can be corralled and controlled, the exotic electronic state could help to build resilient, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

To date, this effect, known to physicists as the “fractional quantum Hall effect,” has been observed a handful of times, and mostly under very high, carefully maintained magnetic fields. Only recently have scientists seen the effect in a material that did not require such powerful magnetic manipulation.

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