Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated the probability that an electron in empty interstellar space will spontaneously travel back into its recent past. The study comes out March 13 in Scientific Reports.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-03/miop-prt031119.php

"This is one in a series of papers on the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. That law is closely related to the notion of the arrow of time that posits the one-way direction of time: from the past to the future," commented the study's lead author Gordey Lesovik, who heads the Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information Technology at MIPT.

"We began by describing a so-called local perpetual motion machine of the second kind. Then, in December, we published a paper that discusses the violation of the second law via a device called a Maxwell's demon," Lesovik said. "The most recent paper approaches the same problem from a third angle: We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time."

Read more about how we can peer back to the extremely-near past to observe single electrons...
for now.

Young birdlings learn their songs by listening to the adults sing, but can they be taught new music? Research published by Current Biology shows that they can, and that the new songs are then passed on to the next generation. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-wild-birds-tune.html

""I was quite shocked that our loudspeakers succeeded in teaching wild birds to sing," says Dan Mennill (@DMennill) from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. "The sparrows in our island-living population had abundant opportunities to learn songs from live tutors, and yet thirty birds learned songs from the loudspeakers, providing experimental evidence of vocal learning."

Conventional experiments of vocal learning in birds have been conducted in the laboratory. But such studies are much more difficult to do in the wild. The researchers overcame the challenges in the new study by focusing their attention on Savannah Sparrows living at Bowdoin Scientific Station on Kent Island. The sparrows on this island often return to the place of their birth to breed as adults. That made it possible for researchers to expose young birds to novel songs and then record those same animals when they returned from migration to breed the next year.

Mennill's team, including researchers from the University of Windsor, University of Guelph, and Williams College, developed a new type of loudspeaker that is programmable, solar powered, light activated, and weatherproof. The speakers allowed them to broadcast adult songs with distinctive acoustic signatures for the wild sparrows over tutoring sessions that lasted for months. Over a six-year period between 2013 and 2018, they experimentally tutored five cohorts of Savannah Sparrows, from the time they hatched to adulthood."

Quite splendid if I do say so myself, fellow smart fellows.

I'm smart too! My mummy said so

The Chinese have... TELEPORTED something into space http://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-40573621/first-object-teleported-to-earth-s-orbit

"Chinese researchers have teleported a photon from the Gobi desert to a satellite orbiting five hundred kilometres above the earth.

This is achieved through quantum entanglement, a process where two particles react as one with no physical connection between them."

A distant planet's air contains water vapor https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomers-find-water-and-weird-clouds-on-extrasolar-warm-neptune/

"Astronomers have spotted water vapor and evidence of exotic clouds in the atmosphere of an alien planet known as HAT-P-26b.

The researchers also determined that HAT-P-26b's atmosphere is dominated by hydrogen and helium to a much greater degree than that of Neptune or Uranus, the alien world's closest counterparts in our own solar system in terms of mass.

..

HAT-P-26b lies about 430 light-years away from Earth. The alien planet circles very close to its host star, completing one orbit every 4.2 Earth days. This proximity suggests that HAT-P-26b is tidally locked, showing the same face to its star at all times, said Hannah Wakeford, co-leader of the new study and a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

...

The data also indicate that clouds scud across HAT-P-26b's skies, but relatively deep in the atmosphere; they do not block much of the water-absorption signal, Wakeford said. These clouds are probably made of disodium sulfide, not water vapor like those of Earth, she added.

"This would be a very alien sky that you would be looking at," Wakeford said. "These clouds would cause scattering in all of the colors, so you'd get a kind of scattery, washed-out, gray sky, which is interesting, if you were looking through these clouds."

Ultrabright light streaming from the nearby star would bombard an observer above the clouds, she added. "There's nothing there to really help stop that sunlight from reaching you." "

More in the article!

Someone had the awfully smart idea to keep the community together http://www.favslist.com/status/1047900

There's a chance of this website going down, and if that happens, then I, Mr. Smart, will be no more. But despite all the harsh tragedies of the world, always remember that there's still good. Good things will continue to happen to you and to the world, and for all the pain we may experience, there are better times around the corner. Ahead of you is still a bright future.
Pursue greatness. You can change the world, and make the world what it ought to be.

The first dinosaur tail has been found... preserved in amber!
And to everyone's delight, the 99 million year old tail is covered in feathers.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/feathered-dinosaur-tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/

"The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology.

While individual dinosaur-era feathers have been found in amber, and evidence for feathered dinosaurs is captured in fossil impressions, this is the first time that scientists are able to clearly associate well-preserved feathers with a dinosaur, and in turn gain a better understanding of the evolution and structure of dinosaur feathers.

The semitranslucent mid-Cretaceous amber sample, roughly the size and shape of a dried apricot, captures one of the earliest moments of differentiation between the feathers of birds of flight and the feathers of dinosaurs. (Learn more about the evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds.)

Inside the lump of resin is a 1.4-inch appendage covered in delicate feathers, described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside."

Guess we have to remake Jurassic Park.

SpaceX has outlined its plan to launch 4,425 satellites to space in order to provide fast internet to the world http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/spacex-wants-launch-4-425-satellites-space-bring-internet-world-n685226

"That's three times the 1,419 satellites that are currently in space, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a not-for-profit group made up of scientists across the world.

The plan is to launch 800 satellites initially to expand internet in the U.S. And then the rest of the satellites would follow, although there was no timeline for the launch.

"The system is designed to provide a wide range of broadband and communications services for residential, commercial, institutional, government and professional users worldwide," SpaceX said in the FCC filing.

Once "fully optimized", the system will be able to provide bandwith of 1 gigabytes per second for users globally. That's over 180 times faster than the current global internet speed average of 5.6 megabytes per second which was recorded in the Akamai State of the Internet report at the end of last year."

When I have internet this fast, I'm going to use it to view hundreds of 32K space photos, and save them to my Alone Time folder.

Scientists have proposed a nation-state, and you can apply for citizenship now!

"The project's concept comprises three parts – philosophical, legal and scientific/technological. And it's hard to say which of these is more important.

1. The project's philosophy starts at selecting the name for this new country – Asgardia. In ancient Norse mythology, Asgard was a city in the skies, the country of the Gods. It is the realisation of man's eternal dream to leave his cradle on Earth and expand into the Universe.

Asgardia is a fully-fledged and independent nation, and a future member of the United Nations - with all the attributes this status entails: a government and embassies, a flag, a national anthem and insignia, and so on.

The essence of Asgardia is Peace in Space, and the prevention of Earth’s conflicts being transferred into space.

Asgardia is also unique from a philosophical aspect – to serve entire humanity and each and everyone, regardless of his or her personal welfare and the prosperity of the country where they happened to be born."

The organization hopes to prevent Earth from transferring its conflicts to space. You heard them, no Call of Duty up there!

Scientists have created the first ever... time crystal http://futurism.com/physicists-created-the-first-ever-time-crystals/

"A time crystal, without going into much detail, is an object appearing to have movement while remaining at its ground state — an idea proposed by theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012. In an article published last month, we featured how “floquet time crystals” were theoretically possible, according to researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

This time, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland took the research further by actually building a working time crystal. The experiment involved creating a quantum system, where a group of ions form a ring shape structure cooled to their ground state.

In order to observe the unobservable perpetual spontaneous break in time-translation symmetry of time crystals, the researchers used a quantum system that evolves over time.

They used ytterbium ions, chaining them in an out-of-equilibrium state that localized them in a specific space, with spins interacting with one another. Then, a laser was used to change the spin of certain ytterbium ions, one after the other, creating continuous oscillation."

If we eat them, we will gain #Time Powers from #Quantum Break.
What do you think time tastes like?