Physicist Can Predict Wars Using Mathematical Algorithms

Wars can often seem like series of random events and attacks without any pattern or reason behind them. Surprisingly, physicist Sean Gourley and a team of researchers have found a mathematical equation that can be used to not only model past wars perfectly, but that can predict the trends of attacks in future and ongoing conflicts. Sean began the project hoping to create a database from various sources, to accurately collect every piece of news that occurs. What his team didn’t expect to find was a pattern in the attacks of wars, all related down to one very simple equation. This TED talk is incredibly fascinating, and as it turns out, all wars actually follow the exact same trend.

Gourley reports that the path, leading up to the conclusion he and his interdisciplinary team drew, was not an easy one. Finding trends within warfare and insurgency overlaps many academic disciplines, so many in academia created a lot of friction to the project as it didn’t really have a home in one subject. Gourley claims that he was criticized for not focusing fully on the discipline he was good at, but also learning about other disciplines which he didn’t know enough about, according toOzy.

His research on warfare found that all conflicts had a downward trend with a slope around 2.5. This related the number of people killed in an attack to the number of attacks for a given death toll. At first this data seemed random, but they found that when plotted on a logarithmic scale, it resulted in an almost perfect descending trend.

Iraq was the first conflict they looked into, but as they began digging deeper into past conflicts, they found that nearly every war in history yielded the same exact results. As they plotted more and more wars, all of the data clustered around a slope of 2.5, meaning that there was some kind of similarity between every known human conflict. The equation is as follows:

P(x)=Cx-α

P is the probability of the event, x is the number killed, C is a constant, and α is the slope of the conflict’s trend line. This is a surprisingly simple equation that in theory describes every human conflict that will ever take place, or has ever taken place.

[Image Source: TED]

As they thought about these numbers more, they determined that α is really the structure of the insurgency in a war. Using this formula, Gourley claims that governments and military organizations should be able to develop strategies all based around how to change the α value, therefore potentially ending a war. A conflict that will continue, maintains a slope of around 2.5, so the key is to find some way to push that trend either higher or lower. Pushing α higher would mean fragmenting the insurgent groups and making them weaker, eventually leading to a cease fire in conflict. Pushing α lower would mean pushing groups together, making them stronger and more robust, but capable of being defeated.

For the most part, this research has yet to be adopted by military powers to predict and organize attacks, but through further study, it could become a driving factor in war strategy. The goal should ultimately be to end conflicts, and through mathematical planning and calculations, finding the pathways to those “cease fires” may just become a little easier.

Quantum Computer Could Break any Encrypted Device

         [Image Source: Yuri Samoilov]

Scientists at MIT have successfully developed a scalable quantum computer that runs off of 5 atoms which successfully used Shors algorithm to correctly factor the number 15.

The factors of 15 are relatively simple: just 5 and 3. However, a slightly larger number like 93 will probably take a pen and paper to figure it out. An even larger number with 232 digits can (and has) taken scientists over two years to factor correctly, with the assistance of hundreds of classical computers operating in parallel.

Factoring large numbers is so incredibly hard, that it makes up the basis of many encryption schemes that are used to protect credit cards, state secrets, and other confidential information. The operation is made easy to check with the password that unlocks the algorithm, however, the password is made into a long string of random characters that make decrypting it to the original password practically impossible which would take a classical computer thousands of years to crack by brute force (essentially guessing until the code works).

[Image Source: Jlandin]

In 1994, the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, Peter Shor, derived the quantum algorithm that can calculate all the prime factors of a large number, exponentially faster than a classical computer. However, the success of the algorithm comes from the number of quantum bits- the more bits, the better the algorithm will work. Although some scientists have implemented Shors algorithm in various quantum systems, none have the ability to be scaled up beyond more than a few quantum bits.

That, however, has changed. A paper published in the journal Science from researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria reported that they have successfully designed and built a quantum computer from 5 atoms held in place by an ionic trap. The computer is controlled by laser pulses which carry out Shor’s algorithm on each individual atom, which was able to correctly factor the number 15. The system was built in such a way that it can be expanded using more lasers and atoms to create a bigger and faster computer, that one day could factor much larger numbers (and crack all encryption methods). The results claim to represent the first implementation of Shor’s algorithm which has the ability to be scaled.

“We show that Shor’s algorithm, the most complex quantum algorithm known to date, is realizable in a way where, yes, all you have to do is go in the lab, apply more technology, and you should be able to make a bigger quantum computer.”

“It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build — you won’t be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon — but now it’s much more an engineering effort, and not a basic physics question.” ~Isaac Chuang, professor  of physics and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT

Classical computing involves a binary system where numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s. Calculations are then carried out according to the instructions of a predetermined algorithm which manipulate the 0s and 1s to create both an input and an output. A quantum computer makes use of a quantum property that relies on atomic-scale units, or “qubits”, that can represent 1 and 0 simultaneously- a property known as superposition.  An atom in this state (representing one qubit) can essentially carry out two calculations in parallel, making certain computations incredibly more efficient than a classical computer. Although a classic computer can carry out single operations faster, a quantum computer can arrive at the same answer with exponentially less steps.

The team kept the quantum system stable with an ion trap that held the atoms in place allowing them to remove one atom, therefore giving it a charge. The atoms were then held in place by an electric field

“That way, we know exactly where that atom is in space,”

Chuang explains.

“Then we do that with another atom, a few microns away — [a distance] about 100th the width of a human hair. By having a number of these atoms together, they can still interact with each other, because they’re charged. That interaction lets us perform logic gates, which allow us to realize the primitives of the Shor factoring algorithm. The gates we perform can work on any of these kinds of atoms, no matter how large we make the system.”

Chuang’s colleagues at the University of Innsbruck built the apparatus based on Chuang’s team’s design. The computer was directed to factor the number 15 – the smallest number necessary to demonstrate Shor’s algorithm. The system gave the correct factors without any prior knowledge of the answers to a degree of 99% certainty.

Chuang says:

“In future generations, we foresee it being straightforwardly scalable, once the apparatus can trap more atoms and more laser beams can control the pulses. We see no physical reason why that is not going to be in the cards.”

The completion of the apparatus is an astonishing feat that has great potential in cyber security and unlocking the secrets of the universe. However, a scaled computer could see the potential to crack every single encryption system on the planet. Fortunately for frequent users of the net, there are still many years (and billions of dollars) before a quantum computer could successfully crack any encryption method. Chuang and his colleagues have created an engineering marvel by first implementing a scalable quantum computer capable of successfully factoring small numbers.

As we progress through the 21st century, we are discovering more and greater things about the universe we live in. Perhaps one day we will be able to unlock the rest of the universe’s secrets by designing the universe inside a computer, then again, maybe we already have inside our own minds.

MIT makes significant breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion

After running a series of complex experiments, MIT has finally made a breakthrough in one of the most baffling problems in nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei (in this case, Hydrogen atoms) combine to form an even bigger nucleus (in this case, Helium).

This reaction is important because when these two Hydrogen atoms combine to form Helium, they release an incredible amount of energy; energy that some scientists believe we can harness to provide power to the whole world for years and years to come.

Although quite an interesting idea, there have been difficulties in making it a reality. For one, combining two atomic nuclei requires an incredible amount of energy in itself, so that is one tricky part. The second part is that the energy released after the nuclei combine is lost due to the turbulence in the nuclear reactor. This second problem is what MIT looked into.

Ideally, scientists expected that the turbulence caused by ions and turbulence caused by electrons would cancel each other out, resulting in little or no turbulence in the reactor itself. At least that is what their model was based on. But after experiments, it happened that there was always turbulence in the reactor and no one could understand why it occurred or where it came from.

[Image Source: Nerdist]

This was until researchers at MIT decided to run a simulation but this time, accounting for both types of turbulence. Due to the extra variables, the computation became much more complex than it was before. To give you an idea of just how complex it was, it took 17,000 processors and 37 days to complete the simulation. This makes it 15 million hours of computation!

Nevertheless, MIT did get the result they were looking for and with this, scientists should have a better understanding of the underlying process.

Square Tire From British Airways Plane Baffles Experts

According to the Daily Mail, Aviation experts were baffled when a British Airways plane from Hong Kong landed at Heathrow airport with a square tire. The aircraft was an Airbus A380 and it was reported that upon take-off, it had received a low-pressure tire warning. The airplane continued on its flight, disregarding the warning. An A380 is designed to be perfectly safe, even when one wheel isn’t working. But the pilot requested that a tow tug be available at the London airport in case the aircraft was unable to taxi to the gate by itself. The airplane, however, made a safe landing and was able to taxi itself to the gate. It was after it landed that the square tire was discovered.

A Civil Aviation Authority spokesman described the curious square tire as a “bit mysterious” and confessed that he’s never seen one like it.

[Image Source: Aviation Herald]

It seems that none of the aviation experts could explain why the deflated tire had become square in shape. According to author Patrick Smith, “The tire deflated and the subsequent rotation caused it to fold in on itself in four symmetrical segments.” Another expert said that the square shape was probably caused the way the weight was distributed onto the wheels of the A380. Still another aviation expert named Kumar Mysore went further in describing how a round tire could take on a square shape:

‘The deflated tyre would have been round when the aircraft touched down, it would not have rotated on four square edges as the picture would have us believe. The round wheel would have rotated on the flat ground, with the deflated tyre wobbling around the wheel. The tyre has taken this shape after the aircraft came to a halt.” ~ Daily Mail

So, when we consider that the square shape wasn’t there when the tire was deflated and was spinning around, this seems to make more sense. Also, think about rubber toys that change shape based on the amount of pressure you apply. When you squeeze a deflated rubber ball, you can change the shape easily with varying amounts of pressure. The tire is doing the same thing, changing shape due the lack of air pressure within it. So perhaps when a large weight is applied to a rotating, deflated round object, a square shape is the end result?

But this still doesn’t completely explain why the shape is square and not some other shape. Perhaps the rubber of the tire got overheated, and this heating changed the rubber material’s properties. If we look closely at the photo, we can see that the caved in areas contain the excess rubber material.  None of the explanations truly explain why the tire’s shape became square. Do you know the answer? If you do, please comment below and enlighten us.

Article written by Leah Stephens. She is a writer, artist, and experimenter. She recently self-published her first book, Un-Crap Your Life. You can follow her on Twitter or Medium.

Microsoft dumping data centers into the Pacific Ocean?

In case you didn’t already know, dumping computer equipment into water is generally not a very good idea. This fact is mainly the reason why Microsoft’s dumping of data centers is so interesting. Data centers are basically buildings containing various computer equipment that process all of the internet we use. With the increase in the usage of cloud-based services and various other internet provisions, data centers are in such a high demand right now. But the problem that comes with them is that they are so expensive to maintain. Not only do they consume a lot of energy, most of the energy they consume is spent on the cooling system that prevents the components from overheating.

Given these pieces of information, Microsoft’s idea of putting data centers into the ocean is starting to make much more sense. The idea behind this is that by doing so, Microsoft should be able to capitalize on the low temperatures of the bottom at the ocean. Since the mass of the ocean is practically limitless compared to that of the data centers, there will be virtually no harm in doing so.

Last year, Microsoft initiated Project Natick. In this project, they put a prototype called Leona Philpot into the the Pacific Ocean for 90 days and tested its ability to endure the harsh underwater conditions. It is said that the prototype performed better than expected.

Microsoft thinks this is a good idea because not only does the ocean ensure zero maintenance of data centers for very long periods of time, but they also think that setting up data centers will become much easier by doing so. This is based on the fact up to 4.5 billion people live within 125 miles of a shoreline. This will not only make it much easier to set up data centers for people nearby, but it will also save up a lot of space on the land, which can be now be used for other purposes.