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Posted on Apr 18, 2021 in Science

Another amazing week on Planet Earth, with news stories ranging from quantum computers are revealing an unexpected new theory of reality to James Benfords search for extraterrestrial artifacts to the 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex that lived during the species 2.4 million years of existence on Earth.

Quantum computers are revealing an unexpected new theory of realityA powerful new idea about how the laws of physics work could bring breakthroughs on everything from quantum gravity to consciousness, says researcher Chiara Marletto for New Scientist.

How Many Alien Probes Could Have Visited Earth? Asks James Benford for Centauri DreamsBenford is continuing his research into the still nascent field known as SETA, the Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts. A plasma physicist and CEO of Microwave Sciences, Benford became intrigued with recent discoveries about Earth co-orbital objects there is even a known Earth Trojan and their possibilities in a SETI context. If we accept the possibility that an extraterrestrial civilization may at some point in Earths 4.5 billion year history have visited the Solar System, where might we find evidence of it?

How many T. rex roamed the ancient Earth? During 2.4 million years of existence on Earth, a total of 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex ever lived, and 20,000 individual animals would have been alive at any moment, according to a new calculation method we described in a paper published on April 15, 2021 in the journal Science, reports The Conversation.

How Many Tyrannosaurus Rexes Ever Lived on Earth? Heres a New Clue, reports The New York Times. An estimation of the iconic predators total population can teach us things about dinosaurs that fossils cannot.

Astronomers Peer Through the Fog at Milky Ways Supermassive Black Hole Is It Emitting a Jet Angled Toward Earth? reports Jackie Faherty for The Daily Galaxy In 2019 astronomers lifted the veil on the monster black hole called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) at the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy. Using computer modelling, the scientists simulated the material inside the thick cloud of plasma, dust and gas surrounding Sgr A*. The results pointed to the possibility of a relativistic jet with an inclination that is aligned with Earths viewing point.

Carbon dioxide levels are higher than theyve been at any point in the last 3.6 million years, reports CBS News Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane levels in the atmosphere continued to rise in 2020, with CO2 level reaching their highest point in 3.6 million years, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The barrier was broken despite a reduction in expected emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A New State of Matter Black Hole Physics of Strange Metals reports Jackie Faherty, astrophysicist, Senior Scientist with AMNH for The Daily Galaxy. Jackie was formerly a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The Future of American Radio Astronomy Now Depends on China, reports Sarah Scoles for The Atlantic.

Muons: Strong evidence found for a new force of nature, reports The BBC All of the forces we experience every day can be reduced to just four categories: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force. Now, physicists say they have found possible signs of a fifth fundamental force of nature.

Googles New 3D Time-Lapse Feature Shows How Humans Are Affecting the Planet, reports Sam Rutherford for Gizmodo Described by Google Earth director Rebecca Moore as the biggest update to Google Earth since 2017, Timelapse in Google Earth combines more than 24 million satellite photos, two petabytes of data, and 2 million hours of CPU processing time to create a 4.4-terapixel interactive view showing how the Earth has changed from 1984 to 2020.

The New Historian of the Smash That Made the Himalayas, reports Robin George Andrews for Quanta About 60 million years ago, India plowed into Eurasia and pushed up the Himalayas. But when Luca Prez-Daz reconstructed the event in detail, she found that its central mystery depended on a broken geological clock.

These Ants Shrink Their Brains for a Chance to Become Queen If their bids at motherhood fail, they can then regrow their brains, reports Annie Roth for The New York Times.

Physicists have created a new and extremely rare kind of uranium, reports New ScientistResearchers have produced the lightest version of a uranium atom ever. It has only 122 neutrons compared with the 146 neutrons found in more than 99 per cent of the worlds naturally occurring uranium, which is known as uranium-238.

New Genomic Study of Placenta Finds Deep Links to Cancer, reports Max Kozlov for Quanta A patchwork of genomic differences in the placenta may explain the organs live fast, die young strategy and its connections to cancer.

The alphabet may have been invented 500 years earlier than we thought, reports New Scientist The early history of the alphabet may require rewriting. Four clay artefacts found at an ancient site in Syria are incised with what is potentially the earliest alphabetic writing ever found. The discovery suggests that the alphabet emerged 500 years earlier than we thought, and undermines leading ideas about how it was invented.

The Genetic Mistakes That Could Shape Our Species, reports Zaria Gorvett for BBC Future New technologies may have already introduced genetic errors to the human gene pool. How long will they last? And how could they affect us? He Jiankui with Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China had made the first genetically modified babies in the history of humankind. After 3.7 billion years of continuous, undisturbed evolution by natural selection, a life form had taken its innate biology into its own hands. The result was twin baby girls who were born with altered copies of a gene known as CCR5, which the scientist hoped would make them immune to HIV.

How Radio Astronomy Reveals the Universe, reports QuantaRadio waves, longer and less energetic than visible light, give astronomers access to some of the most obscure physics in the cosmos.

Geoffrey Hinton Has a Hunch About Whats Next for Artificial Intelligence, reports Siobhan Roberts for MIT Technology ReviewBack in November, the computer scientist and cognitive psychologist Geoffrey Hinton had a hunch. After a half-centurys worth of attemptssome wildly successfulhed arrived at another promising insight into how the brain works and how to replicate its circuitry in a computer.

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Planet Earth Report Unexpected New Quantum Theory of Reality to an Earth-Trojan Alien Probe? - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

A powerful new idea about how the laws of physics work could bring breakthroughs on everything from quantum gravity to consciousness, says researcher Chiara Marletto

By Chiara Marletto

Manshen Lo

QUANTUM supremacy is a phrase that has been in the news a lot lately. Several labs worldwide have already claimed to have reached this milestone, at which computers exploiting the wondrous features of the quantum world solve a problem faster than a conventional classical computer feasibly could. Although we arent quite there yet, a general-purpose universal quantum computer seems closer than ever a revolutionary development for how we communicate and encrypt data, for virtual reality, artificial intelligence and much more.

These prospects excite me as a theoretical physicist too, but my colleagues and I are captivated by an even bigger picture. The quantum theory of computation originated as a way to deepen our understanding of quantum theory, our fundamental theory of physical reality. By applying the principles we have learned more broadly, we think we are beginning to see the outline of a radical new way to construct laws of nature.

It means abandoning the idea of physics as the science of whats actually happening, and embracing it as the science of what might or might not happen. This science of can and cant could help us tackle some of the big questions that conventional physics has tried and failed to get to grips with, from delivering an exact, unifying theory of thermodynamics and information to getting round conceptual barriers that stop us merging quantum theory with general relativity, Einsteins theory of gravity. It might go even further and help us to understand how intelligent thought works, and kick-start a technological revolution that would make quantum supremacy look modest by comparison.

Since the dawn of modern physics in

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Quantum computers are revealing an unexpected new theory of reality - New Scientist

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., April 16, 2021 Beth Plale, the Michael A. and Laurie Burns McRobbie Bicentennial Professor of Computer Engineering in the Indiana University Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, has been named the new executive director of theIU Pervasive Technology Institute.

The role marks Plales return to IU after a three-year stint at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., as science advisor for public access.

The Pervasive Technology Institute was founded in 1999 by then IU Vice President for Information Technology Michael A. McRobbie, now IU president, to help IU become a leader in the use and application of information technology. It was seeded through a $30 million grant from Lilly Endowment.

In the years since, the Pervasive Technology Institute has garnered $123.6 million in public grant awards and $12.7 million in private funding for research and innovation at IU.

The institute comprises 10 affiliated research centers, focused on using technology to tackle problems such as human health, cybersecurity and the impact of global climate change. Staff create software, deliver information and services, and support and provision a world-class cyberinfrastructure.

Beth is one of Indiana Universitys most accomplished and innovative professors, McRobbie said. Throughout her distinguished career, she has led numerous projects to ensure that high-performance computing and new technologies are being used in socially responsible ways and in ways that truly make a positive impact on peoples lives.

She has also been a leader in the area of open science, ensuring that vast amounts of important digital material are more readily available to leading scholars and scientists. As such, Beth is well-positioned to lead IUs Pervasive Technology Institute into the future and to further the successful efforts of the institute to advance research, creativity and innovation within and well beyond the university.

Beth Plale is an IU success story in all that she has achieved as an internationally recognized leader and highly experienced center director, said Rob Lowden, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer. She has demonstrated an ability to innovate and lead in the integration of technology, big data and effective organizations, and I am confident she will continue to demonstrate IUs leadership in this third decade of PTI.

Plale, who also is director of theData to Insight Centerat IU, has been a professor at the Luddy School since 2001 and is the founding director of theHathiTrust Research Center. She has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly publications for highly selective journals and conference proceedings, and she has been responsible for over $50 million in externally funded research.

In addition, Plale is among a dozen international researchers who founded the now more than 10,000-memberResearch Data Alliance, whose mission is to reduce barriers to data sharing. She also helped to found the IU BloomingtonCenter of Excellence for Women in Technologyand now serves in an advisory board role.

Its an honor to be named executive director of the Pervasive Technology Institute, and Im excited by the opportunities this new role presents, Plale said. IUs expertise and capacity in cyberinfrastructure have contributed substantially to the universitys strong national reputation, attracting scores of talented faculty, staff and students. I intend to capitalize on these strengths to nurture new growth in both research and workforce development,benefiting both our state and the world, with priority given to artificial intelligence and data services.

Plales research interest and expertise is in the areas of smart and connected communities, open science and responsible artificial intelligence in high-performance computing. Through her work with the Data to Insight Center, she researches new tools, frameworks and organizational approaches for socially responsible application of new technology in smart and connected communities. Because HPC is being used in ways that increasingly touch peoples lives, Plales work examines new technical and cultural approaches that enable more transparency in science, open science and responsible use.

Plale succeeds Brian Voss, who has been interim executive director of the Pervasive Technology Institute since September 2020, and Craig Stewart, who retired in 2020 after 12 years as executive director.

Source:Indiana University

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Beth Plale Named Executive Director of Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute - HPCwire

For the past few years, the main mechanism used by the U.S. against China in the U.S.-Chinese tech war has been Executive Orders limiting (or even banning) certain software and drones manufactured and/or owned by Chinese companies from use by government agencies. Now, instead of only playing defense against Chinese technology, Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Todd Young (R-IN) have teamed up to support the Endless Frontier Act (Act). Originally introduced in 2020, S. 3832 will be revamped and made a keystone of this new Act.

The bipartisan group in Congress seeks to invest in U.S. education, science, and technology as well as research and development. This Act would invest $100 billion in these areas over a five-year period. The Act, as originally submitted, would rename the National Science Foundation as the National Science and Technology Foundation, and establish two Deputy Directors, one for Science and one for Technology.

The Deputy Director of Technology would oversee a newly created Directorate for Technology whose goals include:

The ten key focus areas would be:

For the drone industry this is great news. The Act would increase scholarships, fellowships and other student support in areas including AIML, automation, robotics and advanced manufacturing, which are all important to autonomous flight. However, the fate of the Endless Frontier Act is still unknown. We will follow its path through Congress and see if it may pave the way for more legislation like it.

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The Endless Frontier Act: Shifting the Focus from Defense to Offense - JD Supra

Quantum computing can get pretty esoteric in a hurry, so we won't bother trying to hash it out beyond the basic premise, which is that there are some problems too complex for even the world's biggest and most sophisticated supercomputers. Quantum computers deal with the sorts of problems for which there's an almost incalculable amount of data, and in theory can crunch all that data in a hurry.

"Universal quantum computers" this is from IBM "leverage the quantum mechanical phenomena of superposition and entanglement to create states that scale exponentially with number of qubits, or quantum bits."

Evidently, issues surrounding the world's pathogens, including the ominous horizon of viral global pandemics, are ripe for investigation via this sort of big data computing. The so-called "Discovery Accelerator" program between the Clinic and IBM aims to do just that. The whole point, via the press materials, is to accelerate the pace of discovery in medical research.

As part of this partnership, IBM announced that it willinstall its first U.S.-based private sector "Quantum System One" on Cleveland Clinics campus in Cleveland. In a press release, IBM said it also planned to install "the first of IBMs next-generation 1,000+ qubit quantum systems at a client facility," also in Cleveland, in the coming years.

Much of quantum computing remains entirely theoretical, and the costs associated with the construction and maintenance of these high-tech machines remain under wraps, but if successful these IBM machines will facilitate ongoing research in healthcare, and are being touted as key ingredients for medical and pharmaceutical breakthroughs. Like dozens of other fashionable partnerships and local real estate development projects in recent years, this, too, is being celebrated as an opportunity to put Cleveland on the map.

The partnership comes, however, after both Cleveland and IBM have had disappointing forays into the arenas of big data and artificial intelligence to solve social ills.

In Cleveland, the Unify Project, a mercurial high-tech nonprofit that was meant to use big data and AI to end poverty (or something), crumbled without ever producing much of anything. It is now Unify Labs, or perhaps Unify Jobs, and appears to have pivoted into an equity and inclusion-focused job board.

For its part, IBM recently put Watson Healthup for sale, the Wall Street Journal reported. This was the company's "audacious" plan to help doctors diagnose and cure cancer, among other things, with artificial intelligence. A report in the medical journal STAT found that mismanagement, rapid turnover via layoffs and departures and a culture where marketing was prioritized over science led to the internal combustion of the multibillion-dollar enterprise.

But quantum computing! In an innovation district! That's something else entirely, and something that the overwhelmingly impoverished residents in the zip codes surrounding the Clinic's campus will no doubt enthusiastically get behind.

Through this innovative collaboration, we have a unique opportunity to bring the future to life, said Tom Mihaljevic, President and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, in a press release. These new computing technologies can help revolutionize discovery in the life sciences. The Discovery Accelerator will enable our renowned teams to build a forward-looking digital infrastructure and help transform medicine, while training the workforce of the future and potentially growing our economy.

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Cleveland Clinic to be First U.S. Site of IBM "Quantum Computer" for Advanced Healthcare Research - Cleveland Scene