Science By Press Release
pontiff | September 2, 2008Over hyped press releases are a standard for quantum computing research and a stable of what makes me sound like a grumpy old man. Really I'm not that grumpy (really! reall!), but I always forget to post the stuff which isn't over hyped. For example, today I stumbled upon an article about a recent experimental implementation of a code for overcoming qubit loss done in China. In this article I find a graduate student whose was able to get a reasonable quote into the article:While optimistic critics are acclaiming the newly achieved progress, the team, however, is cautiously calm. "There…
pontiff | August 6, 2008Hot off the presses!In an amazing breakthrough, which this press release has no room to describe in any real detail, scientists at research university BigU have made tremendous progress in the field of quantum computing. The results mean that quantum computers are one step closer to replacing your laptop computer
Quantum computers work by some mechanism that we don't have the time to understand. But we are sure our researchers will explain it to you, but you won't understand anyways, so why ask them? It's definitely got something to do with multiple universes and bits that are both zero…
pontiff | March 20, 2008Dear Digg, no, this article and press release do not mean that Scientists Invent Room Temperature Superconducting Material. It means that scientists have put molecular silane under hundreds of giga-Pascals presures (for comparison, atmospheric pressure is 100 kilo-Pascals) at a temperature of around 20 Kelvin, and gotten it to superconduct. While this is certainly cool, it is not "room temperature" as far as I can tell.
One day I was driving down the road and listening to AM radio when Paul Harvey came on and did his schtick ("and now you know, the rest of the story.") At one point in the…
pontiff | November 7, 2007
What's that you say Dave? Dogs may be able to think about what their owners are thinking? Sounds like interesting research, Dave. If someone could actually find the real research and not just this science by press release, I would really like to read the paper, Dave! And then I'd like to chew it up and hide it in the backyard.