Daily Archives: May 13, 2017

Final Frontier Friday: ‘Q Who’ – Science Fiction

Posted: May 13, 2017 at 6:25 am

Hello and welcome! Were back for the latest installment of Final Frontier Friday, and true to my word, there isnt a single Romulan in sight! Were turning back to The Next Generation this week, to cover an episode thats come up a few times in the past: Q Who.

Coming late in the shows second season, Q Who is arguably the most important episode from the period before The Next Generation finally got good. In the space of an hour, it not only not only introduces the Borg but in doing so it forwards the loose arc of Q stories that ran throughout the series. Indeed, while this is his third appearance overall, this is arguably when it becomes clear that Q has an interest in the Enterprise and her crew that goes beyond whatever the larger machinations of the Q Continuum might be that week. And in smaller terms, it sets up the animosity that exists between Q and Guinan, a relationship that would be further explored in his next appearance.

But of course, the episodes greatest legacy lies in the introduction of the Borg, perhaps the single most iconic antagonist to emerge from eighteen years of Star Trek spin-offs. Though they didnt appear until the latter half of the second season, the conception of the Borg goes back at least a year prior, as the first hints at their existence were dropped in the first season finale. Developed to fill the role of a recurring antagonist for the new series. Though this role was originally intended for the Ferengi, it quickly became apparent that they had utterly failed to resonate in the same way as the Klingons before them. Enter the Borg. First envisioned by then-showrunner Maurice Hurley as a sort of insectoid hive that would plunder resources and technology from anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. These early plans (derailed first by the 1988 Writers Guild strike and more permanently by Hurleys departure at the end of the season) included a season-long story arc that would have seen the Borg overwhelm the Romulans before being defeated by a desperate Federation/Romulan alliance. Over time, they evolved from insectoids into the more budget-friendly cyborgs we all know and love.

While returning to his quarters to change out of a soiled uniform, Captain Picard steps out of a turbo lift and into a shuttlecraft? On finding Q at the helm (who with a wave of his hand cleans Picards uniform), Picard reminds him that he gave his word not to trouble the Enterprise again, to which the demi-god replies that theyre nowhere near the Enterprise.

Back on the Enterprise, Guinan senses something amiss, but cant put her finger on what it is. Not long after, the bridge noticed Picards absence and that of a shuttle and begins a search. On board that shuttle, Picard refuses to hear Q out, demanding instead to be returned to the Enterprise. On a whim, Q agrees, transporting them to Ten Forward. After exchanging a few pleasantries, Q explains that he wants to join the crew, having been kicked out of the Continuum. Picard declines, explaining that he doesnt trust Q. Trust him or not, Q insists, Picard needs him. They arent prepared for whats out there. After a few ominous words, Q transports the Enterprise to System J-25, some 7000 light years away, promising a preview of things to come.

On investigating the sixth planet in the system, they find evidence of an industrialized civilization, but whered there should be cities, there are only great tips in the ground. Data points out that this matches the pattern of the mysterious attacks on Neutral Zone outposts. No sooner is this connection made than a strange, cube-shaped vessel appears. When the ship doesnt respond to hails, Picard calls Guinan, who has some familiarity with this part of space. Though she doesnt know much, she is able to identify the cube as belonging to the Borg, who devastated her civilization a century ago. Heeding her warning, the shields are raised, but not before a single Borg materializes in Engineering.

Worf and Picard lead a security team to Engineering, where they observe the intruder. Q also appears, gloating as Picard attempts to communicate with the Borg, who simply ignores him. When the Borg becomes aggressive, they are forced to kill it. No sooner does it hit the floor, though, than a second Borg appears, and now impervious to phaser fire, finishes what the other began. During a briefing, Q appears just long enough to ask if Picard is sure he doesnt need help. Finally, the Borg attack, locking a tractor beam on to the Enterprise and cutting out a piece of the ship. After disabling the tractor beam and damaging the cube.

While both ships effect repairs, Riker leads an away team to the cube to gather whatever information they can. Onboard the cube, the team discovers slots in the wall through which dormant Borg interface with the collective, a Borg nursery, and learns that the Borg will ignore anything they dont consider a threat, and finally notices the rapid self-repair the ship is undergoing. At that, Picard has them beamed back and retreats with the Borg in hot pursuit and closing.

With Q present and occasionally taunting, the ship continues to flee as the Borg ship gains ground and depletes the Enterprises shields. With their shields down and engines disabled, the crew braces for the inevitable. Faced with no alternative, Picard finally admits that Q was right: they need his help. At that, Q gladly transports them back to where they started, acknowledging that he understands how hard it was for Picard to say that, that a lesser man would have thought it humiliating. The episode closes on Picard and Guinan musing over a game of chess as the realization sinks in that the Borg will be coming

Lets get this out of the way up front, shall we? Q Who is good. While its not the best that the second season has to offer (stay tuned), its definitely up there. It starts out as a more or less standard Q episode before segueing into a tense standoff against the inexorable force of the Borg.

While Qs involvement can be seen as the producers hedging their bets on the introduction of a new villain, it actually contributes a great deal to the episodes effectiveness. For example, his presence allows the writers to reveal information about this new enemy even as the Borg themselves remain a largely silent and implacable foe throughout the episode. Theres a school of thought in fandom that the Borg were far more menacing before we learned as much about them as we ultimately would through their appearances on Voyager and even their later Next Generation episodes, and by definition Q Who presents them at their most enigmatic. In fact, if youre familiar with the Borg, you likely noticed that in my synopsis I avoided using a lot of the vocabulary that would come to be associated with them (slots instead of regeneration alcoves, etc). Thats an exercise I decided to indulge largely as a way of underscoring just how much the conception of the Borg has shifted, even just between this episode and their next appearance in The Best of Both Worlds which yes, we will be getting to here, just as soon as I figure out how I want to handle two-parters.

That shift is something that can no doubt make this a bit jarring to watch for people who know the Borg more in the form they took from First Contact onward, similar to the way the Klingons seen on the original Star Trek are nearly unrecognizable next to their Next Generation counterparts. I consider myself lucky to have first encountered the Borg here (way back when), but even knowing what it was like to watch this without any foreknowledge, some of the bigger conceptual changes still stick out like a sore thumb.

The big one, of course, being the assertion that their primary interest is the consumption of resources and technology. As Q describes them, the ultimate user. Though this isnt terribly hard to reconcile with the later concept of assimilation, it is reflective of just how much farther they still had to go. In fact, while it is a fair argument that the Borg worked better when they were more mysterious and monolithic, Id argue that they didnt actually strike the right balance until The Best of Both Worlds. Here, we just dont quite know enough about them.

Setting aside any discussion of the Borgs long-term effectiveness, theres no arguing that Q Who provides an effective villain introduction for them, and thats an easy thing to foul up. There is a tendency in comics and serialized storytelling, in general, to introduce a new villain by having them kill or otherwise one-up an established character. Thats a cheap, lazy way to establish villain cred. None of that here. Here, the Enterprise is put up against a threat for which they are utterly unprepared (and, but Picards own admission, inadequate) and they are handily overwhelmed. Its easy to overlook, but the episode makes no bones about the fact that had it not been for Qs intervention, they likely would have died in the course of a final escape attempt. And really, the only reason Starfleet as a whole and the Enterprise, in particular, is able to hold its own against the Borg in later episodes is that theyve had time to prepare.

And speaking of Q, this is also a significant episode for him. In his prior appearances, hes been screwing with the Enterprise crew on business, putting Humanity on trial or offering Riker a place in the Q Continuum. Here, though, hes been cast out by the Continuum, and where does he come? The Enterprise. It establishes his interest in humanity (especially Picard) as something specific. In his own strange, fickle, sometimes petulant way, he likes these people. Or at the very least hes fascinated by them. In establishing that, Q Who effectively lays the groundwork for all of Qs later appearances, as he became less of a villain and more of an all-powerful nuisance.

What do you think of Q Who? Is this earlier iteration of the Borg more compelling than what came later? Would you have liked to see Hurleys original arc play out or are you happy with what we got? Let me know in the comments and make sure you check back in two weeks for the next Final Frontier Friday!

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Chandra spots a recoiling black hole – Astronomy Magazine

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Youd think a black hole with a mass of 160 million times that our Sun would be difficult to move and youd be right. Nonetheless, astronomers have spotted a potentially renegade black hole offset from the center of an elliptical galaxy about 3.9 billion light-years away.

In a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, first author Dongchan Kim of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his colleagues outline their discovery of a supermassive black hole whose X-ray emission a sign of growth due to the influx of new material onto the black hole is offset from the center of its host galaxy by roughly 3,000 light-years.

The black hole, labeled CXO J101527.2+625911, wasnt easy to find. First, the authors had to examine data from thousands of X-ray images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory to find a galaxy showing signs of an accreting supermassive black hole. They examined those candidates with the Hubble Space Telescope to look for two peaks of brightness in the optical images, which would indicate one of two scenarios: either a pair of accreting supermassive black holes, or a single renegade black hole ousted from the center of its galaxy.

Finally, the authors looked at Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectra of any galaxies that matched the previous two criteria. Spectra are observations that break light into its constituent parts, allowing astronomers to easily identify certain types of processes such as accretion and clearly identify motion.

Supermassive black holes preferentially lie in the center of their host galaxy, where they dont move much. When one is clearly offset from the center, then, it likely means something interesting is going on. Astronomers are searching for cases such as these because they can shed further light on the formation and behavior of supermassive black holes and the galaxies in which they reside.

CXO J101527.2+625911 does indeed show both an offset and distinct motion. Its velocity doesnt match the overall motion of its host galaxy, leading researchers to believe that it is experiencing the recoil of a previous black hole merger. When two black holes merge, they must first spiral in toward each other, each losing angular momentum before they finally collide. Because the black holes are so massive, this process generates gravitational waves. Differences in mass, spin, and orientation of the two merging black holes cause asymmetry in the gravitational waves produced, which at the final moment of merging can give the object that results a massive kick in one preferred direction. This is called recoil, and it results in a single supermassive black hole moving in a distinct direction away from the center of its galaxy.

If this scenario sounds familiar, its because another such case of a potentially recoiling black hole was recently reported, based on images taken with the Hubble.

Kims group does acknowledge that the alternate scenario is still possible: The galaxy may have two supermassive black holes, one of which (in the center) is either not growing as quickly or whose emission is shrouded. But they still favor the recoiling black hole scenario, as the host galaxy also shows signs of disruption in its outer regions and rapid new star formation, both hallmarks of a recent merger with another galaxy that increases the likelihood of a recoiling black hole.

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A new hot Neptune may be a massive water world – Astronomy Magazine

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Around 440 light years away, theres a planet a little bigger than Neptune thats more than meets the eye.

HAT-P-26b seems, by all standards at first, an ordinary hot Neptune. It should theoretically have a composition much like Uranus and Neptune, the latter of which is more dense and compact than the other giant planets in the outer solar system. But despite its size being closer to the ice giants, the actual planet is only a little more dense than Saturn (which is the least dense planet in the solar system.)

So something is amiss. And that something is water. Or, more accurately, water vapor. At 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 Celsius) the planet is not exactly conducive to somehow being an ocean world. (Nor would it necessarily be at that mass. Despite an abundance of water in Uranus and Neptune, theyre called ice giants because atmospheric pressure pushes water vapor into a state known as hot ice, where its roughly solid but also fairly hot.)

Hannah Wakeford, a postdoc at NASA Goddard who is an author on the study published today in Science, says that the planet is primarily made of a rocky core and a dense envelope of water, with a hydrogen helium atmosphere of about 15-30 percent the mass of the planet. Hubble observations suggest its relatively free of other contaminating heavy metals, which is anything above hydrogen and helium on the periodic table.

What we find is that unlike Neptune and Uranus in our solar system, which have over 100 times the amount of heavy elements as the sun, HAT-P-26b has a low metallicity more like that of Jupiter despite its low Neptune-mass, Wakeford says. This bucks the trend seen in the solar system where decreasing mass results in increasing metallicity.

You might then consider the world, which orbits its K-type star in four days, a hot mini-Jupiter or Saturn instead of an ice giant type world. It also probably formed differently from the ice giants. The abundance of water vapor (nearly 90 percent of the composition of the planet) and the lack of heavy elements suggest a snug formation close in to the star.

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Observatories combine to crack open the Crab Nebula – Astronomy Now Online

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This image of the Crab Nebula combines data from five different telescopes. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI

Astronomers have produced a highly detailed image of the Crab Nebula, by combining data from telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves seen by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to the powerful X-ray glow as seen by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. And, in between that range of wavelengths, the Hubble Space Telescopes crisp visible-light view, and the infrared perspective of the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Crab Nebula, the result of a bright supernova explosion seen by Chinese and other astronomers in the year 1054, is 6,500 light-years from Earth. At its center is a super-dense neutron star, rotating once every 33 milliseconds, shooting out rotating lighthouse-like beams of radio waves and light a pulsar (the bright dot at image center). The nebulas intricate shape is caused by a complex interplay of the pulsar, a fast-moving wind of particles coming from the pulsar, and material originally ejected by the supernova explosion and by the star itself before the explosion.

This image combines data from five different telescopes: the VLA (radio) in red; Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) in yellow; Hubble Space Telescope (visible) in green; XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue; and Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-ray) in purple.

The new VLA, Hubble, and Chandra observations all were made at nearly the same time in November of 2012. A team of scientists led by Gloria Dubner of the Institute of Astronomy and Physics (IAFE), the National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET), and the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina then made a thorough analysis of the newly revealed details in a quest to gain new insights into the complex physics of the object. They are reporting their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

Comparing these new images, made at different wavelengths, is providing us with a wealth of new detail about the Crab Nebula. Though the Crab has been studied extensively for years, we still have much to learn about it, Dubner said.

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With eclipse coming, library sets up astronomy series – Glens Falls Post-Star

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GLENS FALLS Crandall Public Library announced it will present Eyes to the Skies, a series of astronomy programs leading up to a coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in the United States, which will take place on Aug. 21.

Programs will be held in the community room in the library basement and are open to the public free of charge.

The schedule is as follows:

7 p.m. June 28 Kevin Manning, who previously worked with NASA and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, will speak. Weather permitting, the program will move outdoors to view the skies through a telescope.

6:30 p.m. July 11 Storyteller Diane Edgecomb will perform a program of ancient myths about the stars.

6:30 p.m. July 19 Staff from Dudley Observatory at the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady will speak about the upcoming eclipse.

Noon to 4 p.m. Aug. 21 Livestreaming of the eclipse.

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BC-RNS-VATICAN-ASTRONOMY – Colorado Springs Gazette

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Eds: Photos are available for web and print. Please refer to this story at religionnews.com for the photos.

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By JOSEPHINE MCKENNA

c. 2017 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis told a group of astronomers that scientific questions about the universe and its origins sometimes clash with theology and spiritual beliefs, but he encouraged them to continue their quest for knowledge and ``never to fear truth.''

The pope sent a personal greeting on Friday (May 12) to astronomers, cosmologists and other researchers discussing black holes, gravitational waves and assorted scientific questions at the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.

Francis said issues such as the beginning of the universe and its development, as well as the ``profound structure'' of space and time ``concern us deeply.''

``It is clear that these questions have a particular relevance for science, philosophy, theology and for spiritual life,'' the pope said.

``They represent an arena in which these different disciplines meet and sometimes clash.''

The 35 conference participants included Gerald `t Hooft, the 1999 Nobel laureate in physics from the Netherlands, British mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, who won the 1988 Wolf Prize in Physics and Renata Kallosh, a theoretical physicist and professor at Stanford University.

``I encourage you to persevere in your search for truth,'' the pope said. ``For we ought never to fear truth, nor become trapped in our own preconceived ideas, but welcome new scientific discoveries with an attitude of humility.''

Brother Guy Consolmagno, the MIT-educated, Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said on Monday that faith and science are not opposed to each other.

``God is not a scientific explanation,'' Consolmagno told RNS. ``If you are using God instead of science to explain what happens in the world you are talking about the gods of the Romans and Greeks.

``We believe in a God that creates outside space and time and shows us everything he did. We experience God as a person, as a god of love.''

The Vatican Observatory was established by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to show that the church supported science. The weeklong conference was held in honor of the Belgian Catholic priest and cosmologist, Monsignor Georges Lemaitre, who is credited with the big-bang theory about the creation of the universe.

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Virtustream Adds Enterprise Cloud to Global Dell EMC Partner Program – Cloud Computing Intelligence (registration) (blog)

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Dell EMC Partner, Technologent, works with Virtustream to modernise IT for global, enterprise client

Virtustream, the enterprise-class cloud company and a Dell Technologies business, today announced that Virtustream Enterprise Cloud (VEC) has been added to the global Dell EMC Partner Program.

Dell EMC partners now have the opportunity to become Virtustream partners, selling Virtustream Enterprise Cloud and Virtustream Storage Cloud, through the auspices of the Dell EMC Partner Program. Virtustream Storage Cloud was the first solution made available to Dell EMC partners last December in order to help meet growing customer demand for enterprise-class cloud storage.

Simplifying the process for our customers to obtain the perfect blend of Dell EMC and Virtustream solutions for their digital transformation projects is imperative, said Scott Millard, vice president, global channels and alliances, Virtustream. Including Virtustream Enterprise Cloud in the Dell EMC Partner Program accomplishes this goal and arms the already strong Dell EMC partner ecosystem with cloud solutions that make a substantive impact on their digital transformation journey.

One Dell EMC partner, Technologent, has already tapped Virtustream to provide enterprise-class cloud solutions for its customer, a multibillion dollar, North American financial services firm that operates as a key component within a global conglomerate. Technologent, an Irvine, CA-based provider of technology solutions for Fortune 1000 enterprises, was tasked with helping this client to modernise its IT.

Our client wanted several important benefits from its modernization project, said Marco Mohajer, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Technologent. They wanted resources available on demand, a transition from a CAPEX model to an OPEX model to help the bottom line, and a faster time-to-market in responding to their born in the cloud competitors. Virtustream is the perfect partner for both Technologent and our client in developing a hybrid, multi-cloud environment that made all of these goals a reality.

This project helped Technologents client to:

Dell EMC announced a unified partner programme, which combined the legacy Dell and EMC programs into an integrated and improved organisation this past February. Virtustream Storage Cloud and Virtustream Enterprise Cloud are a part of this combined ecosystem.

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quantum computing – WIRED UK

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In a world where we are relying increasingly on computing, to share our information and store our most precious data, the idea of living without computers might baffle most people.

But if we continue to follow the trend that has been in place since computers were introduced, by 2040 we will not have the capability to power all of the machines around the globe, according to a recent report by the Semiconductor Industry Association.

To prevent this, the industry is focused on finding ways to make computing more energy efficient, but classical computers are limited by the minimum amount of energy it takes them to perform one operation.

This energy limit is named after IBM Research Lab's Rolf Landauer, who in 1961 found that in any computer, each single bit operation must use an absolute minimum amount of energy. Landauer's formula calculated the lowest limit of energy required for a computer operation, and in March this year researchers demonstrated it could be possible to make a chip that operates with this lowest energy.

It was called a "breakthrough for energy-efficient computing" and could cut the amount of energy used in computers by a factor of one million. However, it will take a long time before we see the technology used in our laptops; and even when it is, the energy will still be above the Landauer limit.

This is why, in the long term, people are turning to radically different ways of computing, such as quantum computing, to find ways to cut energy use.

Quantum computing takes advantage of the strange ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any time. Due to the way the tiniest of particles behave, operations can be done much more quickly and use less energy than classical computers.

In classical computing, a bit is a single piece of information that can exist in two states 1 or 0. Quantum computing uses quantum bits, or 'qubits' instead. These are quantum systems with two states. However, unlike a usual bit, they can store much more information than just 1 or 0, because they can exist in any superposition of these values.

"Traditionally qubits are treated as separated physical objects with two possible distinguishable states, 0 and 1," Alexey Fedorov, physicist at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology told WIRED.

"The difference between classical bits and qubits is that we can also prepare qubits in a quantum superposition of 0 and 1 and create nontrivial correlated states of a number of qubits, so-called 'entangled states'."

D-Wave

A qubit can be thought of like an imaginary sphere. Whereas a classical bit can be in two states - at either of the two poles of the sphere - a qubit can be any point on the sphere. This means a computer using these bits can store a huge amount more information using less energy than a classical computer.

Last year, a team of Google and Nasa scientists found a D-wave quantum computer was 100 million times faster than a conventional computer. But moving quantum computing to an industrial scale is difficult.

IBM recently announced its Q division is developing quantum computers that can be sold commercially within the coming years. Commercial quantum computer systems "with ~50 qubits" will be created "in the next few years," IBM claims. While researchers at Google, in Nature comment piece, say companies could start to make returns on elements of quantum computer technology within the next five years.

Computations occur when qubits interact with each other, therefore for a computer to function it needs to have many qubits. The main reason why quantum computers are so hard to manufacture is that scientists still have not found a simple way to control complex systems of qubits.

Now, scientists from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Russian Quantum Centre are looking into an alternative way of quantum computing. Not content with single qubits, the researchers decided to tackle the problem of quantum computing another way.

"In our approach, we observed that physical nature allows us to employ quantum objects with several distinguishable states for quantum computation," Fedorov, one of the authors of the study, told WIRED.

The team created qubits with various different energy "levels", that they have named qudits. The "d" stands for the number of different energy levels the qudit can take. The term "level" comes from the fact that typically each logic state of a qubit corresponds to the state with a certain value of energy - and these values of possible energies are called levels.

"In some sense, we can say that one qudit, quantum object with d possible states, may consist of several 'virtual' qubits, and operating qudit corresponds to manipulation with the 'virtual' qubits including their interaction," continued Federov.

"From the viewpoint of abstract quantum information theory everything remains the same but in concrete physical implementation many-level system represent potentially useful resource."

Quantum computers are already in use, in the sense that logic gates have been made using two qubits, but getting quantum computers to work on an industrial scale is the problem.

"The progress in that field is rather rapid but no one can promise when we come to wide use of quantum computation," Fedorov told WIRED.

Elsewhere, in a step towards quantum computing, researchers have guided electrons through semiconductors using incredibly short pulses of light. Inside the weird world of quantum computers

These extremely short, configurable pulses of light could lead to computers that operate 100,000 times faster than they do today. Researchers, including engineers at the University of Michigan, can now control peaks within laser pulses of just a few femtoseconds (one quadrillionth of a second) long. The result is a step towards "lightwave electronics" which could eventually lead to a breakthrough in quantum computing.

A bizarre discovery recently revealed that cold helium atoms in lab conditions on Earth abide by the same law of entropy that governs the behaviour of black holes. What are black holes? WIRED explains

The law, first developed by Professor Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein in the 1970s, describes how the entropy, or the amount of disorder, increases in a black hole when matter falls into it. It now seems this behaviour appears at both the huge scales of outer space and at the tiny scale of atoms, specifically those that make up superfluid helium.

"It's called an entanglement area law, explained Adrian Del Maestro, physicist at the University of Vermont. "It points to a deeper understanding of reality and could be a significant step toward a long-sought quantum theory of gravity and new advances in quantum computing.

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Researchers seek to advance quantum computing – The Stanford Daily

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Researchers in Professor of Engineering Jelena Vuckovics lab are pursuing smaller, faster computers with work in the cutting-edgefield of quantum computing.

Most currentcomputing is based on a binary system of ones and zeros generated by electricity. Instead of using electricity and digits, quantum computing analyzes particles of light called quanta, emitted by lasers striking single electrons. The light particles indicate the way each electron is spinning; they allow transmission of more complicated information than would be possible with just binary numbers.

That greater range of possibilities forms the basis for more complex computing, Marina Radulaski, a postdoctoral fellow in Vuckovics lab, toldStanford News.

According to Vuckovic, whose research is at theforefront of quantum computing, the technology is applicable to a wide variety of problems involving many variables for example, issues in fields like cryptography and data mining.

When people talk about finding a needle in a haystack, thats where quantum computing comes in, Vuckovic said.

For the last two decades, Vuckovic has sought to develop new kinds of quantum computer chips. Recently, she has joined forces with others around the globe to test out three different ways of isolating electronsfor interaction with lasers.

Each of the three strategies leverages semiconductor crystals, a material whose lattice of atoms can be modified subtly to hold electrons.

Many companies tackling quantum computing seek to cool materials almost to absolute zero, the temperature at which atoms stop moving. But one of the materials Vuckovic and her colleagues have been exploring could function at standard room temperatures. This normal-temperature optioncould help quantum computing become more widespread.

To fully realize the promise of quantum computing we will have to develop technologies that can operate in normal environments, Vuckovic said. The materials we are exploring bring us closer toward finding tomorrows quantum processor.

We dont know yet which approach is best, so we continue to experiment, she added.

Contact Hannah Knowles at hknowles at stanford.edu.

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Home News Computer Europe Takes Quantum Computing to the Next Level With this Billion Euro… – TrendinTech

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The race on quantum technologies is on in a big way. Weve already seen big investments coming from both China and the United States, and now Europe is jumping in on the action too. Last year the European Commission announced its plans to invest 1 billion Euros ($1.1 billion) into quantum mechanic research. However, experts are concerned that partners are reluctant to invest.

A meeting was held by an advisory group steering the Quantum Technology Flagship project on 7 April at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in London. Here the group gave details of how the project will work which includes exploiting the behavior shown by quantum systems in order to develop new technologies such as ultra-accurate sensors and super-secure communication systems. But is it too little too late? Various other countries are already developing these technologies, including China and the U.S.

Europe cannot afford to miss this train, says Vladmir Buzek, a member of the steering group and physicist at the Research Center for Quantum Information of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. The industry here is really waiting too long. Launched just last year, this quantum project is a decade-long initiative that will work differently to previous efforts, operating with open calls throughout to ensure flexibility in funding the best researchers. The focus of the European Flagship will be on four distinct areas of quantum technologies: communication, sensing, computing, and simulation.

China is clearly in the lead currently when it comes to quantum communication. They hold the most patents globally in this field with the United States leading to patents involving quantum computers and ultrasensitive sensors. One of the big problems Europe face is the loss of the United Kingdom following the Brexit vote. The project is due to kick off the same year as the United Kingdom are due to exit the European Union (2019). But experts suggest the timing may actually be a good thing and are hopeful the United Kingdom can still participate in some form.

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