Gooday Gaming Guests - Refrigeration and a Splash Of Quantum

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

These are 2 shorts combined

All right, so this is a little one about refrigeration. So there's some things that I want to learn, or Ben wanted to learn, electronics, refrigeration, computing or coding. And this was before A or I was around. So for refrigeration, there was an actual online course that i took for a little while i never quite finished it to be honest with you but it was all right it was called something about a samurai the samurai guy was pretty cool i gave lots of videos and

uh stuff but i learned enough about refrigeration to to understand that uh we know that computers electronics is just a manipulation of electricity or energy it doesn't have necessarily electricity can be other energy as we talked about and now we're looking at the manipulation of gas because energy produces heat but if you put that in reverse it gets cold so therefore there's your refrigeration it's just a constant manipulation of gases so we're going to do some refrigeration for a little while this morning i asked about it yesterday i said is your refrigeration just a manipulation of gases

rich refrigeration fundamentally relies the manipulation of gases and their thermodynamic properties. But it's part of a larger process involving heat transfer. Here's a breakdown of how refrigeration works and how gases play a role. Compression. A refrigerant gas, like Freon or one of them, often a hydro flux carbon or other specialized fluid is compressed in a compressor, increasing its

pressure and temperature. Heat release condensation. The high pressure, high temperature gas flows through the condenser coil where it releases heat to surrounding areas cooling and condensing into a high pressure liquid. Then there's expansion. The high pressure liquid passes

through an expansion valve where it is rapidly dropped in pressure. This sudden drop causes the liquid to expand and partially evaporate, cooling it significantly. So there's a heat cool. The cold, low-pressure refrigerant enters the evaporator coil inside the refrigerated space, where it absorbs heat from the surrounding air and objects cooling the area. As it absorbs heat, the refrigerant evaporates back into gas. And then this is like a never-ending cycle on your refrigerator or your freezer. Repeat. The cycle repeats as the gas returns to compress there. So key roles of gases.

The refrigerant phase changes between gas and liquid and back again are driven by pressure and temperature changes. The ability of the refrigerant gas to absorb and release heat during these phases changes what makes refrigerators work. Why manipulation of gases? The thermodynamic properties of gases especially their ability to absorb and release heat when compressed or expand are at the heart of refrigeration so there's also that it's manipulation of gas but it's the compression of it and the expansion this manipulation

allows heat to be moved from one location inside the fridge to another outside the fridge. So refrigeration is a process that leverages the manipulation of gases and their properties combined with heat transfer techniques to achieve cooling. Alright, so then I was like, alright. So I kind of see it's another energy that's manipulated to do something different so I said uh are there new ways coming out yes several innovative refrigerant technologies are emerging aiming to enhance efficiency and reduce the environmental impact here are some notable advances. So these are new refrigeration techniques. Iochloric refrigeration. This method utilizes the Iochloric effect where the addition or removal of ions introduces temperature changes by manipulating electrochemical fields. It offers a potential alternative to traditional vapor compression systems

with the advantage of using environmentally better materials. So that's an interesting one. So iron. The next one is magnetic refrigeration. This technique leverages the magnetic magnetic effect where certain materials heat up when exposed to a magnetic field and cool down when that field is removed. So it's still the same kind of heat it up, put it down kind of thing. It eliminates the need for conventional

refrigerants. So there's no refrigerants. Potentially reducing environmental harm because refrigerants at some point release gas into the air. Here's an interesting one. Electrocarlotic cooling. Utilizing here's an interesting one electro caloric cooling utilizing electro

elastro elastro caloric that's a big one utilizes effect this approach involves materials that change temperature under mechanical stress so elastic meaning you're pulling it and it's causing heat and you let it go i bet and it when the materials

are compressed or stretched they absorb or release heat offering a solid state cooling method without harmful refrigerants it doesn't say which materials, but we can ask him because he'll know. Thermoelectric cooling. This method employs the petri-pel-ter effect, which applies while we're applying an electric current to certain materials cause heat to move from one side to the other. Samsung has announced plans to incorporate thermoelectric modules in their upcoming refrigerators, aiming to reduce temperature variations and enhance food preservations. So that one's more upcoming.

Air cycle refrigeration, developed by Korea Institute of Energy Research. This technology uses air to refrigerate. Achieving ultra-low temperatures without traditional refrigerant. It combines a compressor and an expander in a high-speed system, offering an eco-friendly alternative to refrigeration and freezing. I'm not really sure of the details of that one. These emerging technologies represent strides towards more substantial and effective energy solutions, both in consumption

and environmental concerns. So that's pretty fun. So refrigeration I kind of understand it now with AI I can understand all the newer ones that are coming out. So what I'll do is let's see I'm going to combine this. I learned how to

combine two audios together. So I'll put this little short one with another one I did this morning. And then it'll be like a double thing to make it about 20 minutes. All right, so later on I'll pick my system. Oh, you know what? Actually, I did my system,

but maybe I'm going to save that for later. So I signed up yesterday for Gemini, which is flash zippy is my um zippy is my chat gpt flash is now my uh gemini um and i signed up for gemini pro because it gave me two terabytes of storage which is cool um so i i asked about um x Xbox One 1540 boot up. So we'll do that a little bit later. We'll just do this one and I'll add another one to this one here. I'll talk to you guys later on this afternoon. I found an article that is always up my alley.

Because I'm really into quantum computers. Now I've learned how to combine smaller threads, smaller, little quick little podcasts into a longer one. So let's read this one this morning. It says, What is quantum supremacy? Supremacy. Okay. Quantum Supremacy. Supremacy. Quantum computers are expected to solve some problems

beyond the reach of most powerful supercomputers imaginable. Reaching this milestone has been dubbed Quantum Supremacy. But whether Quantum Supremacy has been achieved yet or what it would mean for the field remains unsettled. of the theoretical physics of Caltech to describe the point at which quantum computers can do something that a classic one cannot. Crossing this threshold has become a guiding star for the tech companies that are building large-scale quantum computers. In 2019,

in a paper published in the journal Nature, Google became the first to declare it had achieved quantum supremacy. Figures. Other groups have been similar claims in recent years.

So quantum computers are already out there in some form, which is pretty cool. However, several of their assertions, including Google's, have since been rejected after researchers developed novel,

classic algorithms that go toe-to-toe with quantum computers. In addition, quantum supremacy experiments have focused on problems with no obvious practical application, suggesting that useful quantum computers could still be some way off. William Fairman, an assistant

professor of computer science at the University of Chicago. Nonetheless, the idea has helped drive progress in the field and will be a crucial springboard towards more powerful machines, he added. You'll need to walk before you can run. I don't think anyone has a perfect roadmap on how to go from achieving quantum advantage in a really diverse way to this next step to solve a useful problem on a near term quantum computer.

But I'm convinced it's the first step in the process. So it would have to be a problem that can't be solved by a regular computer. So it would have to be something in the quantum realm

that we don't understand yet. So that's pretty interesting. I've got some more to start doing something for a second. And we'll go back to it. I really like my podcasts. I do them all the time. But now I can do little short ones and combine them. So that's fine.

How quantum supremacy demonstrates and combine them. So that's fine. How quantum supremacy demonstrates, demonstrations have manifest so far. Theoretical computer scientists have discovered several quantum algorithms that can, in principle,

solve problems much faster than classic ones. That's because they can exploit quantum effects like entanglement, I like that word, and superposition to encode data very efficiently and process many more calculations in parallel than a classic computer can. But the significant number of qubits, the quantum equivalent of a bit, required to implement

them at a significant scale to show an advantage is far beyond what is available on today's quantum processor. So the processor is not big enough yet. As a result, efforts to demonstrate quantum supremacy have focused on highly contrived problems designed to favor the quantum computer. Google's 2019 experiment involved a 54-qubit processor carrying out a series of random operations. Although the output would be fundamentally useful, the researchers estimated it took roughly 10,000 years to simulate the process on an Oak Ridge supercomputer,

the most powerful classic computer in the world at the time. So it went from doing it really quickly to taking 10,000 years. So that's significantly... I'd like to get that upgrade. Hey, can I get that quantum upgrade? Wow, that's such a big difference between instantly doing something in 10,000

years from now. That's because the unusual properties of quantum mechanics means that simulating these systems on a classical computer quickly becomes attractable as they get larger. A professor of quantum technologies from University of Oxford. It's not that quantum computers are mysterious, magical things. They almost kind of sound like it. We know the equations that they

observe but as you consider larger ones it's tougher and tougher for classical computers to keep track on these equations. This is due to the quantum phenomenon of superposition where the byte in a classical computer can represent 1 and 0. A qubit can encode a complex mixture of those states at the same time. Crucially, multiple qubits can be in shared superposition, meaning that a quantum system can represent all possible combinations of qubit values simultaneously. That's a fast computer. That means that describing two qubits requires four numbers

to convert all possible states of the system. This guy said, and for each additional qubit, the number of classical bits required to represent the qubit computer state doubles. Pretty fast we find ourselves getting a big number so trying to simulate qubits as they get bigger on a classic computer. To provide an idea of how quickly the problem scales, Benjamin said a 30 qubit system can be comfortably simulated by a good laptop a 40 qubit you would need

a university scale computer super computer by around 46 qubits you'd reach the limits of the world's most powerful classic machines so I should be able to simulate a 30 qubit system I want to do that I just want to check it out however this estimate refers to the challenge of

exactly simulating a perfect quantum system in reality today's quantum computers are highly error prone that's a big thing with them. Error of the environment. Which provides shortcuts to classic algorithms. In 2022 a group of Chinese academic scientists showed that a university scale supercomputer

could simulate Google's 2019 quantum experiment in just hours, in part by sacrificing accuracy for speed. Why quantum utilities favorable to quantum supremacy? Other quantum supremacy claims have met similar challenges a group at the University of Science in Canada claimed in a 2021 paper a random sampling operation that carried out a 144 qubit light based quantum computer

would be beyond any classic computer but Farrowman's group said since then, they can exploit the noise in the system to simulate the experiment in less than an hour. Same approach, so they're using the errors of a quantum computer to somehow simulate it on a classic computer. So we're kind of get into that. As far as we know, two quantum superior experiments are still standing.

In 2023, Google used a 70 qubit processor to extend the company's previous results. And in 2024, Quantum Amia claimed to have crossed the milestone with its 56 qubit h21 quantum computer pretty cool wouldn't be surprised of classic approach I've developed that can quickly emulate these experiments in the future. I'm not holding my breath.

So I'm not really sure why we have to compare the two. Why don't we just work on the newer one and see what it can do, right? I don't quite understand that. Everyone's trying to be the best so now there's other people out there trying to show how they're not the best, I guess.

This kind of seems like a waste of time. I don't know. Maybe it's me. A definite achievement of quantum supremacy will require either a significant reduction in quantum hardware error rates or a better theoretical understanding of what kind of noise classic approaches can exploit to help simulate the behavior of error prone quantum computers yeah see that's why I don't understand

why we're worried about if it's doing something a lot faster and it has errors why are we exploiting it and downplaying it again let's see what it can do. But this back and forth between quantum and classic approaches is helping push the field forward.

He had it creating a British cycle that is helping quantum hardware developers understand where they need to improve because of this cycle the experiments have improved dramatically and as theory as a theorist coming up with classical algorithms i hope that eventually i'm not able to do it anymore so he's saying that maybe you'll get the point where there's can't make make an algorithm to compete with the quantum computers. While it's uncertain whether quantum supremacy has already been reached, it's clear that we are on the cusp of it. It seems like it. important to remember that reaching this milestone would be a largely academic and symbolic achievement

as the problems being tackled are of no practical use so why are we worried see i don't get that part why can't we just take this thing and use it for practical stuff like maybe like how to make a better metal or better science, medicine. We are at the threshold, roughly speaking, but it isn't an interesting threshold because on the other side, nothing magic happens. Quantum computers don't suddenly become useful. Let me just run this in there. That's why many in the field are reinforcing their efforts on a new goal, demonstrating quantum utility, or the ability to show a significant speed-up over classic computers

on a practically useful problem. There you go. Some groups, including research at IBM, are hopeful that even today, error-prone quantum computers can achieve this in their term on some significant problems. Google has recently

demonstrated a key milestone in the race to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computers. Its Willow quantum processor was the first to remove more errors than were introduced as you scale up the number of physical qubits in a logic bit, qubit. This means exploitation, error reduction, and a possible pathway to error-free quantum computer. But Benjamin said there is growing consensus in the field that this milestone won't be reached until we have fault-tolerant quantum computers.

This will require a quantum processor with many more qubits than we have today. He said the most well-studied quantum error correction code requires an order of 1,000 physical qubits to produce a single fault tolerant or a logic qubit. It's between the few. There's the physical qubit and there's the logic qubit. It has some sort of

error correction code around it. With today's most large quantum computers having just around 1,000 qubit mark is still likely more years away. I'm optimistic that eventually some quantum computers will exist, but I'm pessimistic that it will exist in the next five or ten years. Pretty fun.

So, some more quantum. I always do quantum as I see it that was a good little article all right so I'll save that one and maybe I'll put it with something else so I'll do it like back to back ones I'll try to make it like 30 minutes or so