MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Astronomer Explores Possibility of Launching Bad People Into Sun T

📌 MAROKO133 Update ai: Astronomer Explores Possibility of Launching Bad People Int

We are not advocates of executing people in cruel and unusual ways here on Futurism, but we have to admit we are intrigued by this astronomer’s proposal of launching bad people into the Sun.

Of course, as the associate professor of astronomy at Monash University Michael JI Brown explains: the concept “sounds easy enough,” but “may be harder than you think.” And the reasons why are fascinating — at least from a perspective of physics, rather than criminal justice.

First, the rocket carrying our hypothetical villain deserving of a dramatic demise has to be going incredibly fast to break free of Earth’s gravity — at least 11 kilometers per second, or over 25,000 miles per hour. Let’s say we have a rocket capable of that, and we point it straight at the Sun — what then?

“The results are, to be honest, disappointing,” Brown writes in a hopefully tongue-in-cheek essay for The Conversation. “We miss the Sun by almost 100 million kilometers.”

As you may have surmised, that’s because the Earth is revolving around the Sun at around 30 kilometers per second, pushing our spacecraft off-course.

“When our rocket leaves the proximity of the Earth it is traveling faster around the Sun than towards the Sun,” Brown explained. “At first the rocket gets closer to the Sun. But the motion of the rocket around the Sun and gravity results in an elliptical orbit that misses the Sun entirely.”

Our launch trajectory, then, needs to counteract Earth’s orbit, which is no small feat, either. The rocket would need to break through low Earth orbit at 32 kilometers per second, while travelling in the opposite direction of our planet’s orbit. Once the rocket breaks free from the Earth’s grasp, it enters the Sun’s domain, where it is effectively not moving at all relative to the star.

“At this point the Sun’s gravity would pull the rocket (and the villain contained therein) inexorably inward,” Brown wrote. “Given this is a journey of 150 million km, the trip would take roughly 10 weeks — plenty of time for our villain to consider their sins before fiery destruction.”

So, problem solved, right? Maybe in a future when we have much more powerful rockets, but right now, no. As Brown notes, the fastest ever spacecraft to leave Earth was NASA’s New Horizons probe which launched in 2006 and reached its first destination Pluto in 2015. It reached a top launch velocity of 16.26 kilometers per second, which is only half of what we need to execute our villain.

But Brown suggests we could use other planets like Jupiter for a gravity assist. By slingshotting around the planet’s orbit, our rocket could pick up significant speed. New Horizons did this by flying around the gas giant in 2007, speeding up by 14,000 kilometers per hour, and shortening its journey to Pluto by three years.

“We can use the same process to get our villain into the Sun. We can launch them into an orbit that takes them past the planets,” Brown concludes. “With each planetary flyby their orbit is reshaped by gravity, taking our villain onto the next flyby and moving them closer and closer to the Sun.”

More on people in alarming proximity to the Sun: Astonishing Photo Shows Man Skydiving Through Sun

The post Astronomer Explores Possibility of Launching Bad People Into Sun appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Scientists find new superconducting material that could p

Researchers at IFW Dresden and the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat announced on November 19 that they had identified a new form of superconductivity in the crystalline material PtBi₂. This form displayed a topological behavior and an electron-pairing pattern that had never been seen before.

The findings of this experiment promise a route to generating stable Majorana particles, regarded as the building blocks of future quantum technologies. The new material platform is also key for tackling fault-tolerant quantum computing.

PtBi₂ is intrinsic, with no complex engineering or exotic conditions necessary. This condition opens pathways to control Majoranas, engineer custom qubit architectures, and build more stable quantum devices.

The new six-fold symmetry

Most superconductors allow electron pairing in all directions, forming a smooth, symmetrical superconducting state. Even in high-temperature cuprate superconductors, the pairing exhibits a four-fold symmetry.

But, PtBi₂ is the first of its kind to show a six-fold restricted pairing, a feature tied to the crystal’s underlying three-fold symmetry.

“We have never seen this before. Not only is PtBi₂ a topological superconductor, but the electron pairing that drives this superconductivity is different from all other superconductors we know of,” said Dr. Sergey Borisenko, a researcher on the experiment.

“We don’t yet understand how this pairing comes about,” he continued.

Automatic formation of Majorana particles

The researchers confirmed that the superconducting state in PtBi₂ naturally produces Majorana particles. These particles are elusive, long-hypothesized quasiparticles that behave like “split electrons” and are immune to many forms of quantum noise.

Theoretical work led by Prof. Jerone van den Brink shows that these Majorana modes are confined to the material’s edges. Intriguingly, by cutting the crystal or by engineering step edges, researchers can generate as many edge-bound Majoranas as needed.

Dissecting PtBi₂’s unusual behavior

To help explain the finding, the researchers break PtBi₂’s unusual behavior into four steps. First, topological surface states force electrons to live only on the crystal’s outer layers; the states remain intact even if the material is cut.

In the second step, these surface electrons become superconducting at low temperatures. The interior stays metallic during this period, forming a natural “superconductor sandwich.”

Third, the pairing on these surfaces shows an unprecedented six-fold symmetry, with electrons in six key directions refusing to pair at all.

Finally, this topological superconductivity automatically produces Majorana particles along the edges — particles that can be shifted or controlled using magnetic fields, thinning the material, or creating artificial step edges.

Majorana pairs can encode information in a way that is inherently protected from errors; hence, they are considered a leading candidate for stable qubits in topological quantum computers.

The discovery of a naturally occurring material that hosts such particles without requiring complex layering, artificial interfaces, or magnetic fields represents a major leap forward..

What lies ahead

The researchers now aim to explore how to manipulate the Majorana states, for instance, by thinning the crystal to tune its interior from metallic to insulating or by applying magnetic fields to shift the location of the quasiparticles.

With PtBi₂’s unprecedented superconducting symmetry and robust topological edges, scientists may now have a practical platform for building the next generation of quantum devices.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com