Support package A new report by the Institute of Physics calls on the government to incentivize quantum start-up firms in the UK. (Courtesy: iStock/Quardia) The UK government must be bold and ambitious to position the country as a world leader in the global quantum technologies market. So says a new report released last month by
Month: November 2022
Superposition on a massive scale: illustration of a mass-quantized black hole that was created using NightCafe Creator AI. (Courtesy: University of Queensland) Quantum superposition is not just a property of subatomic particles but also of the most massive objects in the universe. That is the conclusion of four theoretical physicists in Australia and Canada who
In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast the physicist Susanne Horn talks about the career of Donna Elbert, an American applied mathematician who worked on Nobel-prize-winning physics but did not get the credit she deserved. Based at Coventry University, Horn also talks about her recent research, which builds on Elbert’s pioneering work in
Cash generator The UK quantum start-up firm Universal Quantum has been awarded €67m from the German Aerospace Centre. (Courtesy: Universal Quantum) A British quantum start-up firm has been awarded one of the largest government quantum-computing contracts ever given to a single company. Universal Quantum has won the €67m contract from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to
Ever played that game where you jump around inside your house trying not to touch the floor because it’s made of lava? Nathan Hellner-Mestelman wonders what would happen if the floor really were made of hot, molten rock Dangerous stuff The aim is to avoid touching the ground when playing Floor is Lava – but
Medical television shows sometimes depict thoughts skipping across the brain as action potentials that ignite like exploding stars. While it looks dramatic and impressive, today’s brain imaging technologies can’t visualize brain activity so sensitively. A new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique called DIANA – direct imaging of neuronal activity – may get us closer, though.
Several ronnagrams: Earth as seen by the crew of Apollo 17. (Courtesy: NASA) Say hello to the first new SI prefixes since 1991. At the humongous end of the scale, ronna and quecca now denote 1027 and 1030 respectively. Apparently, the mass of the Earth is six ronnagrams, or 6 Rg. At the miniscule end of
You Can’t Tetris Your Way Out of Trauma Tetris I was never good at Tetris. I watch you move the L block, turn it so it fits with I. You don’t know I know you’re trying to arrange memories into an order that makes them disappear. After the desert, after the new scrap metal, after
It’s impossible to create a cohesive linear narrative out of chronic illness. There often isn’t an identifiable starting point, and there is even less often an identifiable stopping point. There are, instead, waves that rise and fall with each episode, each flare, each day spent trying to keep one’s head above water while pain tries
In August 2011, 19-year-old Mac Miller headlined Boston Urban Music Festival, a free show at City Hall Plaza outside Boston’s Government Center. It was the summer going into my sophomore year of high school. From a distance, I imagined how the festival would go down: my classmates smuggling booze in flattened Poland Springs water bottles,
I found my history classes in school to be mind-numbingly dull: just memorization of dates and battles, kings and presidents. Conspicuously missing from the pages of my textbooks were women. To make up for this, I turned to novels, where I found heroines who too often were tormented, passive, wringing their hands over a man.
A Bottle Girl More Flush Than Your Hedge Fund AJ Bermudez Share article Bottle Girl by AJ Bermudez Amy is twenty-one today. (Everyone is twenty-one today.) The club—seafoam green, on the insistence of a long-since-vanquished investor—thrums with the buzz of a thousand bees. Bass as buzz. Flirtation as buzz. Crane-necked/half-verified celebrity as buzz. Neon sign
How do you discuss something so intimate and uncomfortable as finding a spouse, without laughing or crying or cringing in embarrassment or fear? How do you talk about it without using the L-word? As in Luck. As in, you can plan and strategize as much as you want to, you can prepare as if you’re
The memoir Heretic opens with Jeanna Kadlec boarding a bus to the Middlesex County Courthouse in Massachusetts, where she is filing for divorce against her husband, an Evangelical Christian, and pastor’s son to boot. Kadlec is twenty-five and exhausted from the labor of suppressing her queerness. But, as a lifelong believer, she knows the consequences
A woman who lives on my street knocked at my door. She told me and her husband, members of the local historical society, had written a walking tour of our neighborhood, and she thought I might like a copy—it would cost three dollars. I did want a copy. It interests me that in the Vermont college town
The National Books Awards returned in full force on November 16, 2022 for a night of in-person glitz after two years of virtual ceremonies. In front of white tents where the literati gathered for photos on the red carpet, publishing workers with the HarperCollins Union, standing in the cold, handed out flyers and buttons about
Nicole Rodrigues, founder and CEO of the NRPR Group is an award-winning, trenchant powerhouse globally recognized and admired as a public relations guru and strategic media marketing pro. Headquartered in Beverly Hills with offices across the US, Nicole and her team have executed and developed marketing campaigns and strategies for huge game changers such as
As #TheSimonettaLeinShow continues its 5th season, the show welcomes the iconic American media blogger, Perez Hilton. As you all know, Perez has notoriously flooded tabloids with the juiciest celebrity news for the last few decades. Today Perez is the CEO of his own CBD brand, My True 10 Gummies, and a father of 3, although he still makes the