Lifeboat Foundation

Quantum Goddess

Can the University of New South Wales researcher propel Australia first over the finish line in the race to build a reliable quantum computer? Elizabeth Finkel reports.

Why do we remember the past, but not the future? It seems like a silly question, but for some scientists, it’s a deep mystery wrapped up in physics and perception.

The mystery takes another twist in a study appearing in the same journal that published Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity more than a century ago.

Researchers from the University of Calgary demonstrated that photons’ states could be teleported at a record 6 kilometer distance over “dark fiber.” The team hopes this research could help them establish the fundamentals for a “global quantum internet.”

This is the question tackled by theoretical physicists working on quantum gravity by creating models attempting to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics.

Some of these models predict that spacetime at the Planck scale (10^-33cm) is no longer continuous — as held by classical physics — but discrete in nature.

Just like the solids or fluids we come into contact with every day, which can be seen as made up of atoms and molecules when observed at sufficient resolution. A structure of this kind generally implies, at very high energies, violations of Einstein’s special relativity (a integral part of general relativity).

Satellite, named after ancient philosopher Micius, launched in August with a mission to establish a secure communications between China and Europe.

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 24 September, 2016, 11:47pm.

UPDATED : Saturday, 24 September, 2016, 11:48pm.

Continue reading “China’s orbiting quantum satellite links with ground stations” »

Quantum encryption uses the principle of “quantum entanglement” to foster communication that’s totally safe against eavesdropping and decryption by others.

The satellite’s true military nature is being disguised under the civilian name, Quantum Experiments at Space Scale, or QUESS. Publicly, QUESS is being billed as an international research project in the field of quantum physics.

Micius or Mozi is operated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) while the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences run the satellite’s European receiving stations. The quantum satellite was launched last Aug. 16 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.

Continue reading “China’s Micius Military Quantum Satellite Reports Important Progress” »

The paradox of Schrödinger’s cat—in which a quantum cat is both alive and dead at the same time until we check to see which state it’s in—is arguably the most famous example of the bizarre counter-intuitive nature of the quantum world. Now, Stanford physicists have exploited this feature weirdness to make highly detailed movies of the inner machinery of simple iodine molecules.

They forgot ORNL in the laboratory list.

Deals to three companies — D-Wave, Cambridge Quantum Computing, and Quantum Biosystems — dominate funding. But newer players are emerging.

Definitely less than a decade and even less than 7 especially with China Quantum Satellite, Google’s plan release next year of a Quantum device, etc. I hope folks don’t still believe that we’re immune from a QC attack after 2025.

In a rare public speech, Greta Bossenmaier, chief of the Communications Security Establishment, said cryptologists at the CSE and around the world are racing to find new cryptographic standards before Y2Q — years to quantum — predicted for 2026.

She is the third senior CSE official this week to warn publicly of the threat quantum computing poses to widely used public key cryptography (PKC), protecting sensitive data transmissions from hackers, hacktivists, foreign state spies and other malicious actors.

Continue reading “Quantum computers will cripple encryption methods within decade, CSE head warns” »