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The previous post ended with unanswered questions about describing the Conway group, Co0, in terms of quantum gates with dyadic rational coefficients. It turned out to be easier than expected, although the construction is much more complicated than the counterpart … Continue reading →

In the usual ‘circuit model’ of quantum computation, we have a fixed number of qubits, {q1, q2, …, qn}, and allow quantum gates to act on these qubits. The diagram below shows a Toffoli gate on the left, and an … Continue reading →

1, 240, 2160, 6720, 17520, 30240, 60480, 82560, 140400, … These terms count the number of points at distance from the origin in the E8 lattice, a highly symmetric arrangement of points which Maryna Viazovska recently (in 2016) proved is … Continue reading →

In a previous article, an announcement was made of a complex self-replicating machine (known as the 0E0P metacell) in a simple 2-state cellular automaton. In the interim between then and now, Thomas Cabaret has prepared a most illuminating video* explaining … Continue reading →

The Box-Müller transform is a method of transforming pairs of independent uniform distributions to pairs of independent standard Gaussians. Specifically, if U and V are independent uniform [0, 1], then define the following: ρ = sqrt(–2 log(U)) θ = 2π V … Continue reading →

Whilst not quite as close as the proofs of the ternary Goldbach conjecture and bounded gaps between primes, there has been a quick succession of two important and somewhat complementary breakthroughs on the computational complexity of integer multiplication: Afshani, Freksen, … Continue reading →

There has been further recent activity on the Chromatic Number of the Plane problem, with an eleventh research thread being spawned. Philip Gibbs has been able to 6-colour a large disc (with diameter slightly greater than 4), and Aubrey de … Continue reading →