The Engine Ventures' CEO and Managing partner Katie Rae talks to Forbes’ Alex Knapp about its recent round of fundraising for investments in startups focused on sustainability, health and infrastructure. Rae also sees opportunities in quantum computing and other new hardware, saying “power and climate and compute all go together.”
For the first time ever, researchers at MIT have observed electrons form “fractional quasiparticles without enabling the influence of a magnetic field,” reports Daniel Garisto for Quanta Magazine. This discovery “may carry the seeds of long-sought quasiparticles with stable memories that could underpin a new and powerful approach to quantum computing.”
MIT physicists have “successfully placed two dysprosium atoms only 50 nanometers apart—10 times closer than previous studies—using ‘optical tweezers,’” reports Darren Orf for Popular Mechanics. Utilizing this technique can allow scientists to “better understand quantum phenomena such as superconductivity and superradiance,” explains Orf.
Science reporter Jennifer Sills asked scientists to answer the question: “Imagine that you meet all of your research goals. Describe the impact of your research from the perspective of a person, animal, plant, place, object, or entity that has benefited from your success.” Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao, a Schmidt Science Fellow in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, shares his response from a photon’s perspective. “I am a photon,” writes Cao. “I started my journey entangled with my significant other at the beginning of the Universe. In the past, humans couldn’t understand me, but then physicists created a quantum computer. At last, I have been reunited with my life partner!”
Prof. Long Ju and his colleagues observed the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect (FQAHE) when five layers of graphene were sandwiched between sheets of boron nitride, reports Dan Garisto for Nature. The findings are, “capturing physicists’ imagination because they are fundamentally new discoveries about how electrons behave,” writes Garisto.
A more than $40 million investment to add advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities to MIT.nano will significantly expand the center’s nanofabrication capabilities, reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe. The new equipment, which will also be available to scientists outside MIT, will allow “startups and students access to wafer-making equipment used by larger companies. These tools will allow its researchers to make prototypes of an array of microelectronic devices.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have uncovered “a major advancement in the development of ‘error correction,’ the process of fighting the subatomic deterioration that makes most quantum computers today unhelpful for more than research purposes,” reports Derek Robertson for Politico.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have successfully linked together two molecules in special quantum states, reports Pandora Dewan for Newsweek. “The discovery may lead to more robust quantum computing and support new research techniques,” writes Dewan.
MIT researchers have successfully figured out how to trap tiny electrons in a three-dimensional crystal prison, reports Jess Thomson for Newsweek. The researchers hope that “the flat band properties of the electrons in these crystals will help them to explore new quantum states in three-dimensional materials,” Thomson explains, “and therefore develop technology like superconductors, supercomputing quantum bits, and ultraefficient power lines.”
Researchers from Atlantic Quantum, an MIT startup building quantum computers, have published new research showing “the architecture of the circuits underlying its quantum computer produces far fewer errors than the industry standard,” reports Rashi Shrivastava for Forbes.
MIT researchers are hoping to use Dyson maps “to translate the language of classical physics into terms that a quantum computer—a machine designed to solve complex quandaries by leveraging the unique properties of quantum particles—can understand,” reports Darren Orf for Popular Mechanics.
MIT scientists have developed a new way of colliding ultracold molecules while controlling the rate at which they react, reports Martijn Boerkamp for Physics World. “Our work is a step to achieve quantum control over molecular collisions and reactions and to map out more broadly the collisional properties of these molecules with the goal of finding a deeper understanding,” explains Prof. Wolfgang Ketterle.
Gizmodo reporter Isaac Schultz writes that researchers from MIT, Caltech and elsewhere have found that “quantum systems can imitate wormholes, theorized shortcuts in spacetime, in that the systems allow the instantaneous transit of information between remote locations.” Grad student Alexander Zlokapa explains that: “We performed a kind of quantum teleportation equivalent to a traversable wormhole in the gravity picture. To do this, we had to simplify the quantum system to the smallest example that preserves gravitational characteristics so we could implement it.”
Physicists from MIT and elsewhere have created a small “wormhole” effect between two quantum systems on the same processor and were able to send a signal through it, reports Charlotte Hu for Popular Science. This new model is a “way to study the fundamental problems of the universe in a laboratory setting,” writes Hu.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have created a holographic wormhole using Google’s Sycamore quantum computer, reports Sarah Wells for Vice. “The researchers created an entangled state (a quantum mechanical phenomena where distant particles can still communicate with each other) between two halves of a quantum computer and sent a message in between,” writes Wells. “This message was scrambled as it entered the system and, through entanglement, unscrambled on the other side.”