Aug 15, 2020 03:36 AM
Scientists just identified the fastest-moving star in our galaxy, and it’s booking it
https://futurism.com/the-byte/star-movin...-spacetime
INTRO: The star S62 whips around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, at an extremely tight orbit. At its closest approach, it can travel faster than eight percent the speed of light, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. That’s fast enough to make visible the relativistic phenomena of time dilation and length contraction, turning the star into an interesting sandbox for curious physicists... (MORE)
There may be over a million genetic molecules — DNA is just one of them (chemistry)
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...-11112019/
EXCERPTS: All living things on Earth store information in genetic molecules: either DNA or RNA. But why is it that organisms use only two molecules to store genetic information? What makes DNA and RNA so special? Did the earliest life on Earth actually use a different molecule consisting of different building blocks? These are all important but also very difficult to answer questions — which is where a new study may come in handy. Researchers [...] used advanced computational methods to simulate possible nucleic acid-like molecules. They came up with over a million possibilities.
[..] “It is truly exciting to consider the potential for alternate genetic systems based on these analogous nucleosides -- that these might possibly have emerged and evolved in different environments, perhaps even on other planets or moons within our solar system. These alternate genetic systems might expand our conception of biology’s ‘central dogma’ into new evolutionary directions, in response and robust to increasingly challenging environments here on Earth,” Dr. Jay Goodwin, a chemist with Emory University and co-author of the new study, said in a statement. Besides fundamental science, there may also be practical applications for the new investigation, such as new drugs... (MORE - details)
Major quantum computational breakthrough is shaking up physics and maths (mathematics, physics)
https://theconversation.com/major-quantu...ths-136634
EXCERPTS: MIP* = RE is not a typo. It is a groundbreaking discovery and the catchy title of a recent paper in the field of quantum complexity theory. Complexity theory is a zoo of “complexity classes” – collections of computational problems – of which MIP* and RE are but two.
The 165-page paper shows that these two classes are the same. That may seem like an insignificant detail in an abstract theory without any real-world application. But physicists and mathematicians are flocking to visit the zoo, even though they probably don’t understand it all. Because it turns out the discovery has astonishing consequences for their own disciplines.
[...] Imagine an interaction between two entities, an interrogator and a prover. In a police interrogation, the prover may be a suspect attempting to prove their innocence. The interrogator must decide whether the prover is sufficiently convincing. There is an imbalance; knowledge-wise the interrogator is in an inferior position.
In complexity theory, the interrogator is the person, with limited computational power, trying to solve the problem. The prover is the new computer, which is assumed to have immense computational power. An interactive proof system is a protocol that the interrogator can use in order to determine, at least with high probability, whether the prover should be believed. By analogy, these are crimes that the police may not be able to solve, but at least innocents can convince the police of their innocence. This is the class IP.
If multiple provers can be interrogated, and the provers are not allowed to coordinate their answers (as is typically the case when the police interrogates multiple suspects), then we get to the class MIP. Such interrogations, via cross examining the provers’ responses, provide the interrogator with greater power, so MIP contains IP.
Quantum communication is a new form of communication carried out with qubits. Entanglement – a quantum feature in which qubits are spookishly entangled, even if separated – makes quantum communication fundamentally different to ordinary communication. Allowing the provers of MIP to share an entangled qubit leads to the class MIP*.
It seems obvious that communication between the provers can only serve to help the provers coordinate lies rather than assist the interrogator in discovering truth. For that reason, nobody expected that allowing more communication would make computational problems more reliable and solvable. Surprisingly, we now know that MIP* = RE. This means that quantum communication behaves wildly differently to normal communication... (MORE - details)
https://futurism.com/the-byte/star-movin...-spacetime
INTRO: The star S62 whips around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, at an extremely tight orbit. At its closest approach, it can travel faster than eight percent the speed of light, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. That’s fast enough to make visible the relativistic phenomena of time dilation and length contraction, turning the star into an interesting sandbox for curious physicists... (MORE)
There may be over a million genetic molecules — DNA is just one of them (chemistry)
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...-11112019/
EXCERPTS: All living things on Earth store information in genetic molecules: either DNA or RNA. But why is it that organisms use only two molecules to store genetic information? What makes DNA and RNA so special? Did the earliest life on Earth actually use a different molecule consisting of different building blocks? These are all important but also very difficult to answer questions — which is where a new study may come in handy. Researchers [...] used advanced computational methods to simulate possible nucleic acid-like molecules. They came up with over a million possibilities.
[..] “It is truly exciting to consider the potential for alternate genetic systems based on these analogous nucleosides -- that these might possibly have emerged and evolved in different environments, perhaps even on other planets or moons within our solar system. These alternate genetic systems might expand our conception of biology’s ‘central dogma’ into new evolutionary directions, in response and robust to increasingly challenging environments here on Earth,” Dr. Jay Goodwin, a chemist with Emory University and co-author of the new study, said in a statement. Besides fundamental science, there may also be practical applications for the new investigation, such as new drugs... (MORE - details)
Major quantum computational breakthrough is shaking up physics and maths (mathematics, physics)
https://theconversation.com/major-quantu...ths-136634
EXCERPTS: MIP* = RE is not a typo. It is a groundbreaking discovery and the catchy title of a recent paper in the field of quantum complexity theory. Complexity theory is a zoo of “complexity classes” – collections of computational problems – of which MIP* and RE are but two.
The 165-page paper shows that these two classes are the same. That may seem like an insignificant detail in an abstract theory without any real-world application. But physicists and mathematicians are flocking to visit the zoo, even though they probably don’t understand it all. Because it turns out the discovery has astonishing consequences for their own disciplines.
[...] Imagine an interaction between two entities, an interrogator and a prover. In a police interrogation, the prover may be a suspect attempting to prove their innocence. The interrogator must decide whether the prover is sufficiently convincing. There is an imbalance; knowledge-wise the interrogator is in an inferior position.
In complexity theory, the interrogator is the person, with limited computational power, trying to solve the problem. The prover is the new computer, which is assumed to have immense computational power. An interactive proof system is a protocol that the interrogator can use in order to determine, at least with high probability, whether the prover should be believed. By analogy, these are crimes that the police may not be able to solve, but at least innocents can convince the police of their innocence. This is the class IP.
If multiple provers can be interrogated, and the provers are not allowed to coordinate their answers (as is typically the case when the police interrogates multiple suspects), then we get to the class MIP. Such interrogations, via cross examining the provers’ responses, provide the interrogator with greater power, so MIP contains IP.
Quantum communication is a new form of communication carried out with qubits. Entanglement – a quantum feature in which qubits are spookishly entangled, even if separated – makes quantum communication fundamentally different to ordinary communication. Allowing the provers of MIP to share an entangled qubit leads to the class MIP*.
It seems obvious that communication between the provers can only serve to help the provers coordinate lies rather than assist the interrogator in discovering truth. For that reason, nobody expected that allowing more communication would make computational problems more reliable and solvable. Surprisingly, we now know that MIP* = RE. This means that quantum communication behaves wildly differently to normal communication... (MORE - details)
