We live in a nuclear age. We’ve harnessed the power of the atom to feed our thirst for energy, but new uses of the atom have the possibility to expand the annals of knowledge. Modern scientists are now turning to the power of the atom for its unbridled promise in the realm of computation.
The quantum computer has the potential to radically change the electronic age as we know it. A quantum computer is a theoretical construct for an advanced computing system that harnesses atomic properties for processing. Current computers will soon max out in speed, due to the limits of miniaturization; transistors and electrical wiring cannot be made slimmer than the width of an atom .
Quantum computing offers an alternative in the manufacturing of atom-wide circuits, resulting in much faster processing. Considering the massive calculations that quantum computers could perform, the possibilities seem endless. Programs could be made to simulate the quantum environment, something modern computers cannot even begin to model. These programs could simulate the experiments conducted in billion dollar facilities that are currently being constructed in order to help us better understand the universe.
In addition, medical programs could greatly benefit from quantum computing. Doctors could explore the human body and experiment on simulated environments, advancing medical research enormously. Another area of computing possibilities is the prime factorization of large numbers. Prime factorization is a mathematical algorithm that many organizations use for encryption. It is very hard to calculate in reverse; a modern computer might spend millions of years trying to perform the necessary calculations, rendering any hacking attempts laughable . A quantum computer, however, might complete the required calculations in less than a year. On the other hand, quantum computers could be used to generate more powerful encryption techniques. Just as hacking becomes more powerful with greater resources, so does security. The only danger here is if one party has access to quantum computing and the other does not. When the technology for quantum computing is achieved, it is imperative that it be accessible to everyone.
How do they work?
Clearly quantum computers offer huge potential when compared to the desktop PC of today, but why are they so much faster? What causes our modern machines to seem so uselessly sluggish in comparison? A basic explanation of how the two differ will illustrate. Modern computers manipulate information in the form of on and off signals. Ones (on) and zeroes (off) form a binary mathematics that is the fundamental basis of current computing. Two bits can form four combinations of on and off states. In a standard PC you might have 8 billion bits, providing a fairly large potential for information (see Fig. 1).
Quantum computing accomplishes this task differently. Quantum bits, often referred to as quebits, can attain multiple states simultaneously-each state having a probability. So each combination of on and off would require a probability. The amount of combinations grows rapidly: for n quebits there are 2n different states, each having a probability associated with it . An example of how the two perform a task can help us visualize the process. A good example comes from Scientific American, illustrating how a modern computer and a quantum computer would find the right combination for a lock. Take a lock with 4 numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3; and any one number needed to unlock it. A modern computer would try each number in turn: is ‘1’ correct? Is ‘2’ correct? And so on. It would potentially try all 4 numbers, until it found the correct number. A quantum computer would test multiple numbers at the same time and get a unique answer for each potential correct answer. The modern computer averages n/2 guess, whereas the quantum computer needs only the square root of n .
Some find the idea of simultaneous opposing states hard to swallow. Quantum mechanics, which is the basis for our current theories of the standard model, has a few basic definitions that are helpful when understanding this ‘strange’ coexistence characteristic: Quantization: observable quantities do not vary continuously but come in discrete chunks, or quanta. This characteristic makes computation, classical or quantum, possible. Interference: the outcome of a quantum process, in general, depends on all the possible histories of that process. This makes quantum computers qualitatively more powerful than classical ones. Entanglement: the properties of a composite system, even when the components are distant and non-interacting, cannot in general be fully expressed by descriptions of the properties of all the component systems. This makes quantum cryptography possible .
How do you Make a Quantum Computer?
Even with an understanding of how quantum computers would work, how does one go about building one? This idea is to build logic gates and then use quantum circuits to implement them . It turns out that by reading the states of liquid molecules, we form a rough interface with their quantum properties. Using a technique known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), it becomes possible to manipulate quantum characteristics . This method requires that the liquid molecules be held in a secluded state so that they are not influenced by outside molecules. Two magnets are used to suspend the molecules in an environment of their own. Then using NMR (see Fig. 2) their states are read. The states can be altered using factors like magnetic fields and radio frequencies.
One big problem is that the NMR techniques used to read the state of the molecule disrupt that state. So as soon as data is read, it is lost. A method used to correct this is by using lots of molecules, and reading only one. This way the others will do work to return the one disturbed molecule to its original state. Another current setback is the need for these operations to be performed at near absolute zero temperatures. Researchers Isaac Chuang of Los Almos National Laboratory, Neil Gershenfeld of The Massachusettes Institute of Technology, and Mark Kubinec of The University of California Berkeley are attempting to solve this problem by using foreign atoms. They are finding promise in the use of chloroform to implement some standard algorithms that would be used by quantum computers . Another problem lies in the task of sustaining several quantum bits at the same time. As it is, the magnetic fields required to sustain a quantum bit interfere with each other in when in close proximity. Either another method of sustaining or a way of accounting for the interference must be developed.
Yasnuobu Nakamura and his co-workers at the NEC Fundamental Research Laboratories in Tsukuba, Japan, have designed a quantum bit sustained on a silicon chip. This chip is basically a small piece of aluminum placed between two pieces of silicon. This chip holds great advantages, as the magnetic fields required for the NMR technique are no longer a problem. However, the chip must be held at temperatures near absolute zero to insure its superconducting state. These chips have to be held and read with the utmost precision. They are appended by adding electrons to their existing structures.
Scientific American describes the process: “Two small junctions connect the dot to a larger aluminum reservoir, and an applied voltage aligns the energy levels in dot and reservoir so that a single Cooper pair can tunnel back and forth from reservoir to dot. This forms the 0 and 1 of the device; the absence or presence of one extra Cooper pair in the finger, which is then called a single-Cooper-pair box” . One must add extremely small amounts of voltage to change the state from on to off.
Much more research needs to be done in order to make the process practical and repeatable. Many advances have been and are being made in the field of quantum computing. With years of research, the sheer computational power that it affords will one day not only be a quantum possibility, but a quantum reality.


Today, we are on the edge of a quantum revolution. The advent of quantum computers in the next decade will give mankind access to unparalleled processing power with all the advantages that this brings, however this also creates challenges as they will render much of today’s cybersecurity useless. So how can Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) help?
Quantum cryptography is a technology that uses quantum physics to secure the distribution of symmetric encryption keys. A more accurate name for it is quantum key distribution (QKD). It works by sending photons, which are “quantum particles” of light, across an optical link.
The principles of quantum physics stipulate that observation of a quantum state causes perturbation. The various QKD protocols are designed to ensure that any attempt by an eavesdropper to observe the transmitted photons will indeed perturb the transmission.
This perturbation will lead to transmission errors, which can be detected by the legitimate users. This is used to verify the security of the distributed keys.
QKD implementation requires interactions between the legitimate users. These interactions need to be authenticated. This can be achieved through various cryptographic means.
The end-result is that QKD can utilize an authenticated communication channel and transform it into a secure communication channel.In theory, QKD should be combined with One-Time Pad (OTP) encryption to achieve provable security. However, an OTP requires keys, which are as long as the data to be encrypted, and can be used only once.
This would impose strong limitations on the available bandwidth, due to the fact that the key distribution rate of QKD is typically 1’000 to 10’000 times lower than conventional optical communications.
Therefore, in practice, QKD is often combined with conventional symmetric encryption, such as AES, and used to frequently refresh short encryption keys. This is sufficient to provide quantum-safe security.
Our cybersecurity infrastructure requires two different functions: authentication and confidentiality. Authentication allows distant users to trust their counterpart and validate the content of their exchanges.
It is mostly implemented by public-key signature schemes. Confidentiality is required for any exchange of private information. It is often performed in a two-step process. First the users have to exchange a common secret key.
This relies on another public-key protocol, the key exchange mechanism. The secret key is then used in a symmetric key encryption scheme. Both functions therefore depend on similar cryptographic techniques, known as asymmetric or public-key cryptography.
Cybersecurity is much more than the underlying cryptography. All current hacks and security failures do not come from a weak cryptography, but rather from faulty implementation, social engineering and the like. Today, we trust the cryptography, and fight to get the implementation right.
Unfortunately, this is about to change. The point of cryptographic vulnerability today is public-key cryptography, based on algorithms such as RSA or Elliptic Curve, which are used both to authenticate data and to securely exchange data encryption keys.
The very processing power of the quantum computer can solve these mathematical problems exponentially faster than classical computers and break public-key cryptography.
This means that the currently used public-key cryptosystems are not appropriate to secure data that require long-term confidentiality. An adversary could indeed record encrypted data and wait until a quantum computer is available to decrypt it, by attacking the public keys.
We need quantum-safe cryptography today.
The greatest threat is to public cryptography – or asymmetric algorithms – used for digital signatures and key exchange. There are already quantum algorithms, such as the famous Shor algorithm, which can break RSA and Elliptic Curve algorithms, once a universal quantum computer is available.
Another famous quantum algorithm, the Grover algorithm, attacks symmetric cryptography. Fortunately, Grover can be countered by a simple expansion of the key size. For example, AES symmetric encryption scheme with 256 bit keys is considered as quantum-safe.
Countering the quantum computer threat will rely on two pillars. One is the development of new classical algorithms, which should resist the quantum computer. These are known as Post-Quantum or Quantum-Resistant algorithms.
We already encountered the example of AES above for encryption. We can also mention some signature schemes (LMS and XMSS), based on so-called hash functions.Many other algorithms, for both signature and key exchange are being developed in the framework of the NIST process. Their properties and quantum resistance are still under test. Standardisation is expected by 2023-2024.
The second pillar, which is available today, is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), which provide quantum-safe key exchange, based on very different principles.
A security solution is as secure as its weakest link and in network encryption, the current weakest link with respect to the quantum computer threat is the secret key distribution based on public key cryptography. As its name says, QKD is used to distribute encryption keys, whose security is based on quantum physics and is thus guaranteed for the long-term.
Most QKD solutions currently consist of key distribution appliances combined with link encryptors. The QKD appliances distribute the secret keys to the link encryptors. The link encryptors use the keys to encrypt large amounts of data, typically up to 100 Gb/s.
In the simplest case, two QKD appliances are connected through an optical fibre and continuously distribute key material, which they store at each end-point, until it is requested by the encryptors.
These solutions work up to an optical attenuation in the fibre of 18 dB, which corresponds to a range of about 80km, depending on the quality of the optical network.
These systems are thus typically deployed in Local Area Networks or Metropolitan Area Networks, such as corporate campuses or datacenter interconnects.
These applications have been extended to much longer distances, through the use of so-called Trusted Nodes. These trusted Nodes perform key hopping, whereby keys are generated at a starting node and transferred securely from node to node until the end node.
Instead of relying on the security of the whole transmission channel, security has to be provided at each node only. Using a similar technology, it is also possible to build various types of QKD networks, such as ring networks and star networks.
This requires more complex Key Management Schemes, which distribute the keys from and to any node in the network. For global reach, the Trusted Nodes can be implemented in satellites, with free-space QKD.
Thanks to the rapid development of QKD solutions, many encryptor manufacturers now offer “quantum enabled” devices, which accept keys from QKD appliances. These encryptors are compatible with Ethernet and Fibre Channel with link bandwidth up to 10Gbps and aggregated bandwidth up to 100Gbps.
In addition, a standard QKD interface has been developed by the ETSI (European Telecommunication Standards Institute). This will facilitate the introduction of QKD for OTN vendors.
IDQ has deployed QKD systems commercially since 2007. One of the first QKD implementations was to secure elections in Geneva (see Geneva Government use case) in 2007, and this installation has been working reliably since its installation.
QKD users include banks and governments worldwide. Quantum cryptography, or more correctly QKD, is now a well-established commercial solution.
Standardisation work on QKD is also taking place at an increasing pace. In addition to the ETSI mentioned above, the ITU, ISO and IEEE organisations have all started working on quantum communication and QKD. Industry is getting organized for full-scale deployment of this technology.
Contrary to classical key distribution techniques, which rely on unproven assumptions and thus do not fulfil the first criterion, the security of QKD is based on the laws of quantum physics and can be rigorously proven.
This having been said, it is then important to make sure that the practical embodiment of a QKD system also fulfils the second criterion and does not have any implementation flaws.
IDQ actively participates in quantum hacking projects with well-respected academic partners, with the goal of understanding quantum-specific side channel attacks and of improving implementation security of QKD devices.
All the announcements about QKD having been hacked actually dealt with implementation flaws. These flaws are important but are inherent to any technological system.
Moreover such quantum hacking projects use open QKD systems, designed for R&D research. The quantum hacks which have been discovered to date are not viable attacks on commercial QKD systems with anti-tamper proofing and other standard security features.
In summary, the security of QKD is based on sound principles and, if properly implemented, it guarantees absolute security for key distribution.
Quantum Technologies are creating a world of opportunities across almost every aspect of modern life. IDQ helps you build a trusted future by preparing your organisation now. Data security is a never-ending marathon.
Adding quantum gives you a step ahead in this race. Getting prepared must be considered as a journey where every step completed adds a layer of trust and preparedness.


Northeastern researchers have used a powerful computer model to probe a puzzling class of copper-based materials that can be turned into superconductors. Their findings offer tantalizing clues for a decades-old mystery, and a step forward for quantum computing.
The ability of a material to let electricity flow comes from the way electrons within their atoms are arranged. Depending on these arrangements, or configurations, all materials out there are either insulators or conductors of electricity.
But cuprates, a class of mysterious materials that are made from copper oxides, are famous in the scientific community for having somewhat of an identity issue that can make them both insulators and conductors.
Under normal conditions, cuprates are insulators: materials that inhibit the flow of electrons. But with tweaks to their composition, they can transform into the world’s best superconductors.
The finding of this kind of superconductivity in 1986 won its discoverers a Nobel Prize in 1987, and fascinated the scientific community with a world of possibilities for improvements to supercomputing and other crucial technologies.
But with fascination came 30 years of bewilderment: Scientists have not been able to fully decipher the arrangement of electrons that encodes for superconductivity in cuprates.
Mapping the electronic configuration of these materials is arguably one of the toughest challenges in theoretical physics, says Arun Bansil, University Distinguished Professor of physics at Northeastern. And, he says, because superconductivity is a weird phenomenon that only happens at temperatures as low as -300 F (or about as cold as it gets on Uranus), figuring out the mechanisms that make it possible in the first place could help researchers make superconductors that work at room temperature.
Now, a team of researchers that includes Bansil and Robert Markiewicz, a professor of physics at Northeastern, is presenting a new way to model these strange mechanisms that lead to superconductivity in cuprates.
In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team accurately predicted the behavior of electrons as they move to enable superconductivity in a group of cuprates known as yttrium barium copper oxides.
In these cuprates, the study finds, superconductivity emerges from many types of electron configurations. A whopping 26 of them, to be specific.
“During this transition phase, the material will in essence become some kind of a soup of different phases,” Bansil says. “The split personalities of these wonderful materials are being now revealed for the first time.”
The physics within cuprate superconductors are intrinsically weird. Markiewicz thinks of that complexity as the classical Indian myth of the blind men and the elephant, which has been a joke for decades among theoretical physicists who study cuprates.
According to the myth, blind men meet an elephant for the first time, and try to understand what the animal is by touching it. But because each of them touches only one part of its body—the trunk, tail, or legs, for example—they all have a different (and limited) concept of what an elephant is.
“In the beginning, we all looked [at cuprates] in different ways,” Markiewicz says. “But we knew that, sooner or later, the right way was going to show up.”
The mechanisms behind cuprates could also help explain the puzzling physics behind other materials that turn into superconductors at extreme temperatures , Markiewicz says, and revolutionize the way they can be used to enable quantum computing and other technologies that process data at ultra-fast speeds.
“We’re trying to understand how they come together in the real cuprates that are used in experiments,” Markiewicz says.
The challenge of modeling cuprate superconductors comes down to the weird field of quantum mechanics, which studies the behavior and movement of the tiniest bits of matter—and the strange physical rules that govern everything at the scale of atoms.
In any given material—say, the metal in your smartphone—electrons contained within just the space of a fingertip could amount to the number one followed by 22 zeros, Bansil says. Modeling the physics of such a massive number of electrons has been extremely challenging ever since the field of quantum mechanics was born.
Bansil likes to think of this complexity as butterflies inside a jar flying fast and cleverly to avoid colliding with each other. In a conducting material, electrons also move around. And because of a combination of physical forces, they also avoid each other. Those characteristics are at the core of what makes it hard to model cuprate materials.
“The problem with the cuprates is that they are at the border between being a metal and an insulator, and you need a calculation that is so good that it can systematically capture that crossover,” Markiewicz says. “Our new modeling can capture this behavior.”
The team includes researchers from Tulane University, Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland, and Temple University. The researchers are the first to model the electronic states in the cuprates without adding parameters by hand to their computations, which physicists have had to do in the past.
To do that, the researchers modeled the energy of atoms of yttrium barium copper oxides at their lowest levels. Doing that allows researchers to trace electrons as they excite and move around, which in turn helps describe the mechanisms supporting the critical transition into superconductivity.
That transition, known as the pseudogap phase in the material, could be described simply as a door, Bansil says. In an insulator, the structure of the material is like a closed door that lets no one through. If the door is wide open—as it would be for a conductor—electrons pass through easily.
But in materials that experience this pseudogap phase, that door would be slightly open. The dynamics of what transforms that door into a really wide open door (or, superconductor) remains a mystery, but the new model captures 26 electron configurations that could do it.
“With our ability to now do this first-principles-parameter-free-type of modeling, we are in a position to actually go further, and hopefully begin to understand this pseudogap phase a bit better,” Bansil says.


New paradigm for "auto-tuning" quantum bits could overcome major engineering hurdle.
A high-end race car engine needs all its components tuned and working together precisely to deliver top-quality performance. The same can be said about the processor inside a quantum computer, whose delicate bits must be adjusted in just the right way before it can perform a calculation.
This artist's conception shows how the research team used artificial intelligence (AI) and other computational techniques to tune a quantum dot device for use as a qubit. The dot's electrons are corralled by electrical gates, whose adjustable voltages raise and lower the "peaks" and "valleys" in the large circles. As the gates push the electrons around, sensitive measurement of the moving electrons creates telltale lines in the black and white images, which the AI uses to judge the state of the dot and then make successive adjustments to the gate voltages. Eventually the AI converts a single dot (leftmost large circle) to a double dot (rightmost), a process that takes tedious hours for a human operator.
Credit: B. Hayes / NIST
Who's the right mechanic for this quantum tuneup job?
According to a team that includes scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it's an artificial intelligence, that's who.
The team's paper in the journal Physical Review Applied outlines a way to teach an AI to make an interconnected set of adjustments to tiny quantum dots, which are among the many promising devices for creating the quantum bits, or "qubits," that would form the switches in a quantum computer's processor.
Precisely tweaking the dots is crucial for transforming them into properly functioning qubits, and until now the job had to be done painstakingly by human operators, requiring hours of work to create even a small handful of qubits for a single calculation.
A practical quantum computer with many interacting qubits would require far more dots -- and adjustments -- than a human could manage, so the team's accomplishment might bring quantum dot-based processing closer from the realm of theory to engineered reality.
"Quantum computer theorists imagine what they could do with hundreds or thousands of qubits, but the elephant in the room is that we can actually make only a handful of them work at a time," said Justyna Zwolak, a NIST mathematician. "Now we have a path forward to making this real."
A quantum dot typically contains electrons that are confined to a tight boxlike space in a semiconductor material. Forming the box's walls are several metallic electrodes (so-called gates) above the semiconductor surface that have electric voltage applied to them, influencing the quantum dot's position and number of electrons. Depending on their position relative to the dot, the gates control the electrons in different ways.
To make the dots do what you want -- act as one sort of qubit logic switch or another, for example -- the gate voltages must be tuned to just the right values. This tuning is done manually, by measuring currents flowing through the quantum dot system, then changing the gate voltages a bit, then checking the current again. And the more dots (and gates) you involve, the harder it is to tune them all simultaneously so that you get qubits that work together properly.
In short, this isn't a gig that any human mechanic would feel bad about losing to a machine.
"It's usually a job done by a graduate student," said graduate student Tom McJunkin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's physics department and a co-author on the paper. "I could tune one dot in a few hours, and two might take a day of twiddling knobs. I could do four, but not if I need to go home and sleep. As this field grows, we can't spend weeks getting the system ready -- we need to take the human out of the picture."
Pictures, though, are just what McJunkin was used to looking at while tuning the dots: The data he worked with came in the form of visual images, which the team realized that AI is good at recognizing. AI algorithms called convolutional neural networks have become the go-to technique for automated image classification, as long as they are exposed to lots of examples of what they need to recognize. So the team's Sandesh Kalantre, under supervision from Jake Taylor at the Joint Quantum Institute, created a simulator that would generate thousands of images of quantum dot measurements they could feed to the AI as a training exercise.
"We simulate the qubit setup we want and run it overnight, and in the morning we have all the data we need to train the AI to tune the system automatically," Zwolak said. "And we designed it to be usable on any quantum dot-based system, not just our own."
The team started small, using a setup of two quantum dots, and they verified that within certain constraints their trained AI could auto-tune the system to the setup they desired. It wasn't perfect -- they identified several areas they need to work on to improve the approach's reliability -- and they can't use it to tune thousands of interconnected quantum dots as yet. But even at this early stage its practical power is undeniable, allowing a skilled researcher to spend valuable time elsewhere.
"It's a way to use machine learning to save labor, and -- eventually -- to do something that human beings aren't good at doing," Zwolak said. "We can all recognize a three-dimensional cat, and that's basically what a single dot with a few properly-tuned gates is. Lots of dots and gates are like a 10-dimensional cat. A human can't even see a 10D cat. But we can train an AI to recognize one."
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Scientists took a leukocyte as the blueprint and developed a microrobot that has the size, shape and moving capabilities of a white blood cell. Simulating a blood vessel in a laboratory setting, they succeeded in magnetically navigating the ball-shaped microroller through this dynamic and dense environment. The drug-delivery vehicle withstood the simulated blood flow, pushing the developments in targeted drug delivery a step further: inside the body, there is no better access route to all tissues and organs than the circulatory system. A robot that could actually travel through this finely woven web would revolutionize the minimally-invasive treatment of illnesses.
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The computers of today have just about hit their limits, and scientists around the world are scrambling to build the first viable quantum computer - a machine that could increase processing speeds 100-million-fold.
The biggest challenge in scaling up a quantum computer is figuring out how to entangle enough quantum bits (qubits) to perform calculations, but a team of engineers in the US say they might finally have a solution.
Quantum computers are set to revolutionise how we process data in the future, because they’re not limited to the 1s and 0s of binary code that today’s computers rely on. That binary code is holding us back, because if you can only use a combination of 1s and 0s, there’s a finite amount of data that can be processed, no matter how fast you go.
Instead, quantum computers use qubits, which can essentially take the state of 0, 1, or a 'superposition' of the two. So rather than having bits that can only be 1 or 0 at any given moment, qubits can be anything and everything.
"Quantum computers exploit three very unusual features that operate at the quantum scale - that electrons can be both particles and waves, that objects can be in many places at once, and that they can maintain an instantaneous connection even when separated by vast distances (a property called 'entanglement’)."
This means that quantum computers can perform many calculations simultaneously, giving them - quite literally - limitless potential. But we have to figure out how to build them first.
Despite what Google’s been saying about its controversial new D-Wave 2X quantum computing machine, no one’s been able to build a 'proper' quantum computer, because of how difficult it is to entangle a large number of qubits on a circuit, and control them in any reliable way.
Once derided by Einstein himself as "spooky action at a distance", quantum entanglement is a strange phenomenon where two quantum particles interact in such a way that they become deeply linked, and essentially 'share' an existence.
This means that what happens to one particle will directly and instantaneously affect the other - even if it’s many light-years away.
Getting a bunch of entangled particles in the one place is crucial to the development of quantum computers, and researchers from Penn State University say they’ve come up with a technique that could get this done.
First they used beams of laser light to build a three-dimensional lattice array, which could trap and hold onto a bunch of quantum particles, forcing them into a cubic arrangement of five stacked planes. Think of it like a five-layer sandwich with grids of atoms held inside each layer, says Katherine Noyes from PC World.
Each layer in the circuit could hold 25 equally spaced atoms, and once they were all in position, microwaves were used to switch individual qubits from one quantum state to another without altering the states of the other atoms in the cubic array.
"The scientists filled some of the possible locations in the array with qubits consisting of neutral caesium atoms possessing no positive or negative charge. Then, they used crossed beams of laser light to target individual atoms in the lattice, causing a shift in the energy levels of those atoms.
When the scientists then bathed the whole array with a uniform wash of microwaves, the state of the atoms with the shifted energy levels changed, while the states of all the other atoms did not."
The team, led by physicist David S. Weiss, tested their ability to change the quantum state of these individual atoms by switching the states of selected atoms across three of the stacked planes to spell out the letters P, S, and U (for Penn State University).
"We changed the quantum superposition of the PSU atoms to be different from the quantum superposition of the other atoms in the array," Weiss says in a press release. "We have a pretty high-fidelity system. We can do targeted selections with a reliability of about 99.7 percent, and we have a plan for making that more like 99.99 percent."
So... next step, quantum computers?
Unfortunately, there are two major limitations here - the system needs to be seriously scaled up, because 125 atoms aren't going to do us much good in the real world, and the quantum particles used in the system hadn't been entangled. As we found out last month, when Chinese physicists quantum entangled 10 photon pairs to set a new world record, entangling multiple particles is hard.
But Weiss's team is confident that they can build on the system they have, both in teams of scale and spooky entanglement action.
"Filling the cube with exactly one atom per site and setting up entanglements between atoms at any of the sites that we choose are among our nearer-term research goals," he says.
Our fingers are crossed for the computers of the future.
The results have been published in Science.


Virtually Virtual Reality
Virtually virtual reality (abbreviated VVR) describes a set of technologies which can be used to virtually simulate virtual environments. VVR has been deployed extensively on the world wide web for commercial, entertainment, cultural, and educational purposes.
VVR Technologies and Principles
VVR utilizes quantum computing and physics standard modeling to create an immersive environment. These technologies are combined with virtually simulated neural nets to create fully interactive avatars (called people) within these environments. By utilizing PPP (photon particle protocol) and HFP (Higgs field protocol) over the internet, a VVR world can be transmitted in full to an end user anywhere in the world. VVR implementations incorporate virtually artificial visual, aural, olfactory, and tactile stimuli to create a remarkable level of immersion and interactivity for the end user.
Early Implementations of VVR
The earliest VVR environment was developed at Argonne National Laboratory in 1965 and was demonstrated to the public in 1966 in nearby Harvey, Illinois. This first VVR environment was dubbed Dixie Square Shopping Center. Users within this environment could interact with each other using IVC (interactive vocal chat), a precursor to IRC. Users could also enter virtually virtual store environments, where they could find and purchase products which would then be delivered immediately. Inventory data was presented in real-time; merchants would see virtually virtual representations of merchandise that was in stock. Dixie Square Shopping Center represented an early commercial success of VVR technologies.
Other early VVR experiments included Fallbrook Mall of West Hills, California, developed by researchers at Caltech in 1968; and Mohawk Mall, located in Schenectady, New York, developed by researchers at Stony Brook University in 1970.
Applications of VVR
VVR technology became popular with the widespread adoption of the internet. One of its first applications was in education. Virtually virtual campuses came to be used by thousands of students. This type of education came to be called zero-distance education. On a virtually virtual campus, a directory of academic subjects is presented as a set of virtually virtual buildings. To study a subject, a student need only enter one of the buildings (after entering the virtually virtual registrar’s office where tuition, used to maintain the school’s VVR server, is paid).
Within each virtually virtual building, a student can encounter teaching avatars. In virtually virtual lecture halls, students can interact with each other and the teaching avatar using natural spoken language. Some schools also allow students to interact individually with a teaching avatar. During these virtually virtual sessions, or office hours, students can enjoy a personal educational experience.
VVR vendors have created appealing VVR spaces designed to sell a wide range of goods and services. In virtually virtual stores, merchants keep track of inventory in real time using actual visual representations of goods. Customers receive multisensory virtually virtual simulations of products and can receive information from sales avatars. Many customers prefer the personal interaction made possible in VVR stores.
One of the first major vendors in VVR was Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s VVR experience, with its large number of products available and instant delivery, allowed Wal-Mart to make a profit of $8.4 billion in 2004.
VVR has also proven to be popular in the entertainment industry. The large bandwidth provided by quantum computing and photon particle protocol allows for compelling interactive experiences. Many enjoy purchasing virtually virtual pets in VVR. These virtually virtual pets are fed virtually virtual food and play with virtually virtual toys (which both may be purchased with additional virtually virtual money). Virtually virtual dogs need to be virtually virtually walked at regular times at each day. Virtually virtual pets can die if they are denied virtually virtual care; however, should this happen, a new virtually virtual pet can be purchased with little difficulty.
Others enjoy virtually virtual cinema. Virtually virtual cinema not only virtually simulates a movie, but also an audience, popcorn, and the long lines that are part of the movie-going experience. Comedy clubs, gambling, and interactive chat rooms are extremely popular as VVR experiences.
VVR communities started to become popular in 1995. Among the earliest VVR communities were Quakers.org and Amish.org. In these virtually virtual communities, clusters of commerce sites, educational sites, and other special interest sites are brought together in a single virtually virtual location. These sites are hypolinked using virtually virtual roads and virtually virtual sidewalks. Users can travel within a VVR community using virtually virtual walking or virtually virtual cars. Within a VVR community, users can communicate with the avatars of other users, sales avatars, and adminstrator avatars using natural language and gestures. Many users join VVR communities for the rich types of social interactions which are available within.
In 2002, the IEEE released a set of standards that allowed VVR communities to be linked together. Today, millions of people daily use virtually virtual airplanes and virtually virtual trains to travel between the wide range of VVR communities. This world wide web of VVR communities promises to have a significant impact on the future development of technology and culture.
A VVR Experience
Thanks to the administrators of Uncyclopedia (and in particular the hard work of Carlb, Elvis, and Rcmurphy), the Uncylopedia now hosts a small VVR server. By downloading a VVRML plugin, you can experience VVR for yourself.
The VVRML plugin requires runs on any Windows system or better (better includes Mac OS X and Linux). It requires a G3 or 386 processor (or better). Click on the link below to download the VVRML plugin. Once the plugin has been downloaded, initialized, and calibrated, you will be returned to a VVR representation of this page.
Using your IP address, extrapolations from collected data of quantum effects of the immediate environment on the CPU of your computer, and Google, the VVR server will create a representation of your environs and abode. The Uncyclopedia VVR server will send commands to your computer that will generate a special pattern on your monitor. This pattern will create interference patterns of photons and immerse you in a holographic image. The first hologram that you see will look like the area around your computer. This is your home portal. The VVR representation of this page will look like an Uncyclopedia entry on your virtually virtual monitor.
- In the VVR representation of your kitchen, find a large sharp knife. You will need the knife later.
- Find a copy of the Yellow Pages. The VVR server will list some of the immediate hypolinks available. Find a listing of department stores in your virtually virtual community.
- Choose a method to get to a virtually virtual department store. You may choose virtually virtual walking, virtually virtual driving, or a virtually virtual taxi.
- Look at the sky. The Uncyclopedia VVR server uses real-time data to render the sky according to the time of day.
- The virtually virtual store will maintain real-time data on inventory. You may ask the sales avatars for information using a natural language interface.
- To complete a conversation, run the knife through the avatar. This gesture indicates that you want to close the chat. You can use this same gesture to close chats with other users and avatars you encounter.
- Once you have completed your desired purchases, return to your home portal.
- Close your eyes, click your heels together three times, and repeat the phrase “There is no place like home.” The VVR server will recognize this gesture and exit you back to your web browser.
VVR Issues and Controversies
The proliferation of malware on VVR sites has been of great concern. As of 2005, over 4 million types of VVR viruses had been detected. Entertainment sites in particular have tended to be a cause of concern with respect to viruses. Spyware has also been problematic on VVR sites.
VVR has also been the subject of many legal controversies. National governments have imposed their own laws and regulations upon visitors to VVR sites hosted within their jurisdictions.
The long range impact of VVR on society has been of a concern to many sociologists. Many youth show signs of “addiction” to VVR, spending many hours each day on virtually virtual reality sites. Some psychologists suggest that with the prevalence of VVR, certain people may become unable to distinguish between VVR and reality. Such people may engage in antisocial and psychopathic behavior.
Future Prospects for VVR
Already, VVR has had a large impact on the social fabric of modern society. Elements of VVR, such as virtually virtual hip hop, have entered the popular culture. In 2004, VVR communities had a large impact upon the Presidential election in the United States. As the number of VVR users increase, society and culture and certain to undergo small and large changes.
- The Matrix
- Virtual Realty
- Virtuous Reality
- Vitreous Reality
- Vitriol Reality
- Actual Reality
- Virtual Virtual Reality Uncyclopedia Entry


Researchers at University of B.C. announced Wednesday that they’ve made a major advance in dealing with one of the biggest obstacles to development of a radical new kind of computer.
In a paper published online today by Nature, the world’s top research journal, researchers at UBC and University of California Santa Barbara announced they’ve found a way to deal with decoherence – the tendency of atomic-scale particles to get quickly tangled up with the larger physical world we live in. Their work opens up a whole new area for researchers who are investigating the potential for development of quantum computers.
In an interview, UBC physics professor Phil Stamp said the university published a theory in 2006 that pointed to the solution and the Santa Barbara researchers found a way to make it work in a lab.
Particles such as electrons don’t have to play by the same rules we do when they’re moving around in the quantum-scale universe – a universe with some peculiar rules that seem to defy common sense, like being in two places at once.
When physicists and chemists figure out a way to keep these tiny objects from getting tangled up, or ‘entangled’, in the ‘classical’ world, then they can begin to research ways to put them to work in a radically faster new generation of computers.
It’s anticipated to be a much bigger jump in computer technology than the one between the warehouse-sized mechanical IBM punch card computers of the 1950s and the Internet-browsing mobile devices that consumers covet in 2011.
So far, quantum computing is pretty much restricted to laboratories.
Quantum computers are not expected to do anything that a conventional, or ‘classical’, computer can’t do – but they are expected to do it faster.
A working quantum computer could solve in seconds a problem that would take a classical computer years to work out.
To make a calculation in a classical computer, electrons flow through a series of switches that can be set to one of two positions, on or off.
In a quantum machine there can be three positions, on, off, and on-plus-off – and a particle can be in one, two, or all three of those positions. It’s like a coin that can be heads, tails, or both, at the same time.
That extra position on the switch would make computing “exponentially” faster according to Stamp.
Military and government security agencies such as the NSA are interested because they’d gain the capacity to break codes that classical machines can’t figure out.
There’s a fear factor as well. The first classical-scale quantum computer will be able to crack every code ever written, and figure out every secret message ever archived.
Of course there are positive social implications as well. One quantum computer could probably replace an entire server farm for cloud-based businesses. That would be better for the environment.
The discovery won’t spark a wave of quantum computer manufacturing just yet. But it will provide researchers with an unprecedented road map for research aimed at building them.
Here are some details from UBC’s news release this morning.
Discovery may overcome obstacle for quantum computing: UBC, California researchers
Researchers have made a major advance in predicting and quashing environmental decoherence, a phenomenon that has proven to be one of the most formidable obstacles standing in the way of quantum computing.
The findings – based on theoretical work conducted at the University of British Columbia and confirmed by experiments at the University of California Santa Barbara – are published July 20 in the online version of the journal Nature.
Quantum mechanics states that matter can be in more than one physical state at the same time – like a coin simultaneously showing heads and tails. In small objects like electrons, physicists have had success in observing and controlling these simultaneous states, called “state superposition.”
Larger, more complex physical systems appear to be in one consistent physical state because they interact and “entangle” with other objects in their environment. This entanglement makes these complex objects “decay” into a single state – a process called decoherence.
Quantum computing’s potential to be exponentially faster and more powerful than any conventional computer technology depends on switches that are capable of state superposition – that is, being in the “on” and “off” positions at the same time. Until now, all efforts to achieve such superposition with many molecules at once were blocked by decoherence.
“For the first time we’ve been able to predict and control all the environmental decoherence mechanisms in a very complex system, in this case a large magnetic molecule called the ‘Iron-8 molecule,’” said Phil Stamp, UBC professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Pacific Institute of Theoretical Physics. “Our theory also predicted that we could suppress the decoherence, and push the decoherence rate in the experiment to levels far below the threshold necessary for quantum information processing, by applying high magnetic fields.”
In the experiment, California researchers prepared a crystalline array of Iron-8 molecules in a quantum superposition, where the net magnetization of each molecule was simultaneously oriented up and down. The decay of this superposition by decoherence was then observed in time – and the decay was spectacularly slow, behaving exactly as the UBC researchers predicted.
“Magnetic molecules now suddenly appear to have serious potential as candidates for quantum computing hardware,” said Susumu Takahashi, assistant professor of chemistry and physics at the University of Southern California. “This opens up a whole new area of experimental investigation with sizeable potential in applications, as well as for fundamental work.”
Takahashi conducted the experiments while at UC Santa Barbara and analyzed the data while at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Southern California.
“Decoherence helps bridge the quantum universe of the atom and the classical universe of the everyday objects we interact with,” Stamp said. “Our ability to understand everything from the atom to the Big Bang depends on understanding decoherence, and advances in quantum computing depend on our ability to control it.”
The research was supported by the Pacific Institute of Theoretical Physics at UBC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Keck Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.


This study marks the coldest temperature ever reached by laser-cooling of an object of that size, and the technique holds promise that it will experimentally confirm, for the first time, that large objects obey the laws of quantum mechanics just as atoms do.
Although the research team has not yet achieved temperatures low enough to observe quantum effects, "the most important thing is that we have found a technique that could allow us to get (large objects) to ultimately show their quantum behavior for the first time," said MIT Assistant Professor of Physics Nergis Mavalvala, leader of the team.
The MIT researchers and colleagues at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany will report their findings in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters.
Quantum theory was developed in the early 20th century to account for unexpected atomic behavior that could not be explained by classical mechanics. But at larger scales, objects' heat and motion blur out quantum effects, and interactions are ruled by classical mechanics, including gravitational forces and electromagnetism.
"You always learn in high school physics that large objects don't behave according to quantum mechanics because they're just too hot, and the thermal energy obscures their quantum behavior," said Thomas Corbitt, an MIT graduate student in physics and lead author of the paper. "Nobody's demonstrated quantum mechanics at that kind of (macroscopic) scale."
To see quantum effects in large objects, they must be cooled to near absolute zero. Such low temperatures can only be reached by keeping objects as motionless as possible. At absolute zero (0 degrees Kelvin, -237 degrees Celsius or -460 degrees Fahrenheit), atoms lose all thermal energy and have only their quantum motion.
In their upcoming paper, the researchers report that they lowered the temperature of a dime-sized mirror to 0.8 degrees Kelvin. At that temperature, the 1 gram mirror moves so slowly that it would take 13 billion years (the age of the universe) to circle the Earth, said Mavalvala, whose group is part of MIT's LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) Laboratory.
The team continues to refine the technique and has subsequently achieved much lower temperatures. But in order to observe quantum behavior in an object of that size, the researchers need to attain a temperature that is still many orders of magnitude colder, Mavalvala said.
To reach such extreme temperatures, the researchers are combining two previously demonstrated techniques-optical trapping and optical damping. Two laser beams strike the suspended mirror, one to trap the mirror in place, as a spring would (by restoring the object to its equilibrium position when it moves), and one to slow (or damp) the object and take away its thermal energy.
Combined, the two lasers generate a powerful force-stronger than a diamond rod of the same shape and size as the laser beams-that reduces the motion of the object to near nothing.
Using light to hold the mirror in place avoids the problems raised by confining it with another object, such as a spring, Mavalvala said. Mechanical springs are made of atoms that have their own thermal energy and thus would interfere with cooling.
As the researchers get closer and closer to reaching the cold temperature they need to see quantum behavior, it will get more difficult to reach the final goal, Mavalvala predicted. Several technical issues still stand in the way, such as interference from fluctuations in the laser frequency.
"That last factor of 100 will be heroic," she said.
Once the objects get cold enough, quantum effects such as squeezed state generation, quantum information storage and quantum entanglement between the light and the mirror should be observable, Mavalvala said.
Other authors on the paper are Christopher Wipf, MIT graduate student in physics; David Ottaway, research scientist at MIT LIGO; Edith Innerhofer (formerly a postdoctoral fellow at MIT); Yanbei Chen, leader of the Max Planck (Albert Einstein Institute) group; Helge Muller-Ebhardt and Henning Rehbein, graduate students at the Albert Einstein Institute; and research scientists Daniel Sigg of LIGO Hanford Observatory and Stanley Whitcomb of Caltech.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
MIT News Office | Elizabeth A. Thomson
NASA detects solar flare pulses at Sun and Earth
17.11.2017 | NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Pluto's hydrocarbon haze keeps dwarf planet colder than expected
16.11.2017 | University of California - Santa Cruz
The formation of stars in distant galaxies is still largely unexplored. For the first time, astron-omers at the University of Geneva have now been able to closely observe a star system six billion light-years away. In doing so, they are confirming earlier simulations made by the University of Zurich. One special effect is made possible by the multiple reflections of images that run through the cosmos like a snake.
Today, astronomers have a pretty accurate idea of how stars were formed in the recent cosmic past. But do these laws also apply to older galaxies? For around a...
Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn the visual skills needed to excel at tasks like matching fingerprints, interpreting medical X-rays, keeping track of aircraft on radar displays or forensic face matching.
That is the implication of a new study which shows for the first time that there is a broad range of differences in people's visual ability and that these...
Computer Tomography (CT) is a standard procedure in hospitals, but so far, the technology has not been suitable for imaging extremely small objects. In PNAS, a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) describes a Nano-CT device that creates three-dimensional x-ray images at resolutions up to 100 nanometers. The first test application: Together with colleagues from the University of Kassel and Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht the researchers analyzed the locomotory system of a velvet worm.
During a CT analysis, the object under investigation is x-rayed and a detector measures the respective amount of radiation absorbed from various angles....
The quantum world is fragile; error correction codes are needed to protect the information stored in a quantum object from the deteriorating effects of noise. Quantum physicists in Innsbruck have developed a protocol to pass quantum information between differently encoded building blocks of a future quantum computer, such as processors and memories. Scientists may use this protocol in the future to build a data bus for quantum computers. The researchers have published their work in the journal Nature Communications.
Future quantum computers will be able to solve problems where conventional computers fail today. We are still far away from any large-scale implementation,...
Pillared graphene would transfer heat better if the theoretical material had a few asymmetric junctions that caused wrinkles, according to Rice University...
15.11.2017 | Event News
15.11.2017 | Event News
30.10.2017 | Event News
17.11.2017 | Physics and Astronomy
17.11.2017 | Health and Medicine
17.11.2017 | Studies and Analyses


The potential for improved human intelligence is enormous. Cognitive ability is influenced by thousands of genetic loci, each of small effect. If all were simultaneously improved, it would be possible to achieve, very roughly, about 100 standard deviations of improvement, corresponding to an IQ of over 1,000. We can’t imagine what capabilities this level of intelligence represents, but we can be sure it is far beyond our own. Cognitive engineering, via direct edits to embryonic human DNA, will eventually produce individuals who are well beyond all historical figures in cognitive ability. By 2050, this process will likely have begun.
These two threads—smarter people and smarter machines—will inevitably intersect. Just as machines will be much smarter in 2050, we can expect that the humans who design, build, and program them will also be smarter. Naively, one would expect the rate of advance of machine intelligence to outstrip that of biological intelligence. Tinkering with a machine seems easier than modifying a living species, one generation at a time. But advances in genomics—both in our ability to relate complex traits to the underlying genetic codes, and the ability to make direct edits to genomes—will allow rapid advances in biologically-based cognition. Also, once machines reach human levels of intelligence, our ability to tinker starts to be limited by ethical considerations. Rebooting an operating system is one thing, but what about a sentient being with memories and a sense of free will?
It is easy to forget that the computer revolution was led by a handful of geniuses: individuals with truly unusual cognitive ability. Alan Turing and John von Neumann both contributed to the realization of computers whose program is stored in memory and can be modified during execution. This idea appeared originally in the form of the Turing Machine, and was given practical realization in the so-called von Neumann architecture of the first electronic computers, such as the EDVAC. While this computing design seems natural, even obvious, to us now, it was at the time a significant conceptual leap.
Turing and von Neumann were special, and far beyond peers of their era. Both played an essential role in the Allied victory in WWII. Turing famously broke the German Enigma codes, but not before conceptualizing the notion of “mechanized thought” in his Turing Machine, which was to become the main theoretical construct in modern computer science. Before the war, von Neumann placed the new quantum theory on a rigorous mathematical foundation.
AI research also pushes even very bright humans to their limits. The frontier machine intelligence architecture of the moment uses deep neural nets: multilayered networks of simulated neurons inspired by their biological counterparts. Silicon brains of this kind, running on huge clusters of GPUs (graphical processor units made cheap by research and development and economies of scale in the video game industry), have recently surpassed human performance on a number of narrowly defined tasks, such as image or character recognition. We are learning how to tune deep neural nets using large samples of training data, but the resulting structures are mysterious to us.
The detailed inner workings of a complex machine intelligence (or of a biological brain) may turn out to be incomprehensible to our human minds—or at least the human minds of today. While one can imagine a researcher “getting lucky” by stumbling on an architecture or design whose performance surpasses her own capability to understand it, it is hard to imagine systematic improvements without deeper comprehension.
Perhaps we will experience a positive feedback loop: Better human minds invent better machine learning methods, which in turn accelerate our ability to improve human DNA and create even better minds.
The feedback loop between algorithms and genomes will result in a rich and complex world, with myriad types of intelligences at play: the ordinary human (rapidly losing the ability to comprehend what is going on around them); the enhanced human (the driver of change over the next 100 years, but perhaps eventually surpassed); and all around them vast machine intellects, some alien (evolved completely in silico) and some strangely familiar (hybrids). Rather than the standard science-fiction scenario of relatively unchanged, familiar humans interacting with ever-improving computer minds, we will experience a future with a diversity of both human and machine intelligences.
There will also be many kinds of quantum computers. Currently there are over dozen approaches to quantum computing.
There will be many kinds of neuromorphic machines.
There will be optical computers.
Many different approaches to computing will be useful for different kinds of problems.
Superintelligence is not required to develop molecular nanotechnology. There is already advanced DNA nanotechnology and there has been some experiments proving the controlled movement of molecules. The fact that molecular nanotechnology has been underfunded for a couple of decades does not mean superintelligence is required to solve it or make it happen.
Superintelligence is not required to solve climate change or air pollution. France has cleaner air than most other countries. They have 80% of their electricity from nuclear power. Europe also has stringent standards on their car engines which reduces the amount of particulates and air pollution.
The dynamics and interaction of people is allowing problems to remain unsolved.
This can be seen in the disfunction of the US political system. The solutions used in other countries for many problems could be adopted or emulated and improved upon. They also show that solutions exist.
If we see the emergence of significantly superior superintelligent humans and superintelligent machines, it will be interesting to see what true surprises will be developed.
SOURCE – Nautilus, Infoproc


| Part of the series on|
Logic and rhetoric
“”It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
|—Attributed to Aristotle|
An open mind is a mind that is receptive to new ideas and information. It is often compared to a closed mind which will reject ideas without any consideration.
While there is some philosophical validity to the distinction between open and closed minds, particularly in the case of empiricism, when used in an argument on the internet it's almost always a form of whining. Being told to be "open minded" about something — like being made to listen to Michelle Malkin for example — is usually a code for "you're not going to like this, but I think you should consider subjecting yourself to it anyway". Conversely, being told that you are "closed-minded" is generally a means of asserting that "I don't like the fact that you're proving me wrong, so I will pretend that your failure to agree with my argument is a philosophical deficiency". Being told you are "close-minded" simply shows that the one writing is confused about the difference between "open" and "far" (or is simply lazy in their writing).
“”I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.
The scientific method demands open mindedness because it requires consistency with available data and evidence, regardless of where that leads. Sometimes evidence will lead to a conclusion that defies common sense, which an otherwise closed mind would have trouble with. Quantum mechanics is the most illustrative example of this process, as practically every aspect of quantum physics appears to defy ordinary common sense; duality, slit diffraction and quantum entanglement are all completely at odds with the way that we have evolved to view the world. Without the open-mindedness to reject our common sense view of the world, some of the most complex and counter-intuitive science would be off limits to human endeavour.
To make any advances in science and technology, new ideas need to be (and are) presented constantly. Through open minded consideration of these new ideas and thorough studies of them, science can winnow out the bad ideas and keep the good ones. (Weak ideas shall perish!) A closed minded researcher, unwilling to consider alternatives to their own pet theory or hypothesis, will not advance very far or contribute much to science.
Science is often accused of being "closed-minded". Almost without exception, this is code for "scientists won't blindly accept my crackpot idea". It's certainly not a matter of closed-mindedness and unwillingness that these ideas aren't accepted by the scientific community, because the individuals within it have a lot of motivation to prove each other wrong. In writing a scientific article, this is known as peer review; in experimental science, people must be able to replicate one's results, within the limits imposed by inherent limitation of equipment. There would be money and fame in a scientist showing, with the evidence to back it up and convince the rest, things such as the existence of ghosts, the (non-placebo) workings of homeopathy or even a young earth. Often proponents of woo cry that science hasn't taken them seriously and has refused to do the research, imploring scientists and skeptics to "have an open mind". This is blatantly false; science has very often tried out these ideas or trialed that piece of alternative medicine, it's just that the results have come back negative, or that the idea has been proposed and disproved before. Consequently, calling accusing someone of being closed-minded is very often — but not always — an indication that the accuser themselves is the one who is closed-minded.
What it is not
“”Suppose you are a chef, cooking soup for two hundred diners. You say to yourself ‘Well, I know if I put arsenic in this soup it’ll kill everyone. But hey! Gotta be open-minded!’ And you go ahead and add the deadly metalloid to the goats’ cheese crostini and float it atop the watercress and mint broth. Are you being open-minded or… just ignoring important information?
All that open mindedness requires is that one considers an idea or proposal and does not reject it outright before any considerations or evaluations are made. Having an open mind does not mean accepting any new idea as true as soon as it is presented. If you consider an idea, and then reject it based on evidence or similar criteria, you do not have a closed mind. Lack of an "open mind", based on the misunderstanding between consideration and acceptance of new ideas, is therefore a common but groundless criticism of skeptics. Skeptical open-mindedness differs from credulous open-mindedness in that the skeptic has effective mechanisms for assessing ideas and rejecting those that are found wanting.
Usually, and quite ironically, people who go around accusing others of being closed minded are actually more closed minded themselves. A conspiracy theorist, for example, may say "no one can convince me" that the World Trade Center wasn't blown up by the government" or a similar phrase. This is a clear example of a closed mind: a mind unwilling to accept that, perhaps, everything about an event was actually how it was officially presented—without aliens, reptilian humanoids, government plots, second gunmen, Illuminati, men in black, and so on. This archetypal conspiracy theorist will then go on to accuse anyone who rejects their crackpot ideas of being closed minded. This sort of thing is, unfortunately, extremely common.
That bloody quote
If you hang around in skeptic circles, sooner or later you'll hear (or more probably, read) a variation of the following:
“”Keep an open mind – but not so open that your brain falls out.
| —Origin unknown, attributed to (and used by) various people;|
dates at least back to 1937.
As Pedantic, Humorless Rationalists™, we'd like to point out that a mind is not a skull and the phrase doesn't make any sense. So, please, don't repeat it mindlessly.
That other bloody quote
“”A mind is like an umbrella — it works best when it's open.
|—attrib. James Jeans, Max Gropius. Take your pick|
The riposte to this annoying pseudo-aphorism is that an umbrella only needs to be open under certain circumstances. At other times, e.g. any time you're indoors, an open umbrella is a bloody nuisance.
This quote works better if you remember that the function of an umbrella is to keep stuff away from you (commonly rainwater), not to collect stuff, and in that sense, it only works when it is indeed open (i.e., when the deflective device is in a position to actually deflect stuff you don't want touching you).
The paradox of an "open mind"
QualiaSoup performs a brief and educational examination of some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to advise others who don't to be more open-minded — although even QualiaSoup is apparently confused about having a closed (not open) versus a close (not far) mind.
- Essay:Quantifying Openmindedness - A look at Andrew Schlafly's "open mindedness test".
- If You Open Your Mind Too Much..., Tim Minchin's take on the question (Take His Wife!)
- “Closed-minded”: the phrase that loses every argument by Martin Wagner, The Atheist Experience
- Jonathan E. Adler's essay on the subject, over at the Committee for Sceptical Inquiry
- "Quotes, Stories, and Bon Mots related to Pseudoscience & Mistaken Pronouncements". Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice.
- Or, if your preferences run to vivid metaphors, the difference is that they will both take a taste of anything, within reasonable limits; but the credulous person will swallow what the skeptic will spit out.
- Contrast the cynical phrase "I'll never believe it" with the skeptical phrase "I'll believe it when I see it" to see that there is nothing closed-minded about being a skeptic.


Focus: Detecting Photons With a Thermometer
Detecting single photons is common practice with visible light, but it has proven much harder to do with lower-energy microwaves. A group of Finnish researchers has now built a small electronic circuit that detects microwave photons based on the heat they produce. In a demonstration, the device detected as few as 200 photons, which is 10 times more sensitive than previous thermally based photodetection techniques.
The main motivation for measuring microwave photons comes from the field of circuit QED, where single microwave photons are corralled in a two-dimensional, metal structure on a microchip. The photons interact through their electric fields with tiny devices called superconducting qubits, which have discrete energy states like atoms for absorbing and emitting photons. These systems offer a unique way to study light-matter interactions and to perform quantum computer simulations. For certain experiments, researchers want a direct count of the number of photons propagating through the system. While microwave detectors are common (in cell phones, for example), they traditionally measure electric field amplitude and therefore can’t give a precise photon count. “We don’t have a way of measuring single photons in the microwave region,” says Joonas Govenius of Aalto University in Finland.
Several strategies are being pursued to detect single microwave photons. A recent experiment succeeded using a superconducting qubit, but that technique requires closely matching the microwave frequency to the qubit . A more widely applicable approach is to use thermal photodetectors, in which incoming photons are absorbed by a thermal mass that exhibits an observable temperature increase.
The thermal photodetector created by Govenius and his colleagues is an electrical circuit that at its core consists of a gold-palladium nanowire intersecting a series of superconducting islands arranged like railroad ties. Conceptually, the circuit can be separated into two pieces: a resistor and a resonator. The resistor is the thermal mass that absorbs the energy from an incoming microwave pulse, and the resonator is a thermometer that registers the heat input through a lowering of its resonant frequency. The team showed that they could read out the circuit’s temperature by using a low-power, “probe” pulse—the amount of probe energy absorbed was proportional to the temperature.
Unfortunately, the temperature spike expected for a weak microwave pulse is too small to detect. To improve sensitivity to the smallest pulses, the researchers used a feedback effect between the probe pulse and the resonator. This effect requires increasing the probe pulse power and tuning its frequency to around 760 MHz, so that it is resonant with the thermometer circuit at relatively high temperatures. When the probe pulse is turned on, it starts to heat the resonator, causing the resonator to absorb more of the probe pulse and heat up even more. As a result of this feedback, the circuit is driven into one of two metastable temperature states.
In this bistable condition, the circuit can be made extremely sensitive to any additional input. If a small microwave pulse arrives when the system is in the lower temperature state, the circuit will be pushed into the higher temperature state. In this case, the device no longer acts like a heat gauge but instead becomes a threshold detector that only triggers in the presence of a sufficiently energetic microwave pulse.
In experimental trials, the team was able to detect the arrival of 8 GHz microwave pulses consisting of 200 photons (the equivalent of joules, or 1 zeptojoule) with a signal-to-noise ratio of roughly 1. To improve sensitivity toward the single-photon goal, Govenius says one could switch to a material with a smaller heat capacity, such as graphene. Another option would be to design the system to work at higher frequency, since 200 photons at 8 GHz is equivalent to a single photon at 1.6 THz.
“This is excellent work that is pushing the frontiers of sensitivity for thermal detectors,” says Joel Ullom of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. Kunihiro Inomata of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Saitama, Japan, agrees that this is a significant advance, but he says it will be challenging to improve the sensitivity of these detectors while also avoiding problems from thermal noise.
This research is published in Physical Review Letters.
Correction (15 July 2016): The text was corrected to clarify that single microwave photons have been detected with other techniques. The caption was also revised to correctly identify the artist’s intensions.
Michael Schirber is a Corresponding Editor for Physics based in Lyon, France.
- K. Inomata, Z. Lin, K. Koshino, W. D. Oliver, J.-S. Tsai, T. Yamamoto, and Y. Nakamura, “Single Microwave-Photon Detector Using an Artificial -Type Three-Level System,” arXiv:1601.05513.


Are we alone?
1. We have strong evidence that that our solar system is not the only one; we know there are many other Suns with planets orbiting them.
Improved telescopes and detectors have led to the detection of dozens of new planetary systems within the past decade, including several systems containing multiple planets.
One giant leap for bug-kind
2. Some organisms can survive in space without any kind of protective enclosure.
In a European Space Agency experiment conducted in 2005, two species of lichen were carried aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket and exposed to the space environment for nearly 15 days. They were then resealed in a capsule and returned to Earth, where they were found in exactly the same shape as before the flight. The lichen survived exposure to the vacuum of space as well as the glaring ultraviolet radiation of the Sun.
Hot real estate
3. Organisms have been found living happily in scalding water with temperatures as high as 235 degrees F.
More than 50 heat-loving microorganisms, or hyperthermophiles, have been found thriving at very high temperatures in such locations as hot springs in WyomingÕs Yellowstone National Park and on the walls of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Some of these species multiply best at 221 degrees F, and can reproduce at up to 235 degrees F.
Has E.T. already phoned home?
4. We now have evidence that some form of life exists beyond Earth, at least in primitive form.
While many scientists speculate that extraterrestrial life exists, so far there is no conclusive evidence to prove it. Future missions to Mars, the Jovian moon Europa and future space telescopes such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder will search for definitive answers to this ageless question.
To infinity, and beyond!
5. We currently have the technology necessary to send astronauts to another star system within a reasonable timespan. The only problem is that such a mission would be overwhelmingly expensive.
Even the the unmanned Voyager spacecraft, which left our solar system years ago at a breathtaking 37,000 miles per hour, would take 76,000 years to reach the nearest star. Because the distances involved are so vast, interstellar travel to another star within a practical timescale would require, among other things, the ability the move a vehicle at or near the speed of light. This is beyond the reach of today's spacecraft -- regardless of funding.
Fellowship of the rings
6. All of the gas giant planets in our solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) have rings.
Saturn's rings are the most pronounced and visible, but they aren't the only ones.
May the force be with you
7. In the "Star Wars" films, the Imperial TIE Fighters are propelled by ion engines (TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine). While these spacecraft are fictional, real ion engines power some of todayÕs spacecraft.
Ion propulsion has long been a staple of science fiction novels, but in recent years it has been successfully tested on a number of unmanned spacecraft, most notably NASAÕs Deep Space 1. Launched in 1998, Deep Space 1 rendezvoused with a distant asteroid and then with a comet, proving that ion propulsion could be used for interplanetary travel.
A question of gravity
8. There is no gravity in deep space.
If this were true, the moon would float away from the Earth, and our entire solar system would drift apart. While itÕs true that gravity gets weaker with distance, it can never be escaped completely, no matter how far you travel in space. Astronauts appear to experience "zero-gravity" because they are in continuous free-fall around the Earth.
9. The basic premise of teleportation -- made famous in TVÕs "Star Trek" -- is theoretically sound. In fact, scientists have already ÒteleportedÓ the quantum state of individual atoms from one location to another.
As early as the late 1990s, scientists proved they could teleport data using photons, but the photons were absorbed by whatever surface they struck. More recently, physicists at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, for the first time teleported individual atoms using the principle of quantum entanglement.
Experts say this technology eventually could enable the invention of superfast "quantum computers." But the bad news, at least for sci-fi fans, is that experts donÕt foresee being able to teleport people in this manner.
Good day, Suns-shine
10. Tatooine, Luke Skywalker's home planet in the "Star Wars" films, has two Suns -- what astronomers would call a binary star system. Scientists have discovered recently that planets really can form within such systems.
Double-stars, or binary systems, are common in our Milky Way galaxy. Among the more than 100 new planets discovered in recent years, some have been found in binary systems, including16 Cygni B and 55 Cancri A. (But so far, no one has found a habitable planet like Luke Skywalker's Tatooine.)


When one hears about Quantum Cryptography, the first thought that comes to mind is, how can there be any relation between physics and codes? It actually appears to be one of the newest ideas in the cipher world to use physics and has been declared as the ultimate goal in security. In this short introductory text we will try to explain how these two, from first sight totally unrelated things fit together, how quantum cryptography works and what makes it so secure, and therefore important.
What is Cryptography?
Classical cryptography was always about constructing and analysing protocols in order to protect information against the influence of adversaries. Modern cryptography is composed of disciplines such as mathematics, computer science and electrical engineering. All it needs to ensure is the creation of a safe, complex and indecipherable code to third parties. With secret key cryptography, a single key is used for encryption and decryption. The sender uses the key to encrypt the plain text and sends it to the receiver. The receiver applies the same key to decrypt the message and recover the plain text. Cryptography includes everyday things like computer passwords, ATM cards, electronic commerce and much more. All of the current day classical computer cryptography are based on certain class of mathematical operations that are easy to perform in one direction but are extremely difficult in the opposite direction. Example of such a problem is prime number multiplication. It is very easy to multiply two prime numbers of any length (one direction). However, if you are given a long two million digits number and told that this number is a product of two primes, even with the help of modern computers it would take hundreds of years to find its constitutes-prime factors. This is the basis for the well known RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, 1977) cryptosystem , the importance of which is obvious since nowadays the internet is used by and provides essential communication between hundreds of millions of people.
New Age Methods
Differently from the classical version of cryptography which uses key, based on the assumption that there are no sufficiently fast mathematical algorithms for deciphering, quantum version of cryptography is based purely on the laws of quantum physics. Currently for deciphering, mathematical algorithms are based on computing power and brute force methods. Usually this kind of deciphering is not worth anything, since user can change the key frequently enough, so as to not to give enough time for decipherers to decrypt the key. If one decides to use faster computers and more advanced methods for decryption, another can just simply increase the length of the key used for encryption. When the idea of quantum computing became omnipresent, it soon became obvious that quantum computers could provide unprecedented ability to encrypt secret information. With the use of quantum, it is possible to create devices which allow detection of whether data transmission channel is being spied. Devices which are based on quantum physics phenomena, usually use one of the following: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or quantum entanglement. In its modern form, the Uncertainty Principle tells that the measurement process itself is a part of physical system, and not a passive process, like it is in classical version of physics. The Uncertainty Principle implies that there exist such properties of particles which are not possible to measure exactly at the same time: measurement of one property will inevitably disturb the measurement of the other. Entanglement, on the other hand is a superposition of two or more particles when their states correlate. Entangled particles cannot be described by the use of states of individual particle. This can be used to exchange information in a way that cannot be seen when experimenting with single particle. Entanglement can be observed independently of how far particles are from one another. Based on these two phenomena, several quantum cryptography protocols were created. In the first method, bits of information are coded based on the polarization of photon and on the use of the Uncertainty Principle to try to prevent the eavesdropper (known as Eve) to steal and decipher the information. The second method uses entangled states of photon, and information is revealed only when the state of a photon is measured by Alice (sender) and Bob (receiver) . The correlation of quantum entanglement can not be explained simply using the concepts of classical physics.
[caption id="attachment_419" align="aligncenter" width="494"] Every type of polarization can code one bit of information [/caption][caption id="attachment_420" align="aligncenter" width="296"] Quantum cryptography systems are safe against "Man-in-the-middle" attacks [/caption]
Scheme of quantum cryptography known as BB84 protocol (Bennet&Brassard, 1984), uses pulses of polarised light. Two types of polarisation are used: linear and circular. Linearly polarised light can be vertically or horizontally polarised, whereas circularly polarised light can be left or right handed. Every type of polarisation can code one bit of information, for example horizontal polarisation := 1, left handed := 1, vertical := 0, right handed := 0. To generate a key, random sequence of vertically (or left handed) and horizontally (or right handed) light is sent through a channel with an equal probability in order to mislead a spy. Simple quantum cryptography protocol can be described as follows: 1. Light source creates light pulses of very low intensity. Then, Alice (sender) modulates polarization of these light pulses in a random order of one to four possible states described above. 2. Bob (receiver) measures polarization of photons received in a randomly selected bases (linear or circular). Here it should be noted that quantum systems are very fragile by their nature. Therefore Bob has only one chance to perform a measurement before a quantum state is destroyed. Investigation of non-destructive quantum state measurement techniques is currently very wide field, and in the future could have huge benefits in quantum cryptography. 3. Bob publicly announces what was the sequence of his bases used for measurements. 4. Alice publicly announces which bases were chosen successfully and are the same as sent by her when modulating light pulses. 5. Alice and Bob disregards results of incorrectly chosen bases. 6. Results are interpreted using binary system: horizontal or left handed polarization corresponds to 1, vertical or right handed polarization corresponds to 0. Entangled pairs scheme uses entangled states of photons. These photons can be generated by Alice, Bob and Eve. However, in any case photons should be distributed in such a way that Alice and Bob have one photon from each pair generated. Ideally correlated states can be created, such that when measuring polarization of correlated states Alice and Bob always get the opposite values. On the other hand, when measuring individually, result is always random: it is not possible to predict what will be the polarization of the next photon. These states have what is known as a non-locality property. Non-locality property does not have an analogue in classical physics. During communication, the results of measurements of states by Alice and Bob will correlate at some level, and if Eve tries to disrupt their connection she will disrupt the correlation, which can be easily detected. In other words quantum cryptography systems are safe against "Man-in-the-middle" attacks. Specifically, a pair of entangled photons has opposite rotational directions or spin states with the total spin of the system being zero. The important implication of this property is that the measurement of spin of one immediately gives the spin of the other. The measurement of any measurable property of a photon disturbs its state. This is the the measurement problem. However, this fact provides the advantage that the presence of an eavesdropper can be detected.
Quantum computing has become a reality. And even though it is still in its infancy, there is already a threat of using classical cryptographic coding schemes because quantum tools could be able to quickly crack almost any code. In order to avoid this, we need new breakthroughs, new cryptography ideas, new tools. Quantum cryptography sounds like a solution. Currently there already exist few companies selling quantum key distribution systems, examples include IDQuantique and MagiQ. This type of technique provides a possibility of extremely safe data transmission, as well as avoiding any influence of third parties because the interference can not be overlooked and "Man-in-the-middle" attacks can be prevented. Seemingly it is fair to say that quantum future will bring us new, safer and more reliable tools for protecting our secrets and all this would be impossible without physics.
 R. Rivest, A. Shamir, L. Adleman, A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems, Communications of the ACM 21(2), 120-126 (1978), DOI:10.1145/359340.359342.
 G. Brassard, C. Crépeau, R. Jozsa, L. Denis, A Quantum Bit Commitment Scheme Provably Unbreakable by both Parties, FOCS IEEE, 362-371 (1993).