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EU betting big on Quantum Technology.


The European Union (EU) aims to embark on an ambitious common strategy on quantum technologies, European Commissioner for digital economy and society Gunther Oettinger said here Tuesday.

At a conference which brought together some of the world’s leading experts in the field of quantum technology, European scientists and entrepreneurs launched a “Quantum Manifesto” laying out future priorities and activities to create a new “knowledge-based industrial ecosystem” in Europe.

“We aim to launch an ambitious large-scale flagship initiative to unlock the full potential of quantum technologies, accelerate their development, and bring commercial products to public and private users,” Oettinger told the conference.

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DUBLIN, Ireland, May 17 (UPI) — Researchers in Ireland have discovered a new form of light. Their discovery is expected to reshape scientists’ understanding of light’s basic nature.

Angular momentum describes the rotation of a light beam around its axis. Until now, researchers believed the angular momentum was always a multiple of Planck’s constant — a constant ratio that describes the relationship between photon energy and frequency, and also sets the scale for quantum mechanics.

The newly discovered form of light, however, features photons with an angular momentum of just half the value of Planck’s constant. The difference sounds small, but researchers say the significance of the discovery is great.

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Physicists have just discovered a new form of light that doesn’t follow our existing rules of angular momentum, and it could shake up our understanding of the electromagnetic radiation and lead to faster, more secure optical communication.

Because of how well-studied and, well, everywhere, light is, you might assume that we’ve pretty much learnt all there is to know about it. But just last year, researchers identified a fundamental new property of light, and now a team of Irish scientists has shown that light can take on unexpected new forms.

One of the ways we measure a beam of light is through its angular momentum — a constant quantity that measures how much light is rotating. And until now, it was thought that for all forms of light, the angular momentum would be a whole number (known as an integer) multiple of Planck’s constant — a physical constant that sets the scale of quantum effects.

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In the late 1990s, astronomers discovered something mysterious pushing galaxies apart faster than gravity pulls them together. It seemed like every little bit of space had some amount of energy that spread it away from every other little bit of space, and that strange pushing came to be known as ‘dark energy’ — dark, because no one knows what it is.

And now a group of physicists have shown that dark energy could probably be explained — as long as we’re willing to give up a fundamental piece of our understanding of light…

Most scientists think that dark energy exists because of what’s known as a cosmological constant — something acting throughout the Universe that tells different bits of space to repel each other. It’s sort of like an anti-gravity force, but it acts everywhere instead of just being between two things with mass and it always acts with the same strength.

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Why biocomputing is proving that bio and technology integrated can do amazing things and will eventually get us to real Singularity. Now imaging, take what you have seen so far in technology today and add Quantum to that picture then add bio to that; then you will truly see amazing SINGULARITY.


Scientists have developed a material that can mimic cartilage and potentially encourage it to re-grow.

Cartilage is flexible connective tissue found in places such as in joints and between vertebrae in the spine. Compared to other types of connective tissue is not easy to repair.

Quantum future discussed at London’s Royal Society Conference.


By Tushna Commissariat

Not a week goes by here at Physics World that we don’t cover some advance in quantum mechanics – be it another step towards quantum computing or error correction, or a new type of quantum sensor, or another basic principle being verified and tested at new scales. While each advance may not always be a breakthrough, it is fair to say that the field has grown by leaps and bound in the last 20 years or so. Indeed, it has seen at least two “revolutions” since it first began and is now poised on the brink of a third, as scientific groups and companies around the world race to build the first quantum computer.

With this in mind, some of the stalwarts of the field – including Peter Knight, Ian Walmsley, Gerard Milburn, Stephen Till and Jonathan Pritchard – organized a two-day discussion meeting at the Royal Society in London, titled “Quantum technology for the 21st century “, which I decided to attend. The meeting’s main aim was to bring together academic and industry leaders “in quantum physics and engineering to identify the next generation of quantum technologies for translational development”. As Knight said during his opening speech, the time has come to “balance the massive leaps that the science has made with actual practical technology”.

Interesting method in controlling energy sources and efficiencies via Quantum legos.


The chrome-plated bricks can conduct electricity, integrate active parts such as LED lights, motor blocks, and even sound, light and proximity sensors. The conductive bricks feature flexible side-arms that ensure electrical connection between two adjacent blocks, and the whole assemblies are powered by a Bluetooth-controlled 9V battery block. The built-in Bluetooth controller lets users change the current’s direction and voltage levels via a mobile application.

That means the Brixo bricks can not only be triggered by sound, light and touch, but also controlled by any Bluetooth connected device, taking the good old Lego bricks further into the IoT world (the Danish company has its entries in the cloud via its Mindstorms Lego series and the augmented reality-capable Nexo Knights toys.

The company is promising open 3D building instructions, an online library of models and hacks to its followers, encouraging a community of Brixo enthusiasts to share their models.

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NSA meets with Silicon Valley execs to voice their concerns over legacy systems being hacked by Quantum technology. Glad they’re talking about it because with the recent advancements in Quantum means it will be available in devices, communications, and platforms a lot sooner than originally projected.


The National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) brought together Silicon Valley executives with federal officials at the advisory committee’s annual meeting on Wednesday in Santa Clara, California.

U.S. military and intelligence officials, including Department of Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and Department of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, attended the advisory committee.

“Today’s era relies on technological innovation in our field such as speed and agility,” said Defense Secretary Carter at the meeting. During his presentation, he introduced Raj Shah, CEO/co-founder of Morta Security, Air Force Reservist, and former F-16 pilot, to lead the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUX) initiative. The DoD is restructuring the DIUX program, a Silicon Valley outreach initiative, with Carter calling the revised program “DIUX 2.0.” Shah’s security firm, Morta Security, was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in March 2014.

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