20101122

TEDxCaltech | Feynman's Vision: The Next 50 Years Caltech In recognition of the 50 year anniversaries of Richard Feynman's visionary talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" and the inauguration of his revolutionary "Feynman Lectures on Physics," the Institute will host TEDxCaltech on January 14, 2011. TEDxCaltech will be a dynamic celebration of Feynman's spirit, curiosity, and scientific vision, and will take ideas worth sharing from Caltech out into the world by celebrating Nobel Laureate, visionary, and “curious character” Richard Feynman, with the theme “Feynman’s Vision: The Next 50 Years.” Speakers include Scott Aaronson, Immanuel Bloch, Sean Carroll, John Preskill, Lenny SusskindDavid Awschalom, Kip Thorne, Charlie Marcus, Don Eigler, Michael Roukes, Craig Venter, and many more.
Future holds key to quantum physics—Obama awards National Medal of Science to Aharonov National Medal of Science  | As reported in USAToday, Yakir Aharanov of Chapman University was in Washington D.C. to collect a National Medal of Science this past week:

"The future is affecting the past—all the time, on the quantum level—allowing physicists to effectively select the future they want their particles to have, within limits, and amplifying the results for a desired outcome."

"I really believe we are close to a second revolution in physics as big as the one a century ago," Yakir Aharonov says. "I feel we are only beginning to free existing quantum theory and to do so, we must think of time in another way."

20101112



Quantum computers may be much easier to build than previously thought Physical Review Letters physorg, arXiv "Quantum computers should be much easier to build than previously thought, because they can still work with a large number of faulty or even missing components, according to a study published today in Physical Review Letters. This surprising discovery brings scientists one step closer to designing and building real-life quantum computing system—devices that could have enormous potential across a wide range of fields, from drug design, electronics, and even code-breaking."

Moving Towards Quantum Computing New York Times "Three major technologies have the potential to move from demonstration computers to practical, highly powerful machines. 'We’re at the stage of trying to develop these qubits in a way that would be like the integrated circuit that would allow you to make many of them at once,' said Rob Schoelkopf, a physicist who is leader of the Yale group. In the next few years you’ll see operations on more qubits, but only a handful. The good news is that while the number of qubits is increasing only slowly, the precision with which the researchers are able to control quantum interactions has increased a thousandfold."

Seth LloydQuantum effects in Biological Systems MIT cbc.ca "Lloyd's biological research, funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, looks at how living things use quantum computation [...] Bird navigation, plant photosynthesis and the sense of smell all represent ways living things appear to exploit the oddities of quantum physics."