Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Time Crystals and computer power



- 2069   - The laws of physics are supposed to be symmetrical in time and space.  Creators of the newly-announced time crystals are excited by the possibility of using their methods to accelerate the development of quantum computers.  Appendix lists the history and future for computer power.
-
-  

-
-----------------------------  2069  -.  Time Crystals and computer power
-
-  The laws of physics are supposed to be symmetrical in time and space. That means a ball thrown at a certain speed and in a certain direction would always go the same distance, no matter when you throw or where on Earth you throw it, assuming no other factors, like weather, came into play.
-
-  However, there are things that break space symmetry. Magnets have north and south poles, which means the magnetic spins of atoms within a magnet are not spread in all directions but aligned in one direction or another. The same is true of crystals. Though fixed in space, some atoms in a crystal have preferred positions, which makes them appear different based on where you observe them from.
-
-  Time symmetry never breaks. What if  you threw the ball once at 12pm on Friday, and then again at 10am on Tuesday, at the exact same speed in the exact same conditions ,and, the two throws went a completely different distance?   In the macro world, that would not happen. But as Albert Einstein once pointed out, things get “spooky ” at the atomic level. Perhaps at the atomic level it would be possible to create a type of matter that broke time symmetry,  called a “time crystal.”
-
-  Conventional thinking is that any system in the lowest energy state and in equilibrium would not be able to break time symmetry. By equilibrium, physicists mean that all molecules of, say, water in the liquid state have at least a certain amount of energy. If you add energy in the form of heat to liquid water, all the molecules that gain a certain amount of energy will reach a new equilibrium, becoming steam and enter a new state of matter. Every distinct state of matter we know about is in equilibrium.
-
-  If physicists could get matter to enter a non-equilibrium state, they could make time crystals. If they do, it would be a new state of matter.  Recently physicists have been able to show that such non-equilibrium states can be entered and matter in those states can be classified as types of time crystals.
-
-  They were using a system containing 10 charged atoms of the element ytterbium and four sets of lasers. One laser converted each of the ytterbium atoms into a magnet. Another laser caused disorder to ensure the atoms were in a non-equilibrium state. Then a third laser made the magnetic atoms to flip, similar to the north pole switched to the south pole in a large magnet. The combination of these three lasers caused the atoms to oscillate, but at twice the frequency at which their magnetic states were being flipped. The fourth laser was used to read the status of each atom to determine that they broke time symmetry.
-
-  A time crystal in a different system using a normal diamond but one that has lots of nitrogen atom impurities. Microwave pulses were used to flip the spins of the nitrogen atoms.  The frequency at which the atoms flipped their spin was different from the frequency of the pulses.
-
-  The creators of the newly-announced time crystals are excited by the possibility of using their methods to accelerate the development of quantum computers.  Quantum computers are predicted to be faster than any supercomputer that can be built with silicon chips.
-
-  Quantum computers require atoms to exist in entangled states, where changing the state of one automatically causes the other to change state too. At present, such states can be achieved only at extremely low temperatures.  These nitrogen atoms in the diamond were made to change position together at a constant frequency, meaning they were held in quantum entanglement  The breakthrough occurred at room temperature.
-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-  2072  -  Computer power, how small can they get?    Current chip design has cut the space between component parts on a chip down to a dozen nanometers.  Heat and power are the new challenges in chip design.
-
-  2032  -  Computers are joining embedded sensors and internet connectivity that will have appliances to voice commands.
-
-  This review list 5 other reviews about computer evolution, applications in the medical field, engineers using supercomputers, how computers will go faster, and how computers will get smaller and cheaper.
-
-  1847  -  The history of the computer and what it will be like over the next ten years?
-
-  1420  -  Super computers in the hands of engineers?  A new economy will be born.  
-
-  1373  -  How computers will get faster.  How do they compare with our brain power?
-
-  1130  -  What will continue to make computers smaller and cheaper?
-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Tuesday, May 8, 2018   --------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------





No comments:

Post a Comment