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Categories: Biology: Evolutionary, Physics: Quantum Computing

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Physicists have taken a first step in understanding quantum emergence -- the transition from 'one-to-many' particles -- by studying not one, not many, but two isolated, interacting particles. The result is a first, small step toward understanding natural quantum systems, and how they can lead to more powerful and effective quantum simulations. The team has measured the strength of a type of interaction -- known as 'p-wave interactions' -- between two potassium atoms. P-wave interactions are weak in naturally occurring systems, but researchers had long predicted that they have a much higher maximum theoretical limit. The team is the first to confirm that the p-wave force between particles reached this maximum.

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90% of the plants and animals on Madagascar are found nowhere else on Earth, but this treasure trove of evolution is under serious threat due to habitat loss, over-hunting, and climate change. In this study, researchers examined how long it took Madagascar's unique modern mammal species to emerge and estimated how long it would take for a similarly complex set of new mammal species to evolve in their place if the endangered ones went extinct: 23 million years, far longer than scientists have found for any other island.

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An optical fiber that uses the mathematical concept of topology to remain robust, thereby guaranteeing the high-speed transfer of information, has been created by physicists.

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All chlamydiae today live inside the cells of hosts ranging from amoeba to animals. A team of scientists found that the ancestor of chlamydiae likely already lived inside host cells, but that chlamydiae infecting amoeba evolved later in ways unexpected for intracellular bacteria. The study is an important step for understanding the emergence and evolution of endosymbiotic bacteria, including human pathogens.

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Lizards living in different cities have parallel genomic markers when compared to neighboring forest lizards, according to a new study. The genetic variations linked to urbanization underlie physical differences in the urban lizards, including longer limbs and larger toe pads that show how these lizards have evolved to adapt to city environments.

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Smallpox was once one of humanity's most devastating diseases, but its origin is shrouded in mystery. For years, scientific estimates of when the smallpox virus first emerged have been at odds with historical records. Now, a new study reveals that the virus dates back 2,000 years further than scientists have previously shown, verifying historical sources and confirming for the first time that the disease has plagued human societies since ancient times.

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Researchers have demonstrated an architecture that can enable high fidelity and scalable communication between superconducting quantum processors. Their technique can generate and route photons, which carry quantum information, in a user-specified direction. This method could be used to develop a large-scale network of quantum processors that could efficiently communicate with one another.

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What genetic changes are responsible for the evolution of phenotypic traits? This question is not always easy to answer. A newly developed method now makes the search much easier.

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Nuclear physicists have found a new way to use the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to see the shape and details inside atomic nuclei. The method relies on particles of light that surround gold ions as they speed around the collider and a new type of quantum entanglement that's never been seen before.

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Researchers have created visible lasers of very pure colors from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared that fit on a fingertip. The colors of the lasers can be precisely tuned and extremely fast -- up to 267 petahertz per second, which is critical for applications such as quantum optics. The team is the first to demonstrate chip-scale narrow-linewidth and tunable lasers for colors of light below red -- green, cyan, blue, and violet.

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Much of modern electronic and computing technology is based on one idea: add chemical impurities, or defects, to semiconductors to change their ability to conduct electricity. These altered materials are then combined in different ways to produce the devices that form the basis for digital computing, transistors, and diodes. Indeed, some quantum information technologies are based on a similar principle: adding defects and specific atoms within materials can produce qubits, the fundamental information storage units of quantum computing.

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Two seemingly different areas of physics are related in subtle ways: Quantum theory and thermodynamics. How can the laws of thermodynamics arise from the laws of quantum physics? This question has now been pursued with computer simulations, which showed that chaos plays a crucial role: Only where chaos prevails do the well-known rules of thermodynamics follow from quantum physics.

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Quantum dots are normally made in industrial settings with high temperatures and toxic, expensive solvents -- a process that is neither economical nor environmentally friendly. But researchers have now pulled off the process at the bench using water as a solvent, making a stable end-product at room temperature. Their work opens the door to making nanomaterials in a more sustainable way by demonstrating that protein sequences not derived from nature can be used to synthesize functional materials.

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Mathematical analysis identifies a vortex structure that is impervious to decay.