Quantum Basterdizations
pontiff | January 13, 2010Bad New Scientist has an article up today entitled Brain 'entanglement' could explain memories, which certainly must have sent Roger Penrose's brain into a state of multiple correlated back-flips (twistor flips?) However, from the article:
Subatomic particles do it. Now the observation that groups of brain cells seem to have their own version of quantum entanglement, or "spooky action at a distance", could help explain how our minds combine experiences from many different senses into one memory.
First of all, damnit New Scientist, entanglement is not just between "subatomic particles."…
pontiff | October 2, 2009This morning Mrs. Pontiff read me a review out of the New York Times for the film "A Serious Man." The opening paragraph of the review gives you an idea why she thought it might be relevant to me:
Did you hear the one about the guy who lived in the land of Uz, who was perfect and upright and feared God? His name was Job. In the new movie version, "A Serious Man," some details have been changed. He's called Larry Gopnik and he lives in Minnesota, where he teaches physics at a university. When we first meet Larry, in the spring of 1967, his tenure case is pending, his son's bar mitzvah is…
pontiff | May 21, 2009From Pravda, some pretty serious funny: Quantum transition to transform mankind in 2012.
We begin, as on any other day, with prediction of doomsday:
Russian scientists predict another doomsday. In their opinion, quantum transition will begin in 2012 according to the ancient Maya calendar.
But how, you ask, will this quantum transition occur?
Scientists say that an extremely powerful catalyst will be neccesary to trigger quantum transition. They say that a powerful solar flare will be enough.
Of course, why didn't I think of that: a solar flare to set off a quantum transition. But wait,…
pontiff | May 2, 2009Quantum ghosts, dynamical decoupling, why a diamond is forever in quantum computing, transversal press, quantum phrases I can't grok, and quantum jumping.
Quantum ghosts: here and here. These articles describe the work reported in Laing, Rudolph, and O'Brien. "Experimental Quantum Process Discrimination." Phys. Rev. Lett., 102, 160502 (2009) arXiv:0801.3831. The idea is to discriminate "non-orthogonal" quantum processes via the use of entanglement, which is cool. (I'm a bit surprised that this classic paper is not referenced.)
Optimized dynamical decoupling performed in ions at NIST.…
pontiff | April 6, 2009Scott the optimizer asks a question on a wim:
Come up with a catchy name for growth rates of the form 2^(n^&alpha) , 0<&alpha<1.
I thought the answer was obvious: "probably in BQP."
update: does html superscript not work in a blockquote? I guess the answer is yes.
pontiff | November 19, 2008Over at Uncertain Principles, the uncertainty father has a couple of posts up about parallel universes the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. Which reminded me of a rant I've been needing to write (sorry a bit of technical jargon to follow.)
History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: 'I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself.' The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: 'Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like…
pontiff | November 15, 2008I'm in Halifax, Nova Scotia...eh. For some reason they have a parade at night in November with floats containing Santa and reindeer (obligatory crappy cell phone picture to follow):
Yeah, what the hell?
Interesting conference, I'm attending. I haven't been at a conference in ages where disagreed with so many of the talks!
For example, I learned that many many people have got it all wrong and quantum error isn't possible because we haven't thought about the role of phase errors properly (sadly I didn't get to hear about the twin paradox.) I also learned form an older, well established…
pontiff | September 30, 2008A quantum physics spotting in....rugby? An article about rugby player Jonny Wilkinson:
The experiment was conceived by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödin-ger to demonstrate a conundrum at the heart of quantum physics: that a sub-atomic particle exists in two states. However, the act of measuring it effectively forces it into one particular state, rather as England's discounted second-half try in the 2007 World Cup Final appeared to many fans to be both a try and not a try, until the referee called for a video replay.
Oye vey:
He realised that his entire world-view was bound up with a…
pontiff | September 28, 2008From this Sunday's New York Times in an article entitled Wall Street, R.I.P.:
In search of ever-higher returns -- and larger yachts, faster cars and pricier art collections for their top executives -- Wall Street firms bulked up their trading desks and hired pointy-headed quantum physicists to develop foolproof programs.
Quantum physicists? Come on media get it right. I'm pretty sure those were string theorists who ruined America ;)
Personally I think we should use the association of Ph.D. physicists as the cause of the Wall Street mess to lobby for higher science funding. "Sure you could…
pontiff | August 7, 2008Summer school in November, Quantum crypto is to legit to quit, quantum Pagerank, and no prayer in quantum prayer.
An email about a summer school in Australia:
Dear Colleagues
Please forgive us if you receive this multiple times...
We would like to circulate notice of the inaugural 2008 Asher Peres International Summer School in Physics
which will take place in Chowder Bay, Sydney Harbor, from 17-22 November 2008 in memory of Professor Asher Peres
The 2008 school is entitled: From Qubits to Black Holes
and is organised jointly between Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia), and the Technion…
pontiff | May 30, 2008Sometimes you find one that is just so over the top that it brings a smile to your face. It starts out okay,
The doughnut shaped universe spinning about a central axis of quantum singularity
India Daily Technology Team
May 26, 2008
An unexpected patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - the relic radiation left behind by the Big Bang points to the fact that the universe is donut shaped and finite. The cosmologists are stunned by the fact that cosmologists were surprised to find that longer wavelengths were missing from measurements of the CMB made by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave…
pontiff | May 6, 2008New leader at the Perimeter Institute this Friday, Perimeter researcher wins prestigious award, a summer school on quantum cryptography, the answer is not quantum physics, and quarter charge quasiparticles for quantum computing.
Looks like the Perimeter Institute, without whom jobs in quantum computing theory would be scarcer a Wii at Christmas time, is going to announce its new executive director this Friday, May 9.
In other Perimeter Institute quantum computing news, Raymond Laflamme, has won the Premier's Discovery Award. The picture on that announcement makes Ray look very intense!…
pontiff | April 2, 2008Eat anything you want and lose weight? How? By using quantum physics of course!:
Freedom From Food looks at food and weight from a unique vantage point. It examines the mind/body connection - how your thoughts and emotions affect your body. The book points out that there is abundant scientific evidence in quantum physics to show that our thoughts and emotions directly affect our physical form. From this perspective, food is not seen as "good" or "bad" for the body.
I'm still looking through the postulates of quantum physics to find how thoughts and emotions are used in quantum theory?…
pontiff | March 31, 2008Postdoc in Italy, AQIS 2008 Call for Papers, the Register reports on QUEST, and the New Scientist morphs into the No Scientist.
There is a postdoc position available in Italy:
A Post Doctoral fellowship in Quantum Information Theory is available at the University of Camerino, Department of Physics, associated with the EU project "Correlated Noise Errors in Quantum Information Processing" (CORNER FP7-ICT-2007).
The research work consists in the development of optimal encoding and decoding procedures for quantum memory channels. This should be done in connection with the channels…
pontiff | January 8, 2008Holy mother of quack science, Neuroquantology. But that withstanding, some of you real scientists should really satisfy their call for reviewers. I mean think how much fun you could have tearing holes in their papers :
We need additional reviewers:
Since in our interdisciplinary Journal we seek for holistic approach to science and particularly in neurobiology and consciousness studies, we strongly encourage authors that submit reviews that aim popularization of the recent advances of Quantum Field Theory (QFT), Relativity, String and Brane Theories, Evolution, Chaotic Dynamics, Nonlinear…
pontiff | December 22, 2007Superexchange in optical lattices, factoring 15 in a linear optics quantum computer, quantum plagarism peaceful resolution, silicon and gallium arsinide quantum computers, and quantum mumbo jumbo in support of the ideas popularly known as God.
Superexchange demonstrated in an optical lattice by Immanuel Bloch's group in Germany.
Quantum leaps: Brisbane Times and UQ News Online report on Andrew White factoring 15 with a linear optics quantum computer. The preprint for this paper is arXiv:0705.1398. I didn't check, but I bet they got 15 equals 3 times 5.
A resolution to the quantum…
pontiff | December 14, 2007Murray Gell-Mann always makes me laugh. Via Asymptotia here is what Murray said while giving a Ted talk:
I won't go into a lot of stuff about quantum mechanics and what it's like and so on...you've heard a lot of wrong things about it anyway!
Which got me wondering: is more said which is wrong about quantum theory than any other theory in physics? Now certainly there are those who will interpret Einstein's relativity (which one they probably won't tell you) as some postmodern "everything is relative" mantra. But (and maybe because I'm locked in a quantum closet all day) it seems to me that…
pontiff | December 5, 2007His Squidiness points to a real whopper of a silly article titled "Was Einstein Wrong About Special Relativity?" by Darrell Williams who is listed as a "Mathematician" and a "graduate of Arizona State University."
You know you're in for a "good" article when it begins
Many notable scientists such as the French mathematician, Henri Poincaré rejected Einstein's Theory of Relativity due to it's lack of sound mathematical procedures, absence of clearness of vision or rigorous arguments.
If by "many" he means "very few, and old guys who died in 1912" then this is a perfectly cromulent sentence…
pontiff | November 24, 2007Well it is certainly true that Mystics and quantum physicists speak the same language, that language most probably being Mandarin, English, or Hindi, but I'm guessing that's probably not what they meant by that title. I should have stopped reading at the title, but instead I actually scanned down the page.
Oy, this one starts out bad:
Quantum physicists have discovered to their amazement that, in the sub-atomic world, particles behave in very "unscientific and unpredictable" ways.
Well actually what physicists have discovered is that particles behave in a totally scientific manner. Their…