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How does the earth's magnetic field shield us from solar radiation, and what would happen if it is weakened?

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How do companies like NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD optimize their low level nanoscopic processors that interact directly with electrons and current to perform faster?

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Earth's magnetic field is generated from a movement of molten iron in the earth's outer core, creating powerful electric currents. These currents orients around magnetic field lines between the poles that extend beyond earth’s atmosphere. The magnetosphere can be visualized as magnetic field lines produced by a giant bar magnet, with oppositely charged ends, tilted about 11 degrees from earth's rotational axis. One magnetic pole is located in northern Canada, and the other pole is located in antarctica. The magnetic field above the poles extends far into space and shields the earth from many of the energetically charged particles coming from the sun and more distant sources in the galaxy.

The magnetosphere deflects much of the solar particles and energy that stream towards earths at all times. Without the magnetosphere, earth's layered atmosphere would deteriorate due to the constant bombardment of solar wind.

Without our uniquely layered atmosphere, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation and traps heat, life on earth would not be possible.

The magnetosphere is a strong magnetic field that surrounds our planet. Acting as a shield, it deflects most solar energetic particle radiation that emanates from the sun. Along with light, hot gasses spew from the sun and travel at a speed of a million miles an hour through space.

Question: How would the absence of earth's magnetosphere affect the planet's atmosphere and the potential for sustaining life.

Question: How does the interaction between earth's magnetosphere and solar wind protect the planet's atmosphere and maintain conditions for life?

Additional sources: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/nmp/st5/SCIENCE/magnetosphere.html#:~:text=The%20magnetosphere%20is%20a%20strong,miles%20an%20hour%20through%20space.

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Earth’s Magnetosphere | Center for Science Education

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Earth’s magnetosphere is like a magnetic “bubble” in space around our planet.

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How do tech manufacturing companies optimize their low level components?

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How do tech manufacturing companies optimize their low level components?

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Fundamental Knowledge

-Computers are fundamentally processors for inputs in the form of on and off based on electrical signals from transistors.

-Computers compute binary because the transistors only have 2 forms so they need a number system with only 2 states.

-The faster a computer computes and dissects the inputs the faster the computer is.

-The computer can compute because through logic gates and the circuit pathways, similar to switches in a circuit diagram but on a nanoscopic level, the CPU can fetch this data and do binary arithmetic through its arithmetic logic unit.

Company Optimization

-The fundamental knowledge was important because for low level components of the computer, the most fundamental piece is the CPU which manages all the pieces of the hardwares through electrical signals and logic gates.

-There are many ways that companies optimize CPUs, like adding more transistors, increasing Hz rate, adding more cores, integrating with other components, but the 2 methods I want to focus on that are rooted deeply with physics fundamentals are transistors and architecture.

-Transistors have been shrinking and have been optimized to CPUs so they can store more data and process more inputs at once, generally the smaller the transistor the better because they can handle more data and if they scale up the CPU for more transistors, there will be lots of issues like power, conductivity time, power efficiency and cost. An exception to this rule is when the transistor approaches ~3 nanometers, some very weird quantum physics principles mess up the barriers which I don’t understand yet.

-Transistors are also optimized through better conductive and resistive material that can increase the productivity and efficiency of the computer exponentially.

Typical conductors are silver or copper but higher end CPUs can have new materials like graphene which is considered very very conductive.

-conductors for transistors aren't cutting edge technology for the public market because a good resistor might cause too much heat and a resistor that blocks conductivity and doesn’t cause too much heat is expensive. That’s why, typically, material like carbon is used for resistance.

-Architecture optimization is directly related to principles in electricity and circuit diagrams. Engineers use principles like Ohm’s law and Kirchoff’s law for the current flow to be optimized. The real CPU circuit diagrams are super complex, components have super complex connections to many other components and the circuits are layered so instead of a 2D circuit diagram, it's a 3D diagram, often having 4+ layers for higher end components that have connections to components from all layers.

All sources:

https://logicstechnology.com/blogs/news/business-technology-hardware-and-software?srsltid=AfmBOopRZfQlbjTNNFpxeeHbW5iVMhpOVjwShbfGAEf0ANUp61G3YO86

https://www.icdrex.com/the-brain-behind-the-machine-transistors-in-cpu-architecture/#:~:text=A%3A%20Transistors%20are%20tiny%20electronic,that%20make%20up%20a%20 processor.

http://simplecpudesign.com/simple_cpu_v1/index.html

https://store.ee.co.uk/guides/ideas-inspirations/how-to-improve-cpu-performance?srsltid=AfmBOor_EBNBp6-hxlNdjSeHMzNDEC2gmO6j5KJZXEkZE2dLsby1Ar6E

https://www.electronicspecifier.com/products/design-automation/how-long-will-moore-s-law-last#:~:text=Physical%20limits%3A%20As%20transistor%20sizes,of%20performance%20and%20power%20efficiency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor

(I also have fundamental knowledge in circuit diagrams for CPUs because I’ve made a simple one in a fun summer computer class)

Question: What happens when transistors go below or approach ~3 nanometers? Are CPUs fundamentally capped to a certain speed?

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The Brain Behind the Machine: Transistors in CPU Architecture

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Computers are amazing machines that can perform a variety of tasks, from browsing the web and playing games to analyzing data and controlling robots. But what makes computers so powerful and versatile? The answer lies in their brains: the central processing units (CPUs) that execute the instructions of computer programs and process the input and output data. And what makes CPUs so smart and fast? The answer lies in their building blocks: the transistors that regulate the flow of electricity and enable the representation and manipulation of binary data and logic operations.

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When buying a CPU chip, it has the maximum speed rating stamped on the chip’s case. There are 2 things that limit the chip's speed- transmission delays on the chip and heat buildup on the chip.

Transmission delays occur in the wires that connect things together on a chip. The "wires" on a chip are incredibly small aluminum or copper strips etched onto the silicon. A chip is nothing more than a collection of transistors and wires that hook them together, and a transistor is nothing but an on/off switch. When a switch changes its state from on to off or off to on, it has to either charge up or drain the wire that connects the transistor to the next transistor down the line. Imagine that a transistor is currently "on." The wire it is driving is filled with electrons. When the switch changes to "off," it has to drain off those electrons, and that takes time. The bigger the wire, the longer it takes. As the size of the wires has gotten smaller over the years, the time required to change states has gotten smaller, too. But there is some limit -- charging and draining the wires takes time. That limit imposes a speed limit on the chip. There is also a minimum amount of time that a transistor takes to flip states. Transistors are chained together in strings, so the transistor delays add up. On a complex chip like the G5, there are likely to be longer chains, and the length of the longest chain limits the maximum speed of the entire chip.

Finally, there is heat. Every time the transistors in a gate change state, they leak a little electricity. This electricity creates heat. As transistor sizes shrink, the amount of wasted current (and therefore heat) has declined, but there is still heat being created. The faster a chip goes, the more heat it generates. Heat build-up puts another limit on speed.

Question: Why do CPU’s with the same clock speed sometimes perform differently?

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A microprocessor will perform without error when executed at or below the maximum indicated speed. Why can’t they speed them up? There are two things that limit a chip’s speed.

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Solutions to the transistors  3 nanometer limit

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Solutions to the transistors  3 nanometer limit

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Modern technology allows computers to process billions of inputs through the nanoscopic transistors, typically ranging from 10 to 16 nanometers in size, which is much smaller than a red blood cell.

A physical limitation from technology advancing for computers is the unpredictable theory of quantum physics, when the barriers get too small, the electrons sometimes behave strangely due to quantum tunneling. This can cause issues like the computer freezing, making strange sounds, leaking energy which causes heat or to just out right crash.

A solution engineers and scientists have deduced is to create quantum computers and learn the predictable patterns and nature of quantum physics to produce computers that don’t rely on bits for information. Instead, they use qubits which are bits that are constantly in a superposition between 1 and 0, where its real value is determined when observed by the computer. When you have multiple qubits working together you get entangled, where the values before run time can have a pseudo infinite amount of possibilities but fall under a binary value when observed, so you don’t need to have as many transistors. This method of computing grows the possibilities of information and the processing of information exponentially because classical computers need multiple transistors to determine states, the more qubits there are the combinations grow exponentially depending on the amount of digits the binary holds.

The quantum physics and mechanics of how a qubit is observed can be expressed in mathematical notation. ∣ψ⟩=α∣0⟩+β∣1⟩
Where,∣ψ⟩, is the quantum state of the qubit and the alpha, beta values are the probabilities of which value it will be observed as.

The nature of evaluating qubits are very rooted in probability and a question I had before researching was how the computer knows what the right value is of the qubit before observed. Qubits will generally always be the desired value because quantum computers are usually hooked with classical supercomputers and they’re put through algorithms designed to handle huge factorial numbers. This is a safety to make sure every qubit observed output is the desired output from the user interference. Quantum computers can go through these algorithms super fast because they’re exponentially faster than classical supercomputers and are the solution to create faster computers without the transistor’s limitations.

Question: How does quantum entanglement and superpositions enhance computer efficiency?

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Quantum Computers Explained – Limits of Human Technology

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How would the absence of earth’s magnetosphere affect the planet’s atmosphere and the potential for sustaining life

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How would the absence of earth’s magnetosphere affect the planet’s atmosphere and the potential for sustaining life

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Our earth’s magnetosphere plays a huge role in shielding our planet and ecosystems from the dangerous solar radiation in the form of solar winds.

Without our magnetosphere, the charged particles would damage and thin the atmosphere. This was believed to have happened to mars billions of years ago and in this theory, from the charged particles constantly damaging the atmosphere because it lost its magnetosphere, it eventually became unable to sustain life. This is because of radiation exposure that increases the risk of cancer, destabilizes climate because the atmosphere can’t regulate it, and our technology like the radio, GPS and satellites would stop working due to the solar winds.

Without our earth’s magnetosphere, eventually, our atmosphere would be damaged critically and would no longer be able to regulate our climate, on top of exposing us to deadly carcinogenic beams of ultraviolet rays which would make sustaining life on earth exponentially more difficult.

Next Question: Could life forms like underwater creatures, humans with technology, evolution or microorganisms still exist on earth if our magnetosphere was wiped?

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Earth's Magnetosphere: Protecting Our Planet from Harmful Space Energy - NASA Science

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Earth's magnetosphere shields us from harmful energy from the Sun and deep space. Take a deep dive to the center of our world to learn more about its causes, effects, variations, and how scientists study it.

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Earth’s Magnetosphere: Protecting Our Planet from Harmful Space Energy

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Earth’s Magnetosphere: Protecting Our Planet from Harmful Space Energy

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Earth is surrounded by an immense magnetic field called magnetosphere. Generated by powerful, dynamic forces at the center of our world, our  magnetosphere shields us from erosion of our atmosphere by the solar wind (charged particles our Sun continually spews at us), erosion and particle radiation from coronal mass ejections (massive clouds of energetic and magnetized solar plasma and radiation), and cosmic rays from deep space.

The earth's magnetosphere is a vital shield against harmful space energy, including the solar wind and cosmic radiation. If the magnetosphere was absent, the solar wind would directly interact with earth’s atmosphere, potentially stripping it away over time. This atmospheric loss, particularly of light gasses like hydrogen, could make earth more similar to Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere. Without this protection, life as we know it would struggle to exist due to increased exposure to solar radiation and charged particles. Such exposure can disrupt DNA and other biological molecules, posing significant risks to living organisms. Moreover, the magnetosphere also helps maintain the planet's temperature balance by preserving its atmosphere, which moderates heat retention. The absence of this shield would likely result in extreme temperature fluctuations, further hindering the potential for life. Additionally, earth's magnetosphere contributes to the planet's magnetic field, crucial for navigation and animal migratory behaviors. The loss of this field would affect various species’ survival.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/earths-magnetosphere-protecting-our-planet-from-harmful-space-energy/

Question: What mechanisms protect Earth from harmful cosmic radiation and how do they compare to other planets?

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Official home page for NASA’s Space Technology 5 (ST5) mission. The project will validate methods of operating several satellites as a single system and test multiple technologies in the harsh space environment of Earth’s magnetosphere.

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How does quantum entanglement and superpositions enhance computer efficiency?

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How does quantum entanglement and superpositions enhance computer efficiency?

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Unlike classical computers, quantum computing uses qubits and they can be in a state of 0 or 1 with probability. Without the constraint of linear sequences that classical computers are bound to, qubits can go through complex customly made quantum algorithms and find the solution in parallel, so the more qubit inputs there are, the computer efficiency grows exponentially. For example, if a classical computer had 2 bits, it would only be able to represent 00, 01, 10, 11, at one time, but a qubit could represent all of those at the same time before being observed, making it more efficient and introducing parallel computing to solve huge algorithms.

Another huge pillar or why quantum computers are exponentially faster than classical computers are because of entanglement. The properties of the phenomenon in physics are not intuitive and are very debated in quantum physics. I've learned and researched more when I read the “quantumglobalgroup” article and saw Einstein’s take on it. Quantum entanglement refers to how computer qubit information sometimes interact with each other and their states, either zero or one, intertwine between hidden variables and switch states based off one particles spin or the photons, seemingly instantaneously, which is why Einstein believed it to be a flaw due to the conflicts of relativity where information can’t travel faster than the speed of light.

Ultimately, entanglement in simple terms is just how electrical signals in the form of bits interact with each other based on invisible variables like photon levels and the amount of spin or velocity it has. This helps computer algorithms evaluate the data exponentially faster because this allows indexes to the inputs the computer processes. In an analogy or hypothesis I’ve made myself, although it's pretty accurate to what actually happens, in typical programming languages, algorithms need to go through data structures to organize the data. If there were no indexes or pointers, the algorithm would take O(n) time where n is the amount of data we have, but because we do have indexes and we have pointers to the behavior of the qubits because of the invisible variables, we can use that to manipulate the output and eliminate a lot of the processes from the parallel that saves us time which can be modelled in the logarithm function, O(n log n).

Additional sources: https://quantumzeitgeist.com/superposition-in-quantum-computing/

https://quantumglobalgroup.com/quantum-principles-superposition-entanglement/

https://www.coincarp.com/learn/quantum-computing-the-power-of-superposition-and-entanglement/

https://www.triangle.technology/quantum-computing/quantum-superposition-and-quantum-entanglement

my prereq knowledge in computer programming

Next question(s):

How do electromagnetic waves enable bluetooth and Wi-Fi?

How do magnetic fields influence the operations of hard drives in our computers?

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How do superposition and entanglement make quantum computers faster? — Triangle.Technology

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The two most relevant aspects of quantum physics are the principles of superposition and entanglement.

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Would we exist if Earth's magnetic field hadn't collapsed 500 million years ago

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Would we exist if Earth's magnetic field hadn't collapsed 500 million years ago

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A new study suggests we wouldn't be here at all if that magnetic field hadn’t almost completely collapsed half a billion years ago.

If earth’s magnetosphere was wiped out, life as we know it would face significant challenges. The magnetosphere protects earth from harmful solar and cosmic radiation. Without it, increased radiation could damage DNA, potentially hindering the evolution of complex life. While microorganisms, especially those adapted to extreme conditions, might survive, surface life, including humans, would need advanced technology for protection. Ecolution could favour life forms that thrive in high radiation environments, similar to some extremophiles today. The collapse of the magnetic field could also disrupt atmospheric stability, further threatening life.

Without the magnetosphere, earth’s atmosphere would be more vulnerable to solar wind erosion, potentially stripping away vital gasses like oxygen and water vapour over time. This would make it even harder for life to survive or evolve on the planet's surface. Additionally any surviving species would need to adapt to these extreme conditions, possibly leading to an entirely different trajectory for evolution. While microorganisms might thrive in niches, humans and other complex life forms would need artificial shielding or habitat to ensure such a hostile environment.

Question: How would the collapse of the earth's magnetosphere specifically impact atmospheric composition over millions of years, and could it lead to conditions similar to mars?

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University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw

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Would we exist if Earth’s magnetic field hadn’t collapsed 500m years ago?

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The Earth’s magnetic field is vital for life – without it, the Sun’s radiation would sterilize the planet. But a new study suggests we wouldn’t be here at all if that magnetic field hadn’t almost completely collapsed half a billion years ago.