Page 4 - John Preskill News Today

Scientific American Physicists Need to Be More Careful with How They Name Things The popular term “quantum supremacy,” which refers to quantum computers outperforming classical ones, is uncomfortably reminiscent of “white supremacy” Advertisement In 2012, the quantum physicist John Preskill wrote, “We hope to hasten the day when well controlled quantum systems can perform tasks surpassing what can be done in the classical world.” Less than a decade later, two quantum computing syste...

Physicists Propose a Force Field to Protect Sensitive Quantum Computers From Noise 19 FEBRUARY 2021 Creating a quantum computer requires an ability to stroke the edges of reality with the quietest of touches. Too much noise and the delicate state of the system collapses, leaving you with a very expensive paperweight.   One way to reduce the risk of this occurring is to build in checks and balances that help to shield the blurred state of reality at the core of quantum computers - and now sc...

March Meeting 2021 Hits the Web By Leah Poffenberger In lieu of the typical bustling March Meeting, packing thousands of physicists from around the world into a huge convention center, APS is taking the 2021 March Meeting online. From March 15 to 19, the same exciting, high quality physics content that attendees have come to expect will make its way into offices, living rooms, or anywhere with a computer, with new events designed for the online meeting experience. The 2021 March Meeting will fe...

Since they can’t prod actual universes as they inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.Phil Degginger / Science Source What lies beyond all we can see? The question may seem unanswerable. Nevertheless, some cosmologists have a response: Our universe is a swelling bubble. Outside it, more bubble universes exist, all immersed in an eternally expanding and energized sea—the multiverse. The idea is pola...

Quantum for quants A fundamentally new kind of computing will shake up finance—the question is when T HE FINANCE industry has had a long and profitable relationship with computing. It was an early adopter of everything from mainframe computers to artificial intelligence (see timeline). For most of the past decade more trades have been done at high frequency by complex algorithms than by humans. Now big banks have their eyes on quantum computing, another cutting-edge technology. Listen to this...