Life on Venus Makes a Comeback

Venus, the planet. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In late 2020, a team of astronomers made international headlines with the announcement that they had found phosphine in the clouds of planet Venus. Phosphine, with the chemical formula PH₃, is on Earth mostly used to kill rodents and insects. However, it is also produced by certain types of microbes, hence the idea that phosphine on Venus might be a sign of microbial life. The 2020 study was later criticised for shortcomings in their data analysis. One of the major difficulties with the discovery was that the measurements use a spectrographic analysis – that is, how much light of which frequency is absorbed in the clouds. Unfortunately the key frequency for phosphine is very similar to one of the many frequencies of sulphur dioxide, which is very, very common on Venus. One must therefore first evaluate the sulphur dioxide contribution from other parts of the spectrum and subtract it. This can lead to mistakes.Be that as it may, Jamie Carter reports from a recent astronomy meeting in Cardiff, U.K., that one of the teams that previously found no evidence for phosphine now reprocessed their data and found a positive result after all. There is without doubt a paper somewhere being written that we will hear more about soon.

Gravity Hole Explained

This week's episode of Science News covers a new atomic nucleus, a map of a fruit fly brain, an explanation for the gravity hole in the Indian ocean, a better source of quantum light, how NASA is preparing for a trip to Mars, and more.

Computer Trouble? It’s Not Just You.

A new study from the University of Copenhagen shows that computer problems are a major source of frustration and wasted time for users. The study tracked 234 people for one hour. They experienced computer malfunctions between 11 and 20 percent of the time, and reported that these problems negatively affected their productivity, mood, and well-being. The researchers suggest that better user education, technical support, and software design could help reduce the frequency and impact of computer problems.️ Paper here. Press release here.

Quantum Advantage? Yawn.

Part of Google’s quantum computer. Image: Google AI Quantum

In 2019, scientists from Google published a paper in Nature claiming they’d done a calculation on a 53-qubit quantum computer that would have taken 10,000 years on a conventional super-computer, an achievement referred to as “quantum supremacy.” The 10,000 years claim was swiftly questioned by IBM, and it was indeed later done by Chinese scientists on a conventional computer in only five minutes.Quantum supremacy has since been renamed to “quantum advantage,” and earlier this year, Google repeated a more completed version of the same calculation on a 70-qubit quantum computer, claiming it would take more than 47 years on a supercomputer. They put their results on the pre-print server and they have not yet been peer reviewed. Still, it is remarkable how little attention this achievement got – if nothing else, this is strong evidence that quantum advantage isn’t breaking news any more.

Quantum mechanics is non-local, but what does that mean?

In this much-asked-for video, I explain in just which sense quantum mechanics is non-local, what that means, and what last year’s Nobel Prize in physics was really awarded for.

Support Sabine on Patreon!

Join the discussion on Patreon where you will find transcripts of our videos with links to references.