Lifeboat Foundation

In a recent Science paper, researchers led by JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, along with collaborators JILA and NIST Fellow David Nesbitt, scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Harvard University, observed novel ergodicity-breaking in C₆₀, a highly symmetric molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged on the vertices of a “soccer ball” pattern (with 20 hexagon faces and 12 pentagon faces).

Their results revealed ergodicity breaking in the rotations of C₆₀. Remarkably, they found that this ergodicity breaking occurs without symmetry breaking and can even turn on and off as the molecule spins faster and faster. Understanding ergodicity breaking can help scientists design better-optimized materials for energy and heat transfer.

Many everyday systems exhibit “ergodicity” such as heat spreading across a frying pan and smoke filling a room. In other words, matter or energy spreads evenly over time to all system parts as energy conservation allows. On the other hand, understanding how systems can violate (or “break”) ergodicity, such as magnets or superconductors, helps scientists understand and engineer other exotic states of matter.

Not many pure-play quantum computing start-ups have dared to go public. So far, the financial markets have tended to treat the newcomers unsparingly. One exception is IonQ, who along with D-Wave and Rigetti, reported quarterly earnings last week. Buoyed by hitting key technical and financial goals, IonQ’s stock is up ~400% (year-to-date) and CEO Peter Chapman is taking an aggressive stance in the frothy quantum computing landscape where error correction – not qubit count – has increasingly taken center stage as the key challenge.

This is all occurring at a time when a wide variety of different qubit types are vying for dominance. IBM, Google, and Rigetti are betting on superconducting-based qubits. IonQ and Quantinuuum use trapped ions. Atom Computing and QuEra use neutral atoms. PsiQuantum and Xanadu rely on photonics-based qubits. Microsoft is exploring topological qubits based on the rare Marjorana particle. And more are in the works.

It’s not that the race to scale up qubit-count has ended. IBM has a 433-plus qubit device (Osprey) now and is scheduled to introduce 1100-qubit device (Condor) late this year. Several other quantum computer companies have devices in the 50–100 qubit range. IonQ’s latest QPU, Forte, has 32 qubits. The challenge they all face is that current error rates remain so high that it’s impractical to reliably run most applications on the current crop of QPUs.

Defense satellites used to be big, costly, and “juicy” targets for attack. Now the Pentagon is aiming for a more resilient network of nearly 1,000 mini orbiters.

Last year, NASA undertook its first planetary defense mission with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The goal was to divert the moonlet Dimorphos from its orbit, demonstrating that an asteroid could be redirected in the case of a catastrophic course toward Earth.

The spacecraft’s impact, while altering the moonlet’s orbit, also resulted in the dispersal of 37 boulders from its surface. Some of these space rocks are as wide as 22 feet off its surface.

The DART mission was watched intently across the globe on September 26, 2022. The spacecraft successfully shifted Dimorphos’s orbit from an original 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes post-impact.

New research indicates that Australia and New Zealand are the two best places on Earth to survive a nuclear war. The recently published set of calculations don’t focus on blast-related deaths or even deaths caused by radiation fall-out, which most estimates say would number in the hundreds of millions, but instead look at how a nuclear winter caused by nuclear bomb explosions would affect food supplies, potentially leading to the starvation of billions.

Nuclear War Simulations Performed For Decades

Since the first atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, effectively spelling the end of World War II, war game theorists have looked at a myriad of simulations to determine the potential effects of a full-blown nuclear battle. Many simulations look at the potentially hundreds of millions that would likely die in the initial blasts, while others have tried to model the slower but equally as deadly body count from radiation sickness.

According to Chinese military experts, they have created a novel cooling mechanism that enables high-energy lasers to run “infinitely” without producing any waste heat. South China Morning Post claims that researchers at the National University of Defence Technology in Changsha, Hunan province, claim that the novel cooling system fully avoids the dangerous heat produced by high-energy laser operation.

The advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) has paved the way for a new era in warfare. Gone are the days of manned ships and traditional naval operations. Instead, the US Navy’s Task Force 59 is at the forefront of integrating AI and robotics into naval operations. With a fleet of autonomous robot ships, the Navy aims to revolutionize the way wars are fought at sea.

The Persian Gulf serves as a testing ground for Task Force 59’s fleet of robot ships. These unmanned vessels, ranging from solar-powered kayaks to surfboard-style boats, are equipped with state-of-the-art technology. Their purpose is to act as the eyes and ears of the Navy, collecting data through cameras, radar, and hydrophones. Pattern-matching algorithms help differentiate between oil tankers and potential threats like smugglers.

One particular vessel, the Triton, stands out with its ability to submerge for extended periods. This feature allows it to evade enemy detection and resurface when it is safe to do so. The Triton can stay submerged for up to five days, utilizing this time to recharge its batteries and transmit valuable information back to base.

The need for transparency around AI-generated content is clear, but the value of measures like watermarks is not.

A few miles away, White House aides and reporters scrambled to figure out whether a viral online image of the exploding building was in fact real.

It wasn’t. It was AI-generated. Yet government officials, journalists, and tech companies were unable to take action before the image had real impact. It not only caused confusion but led to a dip in financial markets.

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Beijing’s compromise of Tokyo’s classified cyber networks could prevent greater strategic coordination between Japan’s Defense Ministry and the Pentagon.