RememberTheApollo_

Google has made an eyebrow-raising claim, saying that its new quantum chip may be tapping into parallel universes to achieve its results.

The search giant recently unveiled a new quantum computer chip, dubbed Willow, which — on a specific benchmark, at least — the company says can outperform any supercomputer in the world.

"Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing," Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote in a blog post announcing the chip. "It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10²⁵ or 10 septillion years."

"This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe," he argued. "It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch."

Deutsch is a physicist who laid out his multiverse hypothesis in a 1997 book called "The Fabric of Reality," in which he suggested that quantum computers' calculations take place across multiple universes at the same time.

Put another way, Google is suggesting that its chip is so fast that its computations may have taken place across parallel universes — a bombastic statement that unsurprisingly drew plenty of skepticism online.

For one, the calculation Willow was tasked to solve wasn't really anything useful to anybody.

"The particular calculation in question is to produce a random distribution," German physicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder tweeted in response to Google's announcement. "The result of this calculation has no practical use."

"They use this particular problem because it has been formally proven (with some technical caveats) that the calculation is difficult to do on a conventional computer (because it uses a lot of entanglement)," she added. "That also allows them to say things like 'this would have taken a septillion years on a conventional computer' etc."

Willow is a 100-qubit, or quantum-bit, chip. Unlike conventional computers, which use zeroes and ones for a binary system, quantum computers rely on qubits, which can be on, off, or — counterintuitively — both thanks to quantum entanglement, the mysterious phenomenon that allows particles to influence each other's states even when separated by distance.

"It's exactly the same calculation that they did in 2019 on a circa 50 qubit chip," Hossenfelder wrote.

At the time, Google made a similarly bombastic claim, arguing that it had achieved "quantum supremacy," or "the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, regardless of whether those tasks are useful," as John Preskill, who first coined the term in 2012, wrote in a 2019 Quanta Magazine column.

That last part appears to be particularly relevant, given Google's latest claim.

"So while the announcement is super impressive from a scientific point of view and all, the consequences for everyday life are zero," Hossenfelder argued. "Estimates say that we will need about 1 million qubits for practically useful applications and we're still about 1 million qubits away from that."

The physicist also suggested that such wild claims may eventually "evaporate because some other group finds a clever way to do it on a conventional computer after all."

Google's claim of quantum supremacy drew immediate criticism in 2019, sparking a years-long feud between the company and quantum computing rival IBM. At the time, IBM researchers charged that Google had exaggerated its claims.

In a 2023 follow-up blog post, IBM researchers argued that the problem Google's quantum computer was instructed to solve in 2019 could be "performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity."

"This is in fact a conservative, worst-case estimate, and we expect that with additional refinements the classical cost of the simulation can be further reduced," the researchers wrote at the time.

In short, there's still a good reason to believe that Google's latest claim that Willow could be operating in the multiverse will be debunked. Apart from Deutsch's interpretation, researchers have also suggested that quantum particles are instead in a state of all positions before measurement, a theory known as the Copenhagen interpretation.

Where all of this leaves Google's breakthrough and its significance remains debatable.

But the company is already looking far ahead, promising to continue to scale up Willow to a point where it may actually become useful.

"This is the most convincing prototype for a scalable logical qubit built to date," Neven wrote in the announcement. "It’s a strong sign that useful, very large quantum computers can indeed be built."

A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.

Siri has been sitting alongside Kennedy in interviews in which they have asked candidates for top health jobs where they stand on vaccines, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Kennedy, a leading vaccine sceptic, has insisted he has no plans to revoke vaccines should he be confirmed by the US Senate for the health secretary position. But his close ties with Siri are raising concerns about the incoming Trump administration’s intentions, given the lawyer’s intimate involvement in the anti-vaccine movement.

Even in blue Colorado, vaccine advocates worry about RFK Jr’s appeal and ‘medical freedom’ movement

Read more

Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.

Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.

Siri has not only been involved in lawsuits calling for the withdrawal or suspension of the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, but he has also petitioned the FDA to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, according to the Times.

Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism. The remark to NBC suggests that his pick for health secretary may run with the conspiracy theory that there is a connection between childhood vaccinations and autism that has been thoroughly debunked yet is repeatedly peddled by Kennedy.

Kennedy’s spokesperson, Katie Miller, confirmed to the Times that Siri has been advising Kennedy but said his vaccine petitions had not been discussed.

“Mr Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice,” she said.

There have been internal concerns that Trump Media could be misleading investors, a source said. But with its largest shareholder about to be president, experts doubt the SEC is up to the job of investigating Truth Social’s parent company.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal

Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our Nation just gave a landslide…

Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our Nation just gave a landslide…

Miles of defunct, lead-covered telephone cables have long sat abandoned beneath the cerulean waters of Lake Tahoe. Now, after years of legal back-and-forth, the cables have been removed.

Scuba divers discovered the cables on the lake’s sandy, silty bottom in 2012. The cables consist of copper wires surrounded by a layer of lead sheathing. They were laid in Lake Tahoe decades ago—possibly as early as the 1920s—while telephone service was expanding across the United States. As technology advanced, telecom companies installed newer cables, but they left the old ones in place.

Over time, the Lake Tahoe cables suffered damage from boat anchors and debris. Health and environmental activists and residents grew concerned that the torn cables were leaching lead into the lake, which is a popular swimming destination and provides drinking water for some nearby households.

The cables’ origins are a little murky, but they are believed to have been originally installed by Bell Systems, which was later acquired by AT&T, as the San Francisco Chronicle’s Gregory Thomas reported in August. In 2021, the nonprofit California Sportfishing Protection Alliance filed a civil lawsuit against AT&T over the cables.

A 2023 Wall Street Journal investigation subsequently found abandoned, lead-covered telecommunications cables across the nation. The publication hired an environmental consulting firm to take soil and water samples from areas near the cables. Testing near the cables in Lake Tahoe showed lead levels that, in one sample, were 2,533 times higher than those recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to the Wall Street Journal.

AT&T disputed the claims that the cables had contaminated Lake Tahoe, and it commissioned its own lead tests that concluded the cables were “safe and pose no threat to public health nor the environment,” per its website. But the telecommunications company agreed to remove the cables anyway.

The U.K. Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing a legal challenge focusing on the definition of “woman” in a long-running dispute between a women’s rights campaign group and the Scottish government.

Five judges at Britain’s highest court were considering the case, which seeks to clarify whether a transgender person with a gender recognition certificate that recognizes them as female can be regarded as a woman under equality laws.

While the case centers on Scottish laws, the campaign group bringing the challenge, For Women Scotland (FWS), has said its outcomes could have U.K.-wide consequences for sex-based rights as well as everyday single-sex services such as toilets and hospital wards.

Space weather experts say auroras could be visible from 10 p.m. EST Thursday to 1 a.m. Friday EST, though it’s difficult to pin down an exact window. Updated forecasts may be available as the event draws closer on NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center website or an aurora forecasting app.

The engine for a new flagship small Japanese rocket burst into flames Tuesday during a combustion test, causing no injury or damage to the outside but destroying the engine and extensively damaging its test facility, officials said.

The second failure in a row raises concern about the progress of the Epsilon S rocket, whose debut flight is expected by March.

The test was conducted inside of the restricted area at Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is investigating, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.

An Epsilon project manager, Takayuki Imoto, told an online press conference from Tanegashina that the explosion occurred 49 seconds into the planned two-minute test, causing fire and scattering broken parts of the engine and damaging the facility.

“We are very sorry to have failed to live up to expectations,” Imoto said. He said the cause of the explosion was still under investigation. Project staff are trying to recover broken pieces to analyze and determine the cause as soon as possible to minimize the delay of the program, Imoto said.

Six monkeys were still on the loose early Monday after dozens escaped earlier this month from a South Carolina compound that breeds the primates for medical research, according to authorities.

Two more Rhesus macaques were trapped Sunday outside the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee, bringing the total of recovered monkeys to 37 of the 43 that escaped, Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard said in a statement relayed by Yemassee Police in a social media post.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, has not served in the military or had a civilian leadership role in the service. While officials and defense experts said the Navy is in sore need of a disruptor, they cautioned that Phelan’s lack of experience could make it more difficult for him to realize Trump’s goals.

Trump late Tuesday nominated Phelan, a major donor to his campaign who founded the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment on his qualifications. According to his biography, Phelan’s primary exposure to the military comes from an advisory position he holds on the Spirit of America, a non-profit that supports the defense of Ukraine and the defense of Taiwan.

Not all service secretaries come into the office with prior military experience, but he’d be the first in the Navy since 2006. Current Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth similarly does not have prior military service. She, however, has spent her career in a host of defense civilian positions.