Is everyone ready for a new teleporting net?
Physicists have set a new bar for quantum teleportation: moving information from one place to another without physically sending anything between the locations.
Two separate teams managed to teleport information across several kilometres of optical fibre network in two cities.
This form of teleportation differs from that depicted in Star Trek: it involves transferring quantum states of a light particle, not Starfleet officers.
Dwave’s next quantum chip, due in 2017, will be able to handle 2,000 qubits which is double the usable number in the existing D-Wave 2X system chip. It will be capable of solving certain problems 1,000x faster than its predecessor.
The new processor will also support additional features that allow for more efficient calculations.
“From an internal tests, that looks like that’s a really good thing to do. We’ve got some problems we’ve already sped up by a factor of 1,000 by exploiting that capability,” said Williams at the CW TEC conference in Cambridge.
Quantum teleportation just moved out of the lab and into the real world, with two independent teams of scientists successfully sending quantum information across several kilometres of optical fibre networks in Calgary, Canada, and Hefei, China.
The experiments show that not only is quantum teleportation very much real, it’s also feasible technology that could one day help us build unhackable quantum communication systems that stretch across cities and maybe even continents.
Quantum teleportation relies on a strange phenomenon called quantum entanglement. Basically, quantum entanglement means that two particles are inextricably linked, so that measuring the state of one immediately affects the state of the other, no matter how far apart the two are — which led Einstein to call entanglement “spooky action at a distance”.
Wireless security and internet standards experts release a complete quantum resistant toolkit for commercial use.
TORONTO, Sept. 19, 2016 /CNW/ — 4TH ETSI/IQC Workshop on Quantum-Safe Cryptography – ISARA Corporation today announced the availability of its ISARA Quantum Resistant (IQR) Toolkit. The toolkit helps software and hardware solution providers build robust commercial products that protect vulnerable infrastructure against the threat quantum computing already poses to widely-used security standards.
Similar to the Y2K crisis, the technology industry is facing a ‘Y2Q’ (years to quantum) challenge that has a limited timeline and requires significant work to ensure systems and information are properly protected. The massive processing power of quantum computers is such that, without integrating quantum resistant security solutions, all security that depends on existing standards is vulnerable.
Researchers have observed quantum effects in electrons by squeezing them into one-dimensional ‘quantum wires’ and observing the interactions between them. The results could be used to aid in the development of quantum technologies, including quantum computing.
Scientists have controlled electrons by packing them so tightly that they start to display quantum effects, using an extension of the technology currently used to make computer processors. The technique, reported in the journal Nature Communications, has uncovered properties of quantum matter that could pave a way to new quantum technologies.
The ability to control electrons in this way may lay the groundwork for many technological advances, including quantum computers that can solve problems fundamentally intractable by modern electronics. Before such technologies become practical however, researchers need to better understand quantum, or wave-like, particles, and more importantly, the interactions between them.
I remember when this was announced last year; however, I am glad to see the topic highlighted again especially after China’s launch of their Quantum Satellite.
Quantum teleportation is the mystical, far-off in the future idea where quantum information encoded into particles of light can be transferred from one place to another remotely. Except it’s not far-off in the future — it just happened. Teleportation is real and it is here.
The teleportation occurred over several kilometres of optical fibre networks in the cities of Hefei in China and Calgary in Canada.
The two independent studies show that quantum teleportation across metropolitan networks is technologically feasible, and pave the way towards future city-scale quantum technologies and communications networks, such as a quantum internet.
Winfried Hensinger likes Star Trek. “It goes all the way back to primary school,” said the director of the Sussex Centre for Quantum Technologies in England. “I wanted to be science officer on the Enterprise, so I worked out in about grade five that I wanted to study physics.”
Today, his day-to-day work on abstract notions of quantum mechanics would make even Spock’s ears perk up.
“[Quantum computing] has a huge appeal for young people,” Hensinger told Digital Trends, “because it’s basically science fiction.” When he started in the field, it was largely confined to theoretical study. Today, the most promising projects are within reach of producing a universal quantum computer — something that was as sci-fi as Star Trek just a few years ago.
If I had to pick my least favorite subject in high school, it would be physics.
The concepts themselves were challenging. The math was even more challenging.
However, my views on physics quickly changed when my teacher mentioned the words “quantum mechanics.”
He refused to discuss it, saying it was beyond the scope of our class. However, my curiosity was piqued.
