Lifeboat Foundation

Chip makers have a mantra: smaller, cheaper, and faster. They may now need a new adjective—taller.

R. Mark Wilson

Physicists from the University of Basel have developed a memory that can store photons. These quantum particles travel at the speed of light and are thus suitable for high-speed data transfer. The researchers were able to store them in an atomic vapor and read them out again later without altering their quantum mechanical properties too much. This memory technology is simple and fast and it could find application in a future quantum Internet. The journal Physical Review Letters has published the results.

Even today, fast data transfer in telecommunication networks employs short light pulses. Ultra broadband technology uses optical fiber links through which information can be transferred at the speed of light. At the receiver’s end, the transmitted information has to be stored quickly and without errors so that it can be processed further electronically on computers. To avoid transmission errors, each bit of information is encoded in relatively strong light pulses that each contain at least several hundreds of photons.

For several years, researchers all over the world have been working on operating such networks with single photons. Encoding one bit per photon is not only very efficient, but it also allows for a radically new form of information processing based on the laws of quantum physics. These laws allow a single photon to encode not only the states 0 or 1 of a classic bit, but also to encode a superposition of both states at the same time. Such quantum bits are the basis for quantum information processing that could make unconditionally secure communication and super fast quantum computers possible in the future. The ability to store and retrieve single photons from a quantum memory is a key element for these technologies, which is intensively investigated.

Research and development is focused on developing new means of data storage that are more dense and so can store greater amounts of data, and do so in a more energy efficient way. Sometimes this involves updating established techniques: recently IBM announced a new magnetic tape technology that can store 25 gigabytes per square inch, a new world record for the 60-year-old technology. While current magnetic or solid-state consumer hard drives are more dense at around 200 gigabytes per square inch, magnetic tapes are still frequently used for data back-up.

However, the cutting edge of data storage research is working at the level of individual atoms and molecules, representing the ultimate limit of technological miniaturization.

Continue reading “How to Store Data on Magnets the Size of a Single Atom” »

SanDisk has unleasehd a new model, the microSXDC USH-I, which stores 400GB of data, one of many other advances in data storage undergoing major revolution.

Quantum computers based on the twisting pathways of moving particles have so far lived only in theory – the particles they would rely on might not even exist.

But with the exciting discovery of electrons ‘swirling’ down a wire, the hunt is over for exactly the particles such quantum devices have been waiting for. Now the work of turning these theoretical computers into reality could soon be underway.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and Microsoft have observed electrons forming a kind of matter called a quasiparticle under conditions that saw them behave as theoretical objects called Majorana fermions.

Continue reading “This New Proof of Majorana Fermions Is Going to Be Massive For Quantum Devices” »

Australian researchers have designed a new type of qubit — the building block of quantum computers — that they say will finally make it possible to manufacture a true, large-scale quantum computer. Broadly speaking, there are currently a number of ways to make a quantum computer. Some take up less space, but tend to be incredibly complex. Others are simpler, but if you want it to scale up you’re going to need to knock down a few walls.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) — Researchers in Australia have found a new way to build quantum computers which they say would make them dramatically easier and cheaper to produce at scale.

Quantum computers promise to harness the strange ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at a time to solve problems that are too complex or time-consuming for existing computers.

Google, IBM and other technology companies are all developing quantum computers, using a range of approaches.

Continue reading “Australia researchers say find new way to build quantum computers” »

Using scintillating fiber to detect particles

After five years of work, EPFL’s physicists, together with some 800 international researchers involved in the LHCb project, have just taken an important preliminary step towards significantly enhancing their experimental equipment. They have decided to build a new detector — a scintillating fiber tracker dubbed SciFi.

Construction of the tracker, which incorporates 10,000 kilometers of scintillating fibers each with a diameter of 0.25mm, has already begun. When particles travel through them, the fibers will give off light signals that will be picked up by light-amplifying diodes. The scintillating fibers will be arranged in three panels measuring five by six meters, installed behind a magnet, where the particles exit the LHC accelerator collision point. The particles will pass through several of these fiber ‘mats’ and deposit part of their energy along the way, producing some photons of light that will then be turned into an electric signal.

A Stanford team has launched a new challenge on the Eterna computer game. Players will design a CRISPR-controlling molecule, and with it open the possibility of new research and therapies.

A team of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine has launched a new challenge for the online computer game Eterna in which players are being asked to design an RNA molecule capable of acting as an on/off switch for the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9.

Continue reading “Online game challenges players to design on/off switch for CRISPR” »