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Category: computing – Page 100

Astronomers have published a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects — the most detailed one ever made. Using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, the team monitored the central regions of our Galaxy over more than 13 years. At 500 terabytes of data, this is the largest observational project ever carried out with an ESO telescope.

“We made so many discoveries, we have changed the view of our Galaxy forever,” says Dante Minniti, an astrophysicist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile who led the overall project.

This record-breaking map comprises 200,000 images taken by ESO’s VISTA — the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. Located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, the telescope’s main purpose is to map large areas of the sky. The team used VISTA’s infrared camera VIRCAM, which can peer through the dust and gas that permeates our galaxy. It is therefore able to see the radiation from the Milky Way’s most hidden places, opening a unique window onto our galactic surroundings.

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A team of Chinese researchers, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, has demonstrated that D-Wave’s quantum annealing computers can crack encryption methods that safeguard sensitive global data.

This breakthrough, published in the Chinese Journal of Computers, emphasizes that quantum machines are closer than expected to threatening widely used cryptographic systems, including RSA and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

The research team’s experiments focused on leveraging D-Wave’s quantum technology to solve cryptographic problems. In their paper, titled “Quantum Annealing Public Key Cryptographic Attack Algorithm Based on D-Wave Advantage,” the researchers explained how quantum annealing could transform cryptographic attacks into combinatorial optimization problems, making them more manageable for quantum systems.

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How do we assess quantum advantage when exact classical solutions are not available?

A quantum advantage is a demonstration of a solution for a problem for which a quantum computer can provide a demonstrable improvement over any classical method and classical resources in terms of accuracy, runtime…

Today, algorithms designed to solve this problem mostly rely on what we call variational methods, which are algorithms guaranteed to output an energy for a target system which cannot be lower than the exact solution — or the deepest valley — up to statistical uncertainties. An ideal quality metric for the ground state problem would not only allow the user to benchmark different methods against the same problem, but also different target problems when tackled by the same method.

So, how can such an absolute metric be defined? And what would be the consequences of finding this absolute accuracy metric?

We construct our accuracy metric from an estimation of the energy and its variance for any specific algorithm used to solve the ground state problem, with additional parameters of the system such as the size and the nature of its interactions. We call this metric “variational-score,” or and show that it is an absolute metric for this benchmark.

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A research team led by National Tsing Hua University Department of Physics and Center for Quantum Science and Technology professor Chuu Chih-sung (褚志崧) has developed Taiwan’s first and the world’s smallest quantum computer, using a single photon, the university said yesterday.

Chuu said in the…

Bringing taiwan to the world and the world to taiwan.

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Researchers have discovered how the “edge of chaos” can help electronic chips overcome signal losses, making chips simpler and more efficient.

By using a metallic wire on a semi-stable material, this method allows for long metal lines to act like superconductors and amplify signals, potentially transforming chip design by eliminating the need for transistor amplifiers and reducing power usage.

Revolutionizing chip design with the edge of chaos.

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Australian, American and British researchers conducted a prospective analysis of light levels in almost 89 thousand people and concluded that more light exposure at night and less during the day are associated with an increased risk of death from all causes.

Light enhances or disrupts circadian rhythms, depending on the timing of exposure. Circadian disruption contributes to poor health outcomes that increase mortality risk. Whether personal light exposure predicts mortality risk has not been established. We therefore investigated whether personal day and night light, and light patterns that disrupt circadian rhythms, predicted mortality risk. UK Biobank participants (N = 88,905, 62.4 ± 7.8 y, 57% female) wore light sensors for 1 wk. Day and night light exposures were defined by factor analysis of 24-h light profiles. A computational model of the human circadian pacemaker was applied to model circadian amplitude and phase from light data. Cause-specific mortality was recorded in 3,750 participants across a mean (±SD) follow-up period of 8.0 ± 1.0 y.

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Are we alone in the universe? Are there other technological civilizations out there and how can we find them? This is what a recent preprint submitted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers led by Penn State University investigated new methods for detecting radio signals from extraterrestrial technological civilizations (ETIs). This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand and develop more efficient methods for detecting radio signals from ETIs and how we can continue to improve these methods.

For the study, instead of attempting to detect radio signals directed at Earth from an ETI, the researchers focused on radio signals that could potentially be traveling between planets, known as planet-planet occultations (PPOs). The team tested this method on the TRAPPIST-1 system, which boasts seven approximate Earth-sized worlds, and at least three orbiting within its star’s habitable zone (HZ). After using computer models to estimate the number of potential PPOs that could be found within the system, the researchers used the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) to scan the TRAPPIST-1 system for 28 hours with the goal of detecting radio signals emanating from ETIs. In the end, the researchers detected no signals, but this study opens the door for better understanding how to develop and improve methods for detecting ETI radio signals.

“This research shows that we are getting closer to technology and methods that could detect radio signals similar to the ones we send into space,” said Nick Tusay, who is a PhD student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State and lead author of the study. “Most searches assume a powerful signal, like a beacon intended to reach distant planets, because our receivers have a sensitivity limit to a minimum transmitter power beyond anything we unintentionally send out. But, with better equipment, like the upcoming Square Kilometer Array, we might soon be able to detect signals from an alien civilization communicating with its spacecraft.”

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