Bizarre Quantum Universe
In 2022 three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for proving something astonishing: the universe is not locally real. In other words, particles don't have fixed properties until they are measured. Although it seems to counter everything we perceive, the discovery was established by some of the most rigorous experiments ever conducted, and it aligns with a prediction Albert Einstein and his colleagues made almost 100 years ago: that particles strangely influence one another, even across vast distances. Today quantum strangeness is no longer confined to theory. Researchers are entangling objects large enough to see, quantum computers are on the cusp of solving problems no classical machine can touch, and speculative ideas such as vacuum decay and alternative realities are serious science. The quantum era has arrived.
Bizarre quantum dynamics underpin our view of reality: Time travels forward for us, but in the quantum world, it may flow in two directions. Gravity itself may follow quantum rules. Quantum mechanics supports the possibility of alternative universes, but even if they exist, we can't access them (and probably shouldn't anyway). Some physicists argue that quantum rules dictate that everything in the universe is preordained, making free will an illusion, so we might as well accept our current reality.
These insights are fueling tremendous scientific innovation. The strongest force in nature, which binds together quarks inside protons and neutrons, may be dictated by quantum interactions. Scientists have found that electrons swarm in a soup of quantum entanglement in a recently discovered class of materials called strange metals. An experiment housed deep underground in a Sardinian mine is designed to determine the weight of empty space —yes, it weighs something—and thereby isolate particles predicted by quantum field theory. To better understand the most inexplicable behavior of quantum particles, physicists have created lattices out of light waves that simulate solid materials.
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If many universes exist, the stars and planets that were able to form in ours could be the best evidence for them. But even how matter exists in the first place is a mystery to physicists. The universe seems stable, but an unlikely shift in the Higgs field, a quantum field that pervades all of space, could trigger a bubble that passes through the universe, annihilating all matter.
Perhaps the most tangible application of quantum discovery is in computing. The key to quantum computing is the qubit, and it promises to make electronic machines obsolete. In a type of computing arms race, researchers are trying to build systems that can withstand the might of future quantum-armed hackers. Despite the hype and parade of press announcements from big tech, however, so far no company has achieved 'quantum advantage' —that is, a quantum computer able to solve a problem no classical computer can.
For corporeal creatures such as humans, grappling with a universe that might not be singular, time that moves in many directions, and matter that both does and does not exist is mind-bending, to say the least. Two giants in early quantum theory, Werner Heisenberg and John Bell, speculated that because we perceive as we do, the mind, in a sense, defines quantum interactions. Its implications are cosmic, but the quantum realm is definitively a human one.
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Scientific American
20 hours ago
- Scientific American
White House Budget Plan Would Devastate U.S. Space Science
Late last week the Trump Administration released its detailed budget request for fiscal year 2026 —a request that, if enacted, would be the equivalent of carpet-bombing the national scientific enterprise. 'This is a profound, generational threat to scientific leadership in the United States,' says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. 'If implemented, it would fundamentally undermine and potentially devastate the most unique capabilities that the U.S. has built up over a half-century.' The Trump administration's proposal, which still needs to be approved by Congress, is sure to ignite fierce resistance from scientists and senators alike. Among other agencies, the budget deals staggering blows to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which together fund the majority of U.S. research in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, heliophysics and Earth science —all space-related sciences that have typically mustered hearty bipartisan support. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The NSF supports ground-based astronomy, including such facilities as the Nobel Prize–winning gravitational-wave detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), globe-spanning arrays of radio telescopes, and cutting-edge observatories that stretch from Hawaii to the South Pole. The agency faces a lethal 57 percent reduction to its $9-billion budget, with deep cuts to every program except those in President Trump's priority areas, which include artificial intelligence and quantum information science. NASA, which funds space-based observatories, faces a 25 percent reduction, dropping the agency's $24.9-billion budget to $18.8 billion. The proposal beefs up efforts to send humans to the moon and to Mars, but the agency's Science Mission Directorate —home to Mars rovers, the Voyager interstellar probes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Hubble Space Telescope, and much more —is looking at a nearly 50 percent reduction, with dozens of missions canceled, turned off or operating on a starvation diet. 'It's an end-game scenario for science at NASA,' says Joel Parriott, director of external affairs and public policy at the American Astronomical Society. 'It's not just the facilities. You're punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don't just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.' Adding to the chaos, on Saturday President Trump announced that billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman was no longer his pick for NASA administrator —just days before the Senate was set to confirm Isaacman's nomination. Initial reports —which have now been disputed —explained the president's decision as stemming from his discovery that Isaacman recently donated money to Democratic candidates. Regardless of the true reason, the decision leaves both NASA and the NSF, whose director abruptly resigned in April, with respective placeholder 'acting' leaders at the top. That leadership vacuum significantly weakens the agencies' ability to fight the proposed budget cuts and advocate for themselves. 'What's more inefficient than a rudderless agency without an empowered leadership?' Dreier asks. Actions versus Words During his second administration, President Trump has repeatedly celebrated U.S. leadership in space. When he nominated Isaacman last December, Trump noted 'NASA's mission of discovery and inspiration' and looked to a future of 'groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology and exploration.' More recently, while celebrating Hubble's 35th anniversary in April, Trump called the telescope 'a symbol of America's unmatched exploratory might' and declared that NASA would 'continue to lead the way in fueling the pursuit of space discovery and exploration.' The administration's budgetary actions speak louder than Trump's words, however. Instead of ushering in a new golden age of space exploration—or even setting up the U.S. to stay atop the podium—the president's budget 'narrows down what the cosmos is to moon and Mars and pretty much nothing else,' Dreier says. 'And the cosmos is a lot bigger, and there's a lot more to learn out there.' Dreier notes that when corrected for inflation, the overall NASA budget would be the lowest it's been since 1961. But in April of that year, the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit, igniting a space race that swelled NASA's budget and led to the Apollo program putting American astronauts on the moon. Today China's rapid progress and enormous ambitions in space would make the moment ripe for a 21st-century version of this competition, with the U.S. generously funding its own efforts to maintain pole position. Instead the White House's budget would do the exact opposite. 'The seesaw is sort of unbalanced,' says Tony Beasley, director of the NSF-funded National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). 'On the one side, we're saying, 'Well, China's kicking our ass, and we need to do something about that.' But then we're not going to give any money to anything that might actually do that.' How NASA will achieve a crewed return to the moon and send astronauts to Mars—goals that the agency now considers part of 'winning the second space race'—while also maintaining its leadership in science is unclear. 'This is Russ Vought's budget,' Dreier says, referring to the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an unelected bureaucrat who has been notorious for his efforts to reshape the U.S. government by weaponizing federal funding. 'This isn't even Trump's budget. Trump's budget would be good for space. This one undermines the president's own claims and ambitions when it comes to space.' 'Low Expectations' at the High Frontier Rumors began swirling about the demise of NASA science in April, when a leaked OMB document described some of the proposed cuts and cancellations. Those included both the beleaguered, bloated Mars Sample Return (MSR) program and the on-time, on-budget Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the next astrophysics flagship mission. The top-line numbers in the more fleshed-out proposal are consistent with that document, and MSR would still be canceled. But Roman would be granted a stay of execution: rather than being zeroed out, it would be put on life support. 'It's a reprieve from outright termination, but it's still a cut for functionally no reason,' Dreier says. 'In some ways, [the budget] is slightly better than I was expecting. But I had very low expectations.' In the proposal, many of the deepest cuts would be made to NASA science, which would sink from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. Earth science missions focused on carbon monitoring and climate change, as well as programs aimed at education and workforce diversity, would be effectively erased by the cuts. But a slew of high-profile planetary science projects would suffer, too, with cancellations proposed for two future Venus missions, the Juno mission that is currently surveilling Jupiter, the New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto and two Mars orbiters. (The Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan would survive, as would the flagship Europa Clipper spacecraft, which launched last October.) NASA's international partnerships in planetary science fare poorly, too, as the budget rescinds the agency's involvement with multiple European-led projects, including a Venus mission and Mars rover. The proposal is even worse for NASA astrophysics—the study of our cosmic home—which 'really takes it to the chin,' Dreier says, with a roughly $1-billion drop to just $523 million. In the president's proposal, only three big astrophysics missions would survive: the soon-to-launch Roman and the already-operational Hubble and JWST. The rest of NASA's active astrophysics missions, which include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), would be severely pared back or zeroed out. Additionally, the budget would nix NASA's contributions to large European missions, such as a future space-based gravitational-wave observatory. 'This is the most powerful fleet of missions in the history of the study of astrophysics from space,' says John O'Meara, chief scientist at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and co-chair of a recent senior review panel that evaluated NASA's astrophysics missions. The report found that each reviewed mission 'continues to be capable of producing important, impactful science.' This fleet, O'Meara adds, is more than the sum of its parts, with much of its power emerging from synergies among multiple telescopes that study the cosmos in many different types, or wavelengths, of light. By hollowing out NASA's science to ruthlessly focus on crewed missions, the White House budget might be charitably viewed as seeking to rekindle a heroic age of spaceflight—with China's burgeoning space program as the new archrival. But even for these supposedly high-priority initiatives, the proposed funding levels appear too anemic and meager to give the U.S. any competitive edge. For example, the budget directs about $1 billion to new technology investments to support crewed Mars missions while conservative estimates have projected that such voyages would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more. 'It cedes U.S. leadership in space science at a time when other nations, particularly China, are increasing their ambitions,' Dreier says. 'It completely flies in the face of the president's own stated goals for American leadership in space.' Undermining the Foundation The NSF's situation , which one senior space scientist predicted would be 'diabolical' when the NASA numbers leaked back in April, is also unsurprisingly dire. Unlike NASA, which is focused on space science and exploration, the NSF's programs span the sweep of scientific disciplines, meaning that even small, isolated cuts—let alone the enormous ones that the budget has proposed—can have shockingly large effects on certain research domains. 'Across the different parts of the NSF, the programs that are upvoted are the president's strategic initiatives, but then everything else gets hit,' Beasley says. Several large-scale NSF-funded projects would escape more or less intact. Among these are the panoramic Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scheduled to unveil its first science images later this month, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope. The budget also moves the Giant Magellan Telescope, which would boast starlight-gathering mirrors totaling more than 25 meters across, into a final design phase. All three of those facilities take advantage of Chile's pristine dark skies. Other large NSF-funded projects that would survive include the proposed Next Generation Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico and several facilities at the South Pole, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. If this budget is enacted, however, NSF officials anticipate only funding a measly 7 percent of research proposals overall rather than 25 percent; the number of graduate research fellowships awarded would be cleaved in half, and postdoctoral fellowships in the physical sciences would drop to zero. NRAO's Green Bank Observatory — home to the largest steerable single-dish radio telescope on the planet — would likely shut down. So would other, smaller observatories in Arizona and Chile. The Thirty Meter Telescope, a humongous, perennially embattled project with no clear site selection, would be canceled. And the budget proposes closing one of the two gravitational-wave detectors used by the LIGO collaboration—whose observations of colliding black holes earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics—even though both detectors need to be online for LIGO's experiment to work. Even factoring in other operational detectors, such as Virgo in Europe and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan, shutting down half of LIGO would leave a gaping blind spot in humanity's gravitational-wave view of the heavens. 'The consequences of this budget are that key scientific priorities, on the ground and in space, will take at least a decade longer—or not be realized at all,' O'Meara says. 'The universe is telling its story at all wavelengths. It doesn't care what you build, but if you want to hear that story, you must build many things.' Dreier, Parriott and others are anticipating fierce battles on Capitol Hill. And already both Democratic and Republican legislators have issued statement signaling that they won't support the budget request as is. 'This sick joke of a budget is a nonstarter,' said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in a recent statement. And in an earlier statement, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations, cautioned that 'the President's Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process.' The Trump administration has 'thrown a huge punch here, and there will be a certain back-reaction, and we'll end up in the middle somewhere,' Beasley says. 'The mistake you can make right now is to assume that this represents finalized decisions and the future—because it doesn't.'
Entrepreneur
20 hours ago
- Entrepreneur
Here's What Keeps Google's DeepMind CEO Up At Night About AI
Nobel Prize Winner and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says he has some concerns about artificial intelligence. Demis Hassabis, the 48-year-old CEO of Google's AI research division DeepMind, isn't concerned about AI taking over jobs. Instead, he's worried about two things: bad actors using AI technology, and a lack of protective measures to keep autonomous AI models in check. Related: These Are AI's 'Most Obvious' Risks, According to Google's Former CEO "Both of those risks are important, challenging ones," Hassabis told CNN this week. Hassabis, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for co-creating an AI program that predicted protein structures, said he was worried about the possibility of humans misusing artificial general intelligence that matches or surpasses human intelligence. He thinks there should be an international agreement to ensure that AI is only utilized for good, especially as it advances and becomes more powerful. "How do we restrict access to these systems, powerful systems, to bad actors… but enable good actors to do many, many amazing things with it?" Hassabis questioned, per CNN. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. Photo byfor SXSW London Criminals are already using AI to clone voices and impersonate people through deepfake phone scams. Hackers are also using AI to generate articles with false or misleading information. NewsGuard has identified over 1,200 AI-generated news sites spewing out false information with little human oversight. As AI becomes more sophisticated, Hassabis says that the technology will result in a "huge amount of change" to the workforce. But instead of mass layoffs and unemployment, Hassabis posits it will create "new, even better jobs." Related: These 3 Professions Are Most Likely to Vanish in the Next 20 Years Due to AI, According to a New Report Other CEOs predict AI could cut jobs Another AI CEO, Anthropic's 42-year-old Dario Amodei, had a starker prediction. Amodei told Axios last week that AI had the potential to wipe out half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs within the next one to five years. He predicted that unemployment would rise to up to 20% as white-collar workers struggled to find work. Amodei stated that AI would impact entry-level roles in industries like finance, technology, and law and said that most employees will not understand the danger posed by AI until they have lost their jobs to it. In finance, company executives plan to cut 3% of their workforce within the next five years due to AI, per a January Bloomberg Intelligence report. That means 200,000 Wall Street jobs are at risk. Meanwhile, tech CEOs are already turning to AI to write code. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in April that he expects AI to write half of Meta's code by next year, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in the same month that about 30% of new code at their companies was AI-generated. As for law, venture capital investor Victor Lazarte, general partner at VC firm Benchmark, says AI is "fully replacing people" in the profession. In an April episode of the podcast "The Twenty Minute VC," Lazarte predicted that AI will be able to take over the busy work in law usually completed by recent graduates within the next three years. Related: 'Fully Replacing People': A Tech Investor Says These Two Professions Should Be the Most Wary of AI Taking Their Jobs
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Google's DeepMind CEO has two worries when it comes to AI. Losing jobs isn't one of them
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google's AI research arm DeepMind and a Nobel Prize laureate, isn't too worried about an AI 'jobpocalypse.' Instead of fretting over AI replacing jobs, he's worried about the technology falling into the wrong hands – and a lack of guardrails to keep sophisticated, autonomous AI models under control. 'Both of those risks are important, challenging ones,' he said in an interview with CNN's Anna Stewart at the SXSW festival in London, which takes place this week. Last week, the CEO of high-profile AI lab Anthropic had a stark warning about the future of the job landscape, claiming that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs. But Hassabis said he's most concerned about the potential misuse of what AI developers call 'artificial general intelligence,' a theoretical type of AI that would broadly match human-level intelligence. 'A bad actor could repurpose those same technologies for a harmful end,' he said. 'And so one big thing is… how do we restrict access to these systems, powerful systems to bad actors…but enable good actors to do many, many amazing things with it?' Hackers have used AI to generate voice messages impersonating US government officials, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a May public advisory. A report commissioned by the US State Department last year found that AI could pose 'catastrophic' national security risks, CNN reported. AI has also facilitated the creation of deepfake pornography — though the Take It Down Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last month, aims to stop the proliferation of these deepfakes by making it illegal to share nonconsensual explicit images online. Hassabis isn't the first to call out such concerns. But his comments further underscore both the promise of AI and the alarm that it brings as the technology gets better at handling complex tasks like writing code and generating video clips. While AI has been heralded as one of the biggest technological advancements since the internet, it also gives scammers and other malicious actors more tools than ever before. And it's rapidly advancing without much regulation as the United States and China race to establish dominance in the field. Google removed language from its AI ethics policy website in February, pledging not to use AI for weapons and surveillance. Hassabis believes there should be an international agreement on the fundamentals of how AI should be utilized and how to ensure the technology is only used 'for the good use cases.' 'Obviously, it's looking difficult at present day with the geopolitics as it is,' he said. 'But, you know, I hope that as things will improve, and as AI becomes more sophisticated, I think it'll become more clear to the world that that needs to happen.' The DeepMind CEO also believes we're headed toward a future in which people use AI 'agents' to execute tasks on their behalf, a vision Google is working towards by integrating more AI into its search function and developing AI-powered smart glasses. 'We sometimes call it a universal AI assistant that will go around with you everywhere, help you in your everyday life, do mundane admin tasks for you, but also enrich your life by recommending you amazing things, from books and films to maybe even friends to meet,' he said. New AI models are showing progress in areas like video generation and coding, adding to fears that the technology could eliminate jobs. 'AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks, and we're going to collectively, as a society, grapple with it,' Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CNN just after telling Axios that AI could axe entry-level jobs. In April, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expects AI to write half the company's code by 2026. However, an AI-focused future is closer to promise than reality. AI is still prone to shortcomings like bias and hallucinations, which have sparked a handful of high-profile mishaps for the companies using the technology. The Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, published an AI-generated summer reading list including nonexistent books last month. While Hassabis says AI will change the workforce, he doesn't believe AI will render jobs obsolete. Like some others in the AI space, he believes the technology could result in new types of jobs and increase productivity. But he also acknowledged that society will likely have to adapt and find some way of 'distributing all the additional productivity that AI will produce in the economy.' He compared AI to the rise of other technological changes, like the internet. 'There's going to be a huge amount of change,' he said. 'Usually what happens is new, even better jobs arrive to take the place of some of the jobs that get replaced. We'll see if that happens this time.'
