The performance of quantum computers could cap out after around 1,000 qubits, according to a new analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Through new calculations, Tim Palmer at the University of Oxford has reconsidered the mathematical foundations underlying the quantum principles behind the technology, concluding that restrictions on the information-carrying capacity of large quantum systems could make their computing power far more limited than many researchers predict.
For some time, quantum physicists have been growing increasingly excited—and concerned—about the seemingly limitless potential of quantum computers. In a classical computer, information content generally grows linearly as the number of bits increases. But in a quantum computer, each extra qubit doubles the number of quantum states the system can occupy.
Since these states can encode multiple possibilities at the same time, the overall system appears to become exponentially more powerful with each added qubit—at least according to our current understanding of quantum mechanics.
The Big Bang just doesn’t make much sense. We don’t have any real idea what was before (or rather ‘beyond’) it, but some of our best guesses involve quantum fluctuations and chance. While this makes intuitive sense, it leads to some statistical consequences #science #bigbang #quantum #boltzmannbrain …
“I like to say that physics is hard because physics is easy, by which I mean we actually think about physics as students.”
Up next, The Multiverse is real. Just not in the way you think it is. ► • The Multiverse is real. Just not in the wa…
Physics seems complicated, until you realize why it works so well, says physicist Sean Carroll, revealing the basis of the field’s greatest successes: Radical simplicity.
Carroll takes us from Newton’s clockwork universe to Laplace’s demon, to Einstein’s spacetime revolution, exploring the historical shockwaves each breakthrough caused. If you’ve wondered how stripping the world down to its simplest parts can reveal deeper truths, this is where that story begins.
00:00:00 Radical simplicity in physics. 00:00:55 Chapter 1: The physics of free will. 00:04:55 Laplace’s Demon. 00:06:27 The clockwork universe paradigm. 00:07:41 Determinism and compatibilism. 00:08:45 Chapter 2: The invention of spacetime. 00:17:30: Einstein’s general theory of relativity. 00:24:27 Chapter 3: The quantum revolution. 00:28:05 The 2 biggest ideas in physics. 00:32:27 Visualizing physics. 00:38:17 Quantum field theory. 00:46:51 The Higgs boson particle. 00:47:28 The standard model of particle physics. 00:52:53 The core theory of physics. 01:02:03 The measurement problem. 01:13:47 Chapter 4: The power of collective genius. 01:16:19 A timeline of the theories of physics.
Is math something humans invent—or something we discover? And why does it describe the universe so uncannily well?
In this episode of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson sits down with mathematicians David Berlinski, Sergiu Klainerman, and Stephen Meyer to explore one of the deepest mysteries in science and philosophy: the reality of mathematics.
From the simple certainty that 2 + 2 = 4 to the mind-bending mathematics behind black holes and quantum physics, the conversation asks why abstract numbers—created in the human mind—map so perfectly onto the physical world. Is mathematics purely logical, or does it point to a deeper structure of reality that isn’t material at all? Along the way, the panel explores beauty in science, the “unreasonable effectiveness” of math, and whether the concept of materialism can really explain the world we live in.
This wide-ranging discussion blends mathematics, physics, philosophy, and metaphysics into a fascinating conversation about truth, beauty, and the nature of reality itself.
__________ The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.
We only ever experience three spatial dimensions, but quantum lab experiments suggest a whole new side to reality – weird particle apparitions included.
About New Scientist: New Scientist was founded in 1956 for “all those interested in scientific discovery and its social consequences”. Today our website, videos, newsletters, app, podcast and print magazine cover the world’s most important, exciting and entertaining science news as well as asking the big-picture questions about life, the universe, and what it means to be human.
Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, and Max Tegmark discuss consciousness, quantum physics, and the possibility of a sentient superintelligent A.I.
The idea that the brain is computational has, from the outset, been central to neuroscience. Like a computer, the brain is a problem-solving machine that stores memories and processes information. But despite the advances in AI, many challenge whether this analogy captures the essence of the mind. Computers use transistors to build elementary logic gates, enabling them to store files exactly, in 0s and 1s. They are precise and repeatable. Human brains, in contrast, are biological—the neurons do not operate as simple logic gates, but have thousands of inputs, and their output is dependent on past activity and their current internal state. Remove a computer’s processor, and it breaks. But humans can survive with only one brain hemisphere. Fundamentally, brains think, they have perception, and are conscious.
Is it a mistake to see the mind as computational? Are computers, at root, limited machines with little in common with the sophistication of living things? Or have computers and mathematics uncovered the essential character of thought—and perhaps even the cosmos itself?
Time is the one thing every human being experiences identically, or so we assume.
Physicist Jim Al-Khalili dismantles that assumption, explaining how velocity and gravity don’t just affect clocks but actually alter the rate at which time passes for the person experiencing it.
About Jim Al-Khalili: Jim is a multiple award-winning science communicator renowned for his public engagement around the world through writing and broadcasting and a leading academic making fundamental contributions to theoretical physics, particularly in nuclear reaction theory, quantum effects in biology, open quantum systems and the foundations of quantum mechanics. Jim is a theoretical physicist at the University of Surrey where he holds a Distinguished Chair in physics as well as a university chair in the public engagement in science. He received his PhD in nuclear reaction theory in 1989 and has published widely in the field. His current interest is in open quantum systems and the application of quantum mechanics in biology.
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In this video I explain why I think it’s wrong to believe that the speed of light is an impossible to overcome limit. I am afraid that this is the biggest mistake that physicists are making, that indeed our entire species is making. And it’s all due to physicists’ misunderstanding quantum mechanics.
What do we mean with the ‘Big Bang’? Why are the properties of our universe so special? What is cosmological inflation? How can we test cosmological inflation and what do the latest observations tell us? Can we probe string theory using cosmology?
How did our universe come into existence? This basic and ancient question still remains one of the biggest mysteries in science. Ever since Einstein discovered that gravity can be understood as the stretching and bending of space and time, cosmology, which studies the properties, evolution and origin of the universe as a hole, became a proper and honest scientific subject, in which theoretical constructs can be confronted with (cosmological) observations.
What we have learned since then, in less than a century, about the origin and properties of our universe, is spectacular and at the same time mysterious. Our universe appears to be very special. In an attempt to explain these remarkable features a small group of theoretical cosmologists developed the paradigm of cosmological inflation in the eighties. What is cosmological inflation? An what do the latest observations tell us about this fascinating proposal in which all structures in our universe find their origin in small primordial quantum fluctuations? And what are the implications of cosmological inflation for conjectured theories of quantum gravity, such as string theory?
String theorist Jan Pieter van der Schaar argues that cosmology in general, and the cosmological paradigm of inflation in particular, is our best (and perhaps only) bet to probe and test the microscopic quantum description of space and time.
An Pieter van der Schaar is a string theorist by training, with a Ph.D. at the University of Groningen in 2000. After postdoctoral research stints at the University of Michigan, the Cern theory group, and Columbia University, he developed into a theoretical cosmologist with a particular interest to connect cosmological models to string theory and vice versa. Jan Pieter has been a member of the string theory and cosmology group at the Institute of Physics of the University of Amsterdam since 2006. Since 2013 he is the coordinator of the Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics and as of 2022 he is heading the ‘Building Blocks of Matter and Foundations of Space-time’ route as part of the Nationale Wetenschapsagenda.
