Machine learning & AI
Will artificial intelligence one day surpass human thinking? The rapid progress of AI, coupled with our standard fear of machines, has raised concerns that its abilities will one day start to grow uncontrollably, eventually ...
Jan 7, 2020
1
13
Engineering
The terahertz frequency range—which sits in the middle of the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light—offers the potential for high-bandwidth communications, ultrahigh-resolution imaging, precise ...
Nov 18, 2019
0
0
Computer Sciences
Google said it has achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing research, saying an experimental quantum processor has completed a calculation in just a few minutes that would take a traditional supercomputer thousands of ...
Oct 23, 2019
0
485
Hi Tech & Innovation
A U.S. Army research result brings the quantum internet a step closer. Such an internet could offer the military security, sensing and timekeeping capabilities not possible with traditional networking approaches.
Sep 26, 2019
0
8
Machine learning & AI
Artificial intelligence refers, among other things, to machines' capacity to demonstrate some degree of what humans consider "intelligence". This process is being driven by the rapid advancement of machine learning: getting ...
Apr 18, 2019
0
6
Engineering
We all mark days with clocks and calendars, but perhaps no timepiece is more immediate than a mirror. The changes we notice over the years vividly illustrate science's "arrow of time"—the likely progression from order to ...
Mar 14, 2019
0
8
Computer Sciences
Cybersecurity researchers and analysts are rightly worried that a new type of computer, based on quantum physics rather than more standard electronics, could break most modern cryptography. The effect would be to render communications ...
Dec 21, 2018
0
24
Computer Sciences
Do you have free will? Can you make your own decisions? Or are you more like an automaton, just moving as required by your constituent parts? Probably, like most people, you feel you have something called free will. Your ...
Mar 14, 2018
0
18
Hi Tech & Innovation
Forget about today's modest incremental advances in artificial intelligence, such as the increasing abilities of cars to drive themselves. Waiting in the wings might be a groundbreaking development: a machine that is aware ...
Dec 8, 2017
0
3
Energy & Green Tech
Efforts to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels are advancing on various significant fronts. Such initiatives include research focused on more efficient production of gaseous hydrogen fuel by using solar energy to break ...
Apr 25, 2017
0
1
In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons. The word comes from the Latin "quantus", for "how much." Behind this, one finds the fundamental notion that a physical property may be "quantized", referred to as "quantization". This means that the magnitude can take on only certain discrete numerical values, rather than any value, at least within a range. There is a related term of quantum number.
A photon is often referred to as a "light quantum". The energy of an electron bound to an atom (at rest) is said to be quantized, which results in the stability of atoms, and of matter in general. But these terms can be a little misleading, because what is quantized is this Planck's constant quantity whose units can be viewed as either energy multiplied by time or momentum multiplied by distance.
Usually referred to as quantum "mechanics", it is regarded by virtually every professional physicist as the most fundamental framework we have for understanding and describing nature at the infinitesimal level, for the very practical reason that it works. It is "in the nature of things", not a more or less arbitrary human preference.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
