Scientists have discovered a material that could create quantum optical computers

Scientists have discovered a material that could create quantum optical computers

Just when you thought data couldn't get any faster.

When people talk about the next-generation of computers, they're usually referring to one of two things: quantum computers – devices that will have exponentially greater processing power thanks to the addition of quantum superposition to the binary code – and optical computers, which will beam data at the speed of light without generating all the heat and wasted energy of traditional electronic computers.

Both of those have the power to revolutionise computing as we know it, and now scientists at the University of Technology, Sydney have discovered a material that has the potential to combine both of those abilities in one ridiculously powerful computer of the future. Just hold on for a second while we freak out over here.

The material is layered hexagonal boron nitride, which is a bit of a mouthful, but all you really need to know about it is that it's only one atom thick – just like graphene – and it has the ability to emit a single pulse of quantum light on demand at room temperature, making it ideal to help build a quantum optical computer chip.

Until now, room-temperature quantum emitters had only worked in a chunky, 3D material such as diamonds, which were never going to be easy to integrate onto computer chips. 

"This material – layered hexagonal boron nitride (boron and nitrogen atoms that are arranged in a honeycomb structure) – is rather unique," said one of the researchers, Mike Ford. "It is atomically thin and is traditionally used as a lubricant; however upon careful processing we discovered that it can emit quantised pulses of light – single photons that can carry information.

"That’s important because one of the big goals is to make optical computer chips that can operate based on light rather than electrons, therefore operating much faster with less heat generation," he added.

So how does a pulse of light work with quantum computing? In a traditional computer system, photons – particles of light – can be used to store information by being in either vertical or horizontal polarisation.

But they can also be turned into quantum bits (or qubits) by being put into superposition – a unique quantum state where they're in both vertical and horizontal polarisation at the same time. That's a big deal for security, and also processing power.

"You can create very secure communication systems using single photons,"explained team member Igor Aharonovich. "Each photon can be employed as a qubit (quantum bit, similarly to standard electronic bits), but because one cannot eavesdrop on single photons, the information is secure."

Best of all, the material just happens to also be cheap and easy to make, which means that it could be easily scaled up.

"This material is very easy to fabricate," said PhD student Trong Toan Tran. "It’s a much more viable option because it can be used at room temperature; it’s cheap, sustainable and is available in large quantities."

"Ultimately we want to build a 'plug and play' device that can generate single photons on demand, which will be used as a first prototype source for scalable quantum technologies that will pave the way to quantum computing with hexagonal boron nitride," he added.

The research has been published in Nature Nanotechnology. Now all we really want to know is whether the new material would also work with Li-Fi. If that's the case, our future is pretty much set.

Li-Fi has just been tested in the real world, and it's 100 times faster than Wi-Fi

Li-Fi has just been tested in the real world, and it's 100 times faster than Wi-Fi

Sorry, Wi-Fi. We had some good times together. 

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Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi - a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC) - in the coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.

And now, scientists have taken Li-Fi out of the lab for the first time, trialling it in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, reporting that they can achieve data transmission at 1 GB per second - that's 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds.

"We are doing a few pilot projects within different industries where we can utilise the VLC (visible light communication) technology," Deepak Solanki, CEO of Estonian tech company, Velmenni, told IBTimes UK. 

"Currently we have designed a smart lighting solution for an industrial environment where the data communication is done through light. We are also doing a pilot project with a private client where we are setting up a Li-Fi network to access the Internet in their office space.”

Li-Fi was invented by Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, Scotlandback in 2011, when he demonstrated for the first time that by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit far more data than a cellular tower. Think back to that lab-based record of 224 gigabits per second - that's 18 movies of 1.5 GB each being downloaded every single second.

The technology uses Visible Light Communication (VLC), a medium that uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz (THz). It works basically like an incredibly advanced form of Morse code - just like switching a torch on and off according to a certain pattern can relay a secret message, flicking an LED on and off at extreme speeds can be used to write and transmit things in binary code. 

And while you might be worried about how all that flickering in an office environment would drive you crazy, don’t worry - we’re talking LEDs that can be switched on and off at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye. 

The benefits of Li-Fi over Wi-Fi, other than potentially much faster speeds, is that because light cannot pass through walls, it makes it a whole lot more secure, and as Anthony Cuthbertson points out at IBTimes UK, this also means there's less interference between devices.

While Cuthbertson says Li-Fi will probably not completely replace Wi-Fi in the coming decades, the two technologies could be used together to achieve more efficient and secure networks.

Our homes, offices, and industry buildings have already been fitted with infrastructure to provide Wi-Fi, and ripping all of this out to replace it with Li-Fi technology isn’t particularly feasible, so the idea is to retrofit the devices we have right now to work with Li-Fi technology.

Research teams around the world are working on just that. Li-Fi expertsreported for the The Conversation last month that Haas and his team have launched PureLiFi, a company that offers a plug-and-play application for secure wireless Internet access with a capacity of 11.5 MB per second, which is comparable to first generation Wi-Fi. And French tech company Oledcomm is in the process of installing its own Li-Fi technology in local hospitals.

If applications like these and the Velmenni trial in Estonia prove successful, we could achieve the dream outlined by Haas in his 2011 TED talk below - everyone gaining access to the Internet via LED light bulbs in their home.

"All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission," Haas said. "In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fis deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and even brighter future."

China says its bullet trains will soon be able to reach 500 km/h

China says its bullet trains will soon be able to reach 500 km/h

The new technology is expected to be rolled out by 2018.

China has announced that's it's developed new technology that will help its bullet trains reach an ultra-fast 500 km/h.

That isn't quite as fast as Japan's Maglev trains, which hit record-breaking speeds of 590 km/h earlier this year, but it's more than twice the top speed of most trains in the US, and more than three times that of Australia's rail network. And in a win for the local economy, the technology is all its own.

"Now we have our own permanent magnet synchronous traction system with full intellectual property rights, marking a new chapter in China's high-speed railways," Ding Rongjun, head of the Zhuzhou Institute in the country's Hunan province, where the technology was developed, told China Daily. 

So what's a permanent magnet synchronous traction system? It's basically a motor that uses permanent magnets rather than a magnetic field created by windings of the rotor to propel the train forward. That means the new 690-kilowatt traction system has significantly fewer parts and is lighter and more efficient, allowing China's already-speedy bullet trains to go 50 percent faster.

But unlike the Maglev system, the train remains in contact with the track, and so is still subject to the effects of friction. 

The new traction technology was developed by CRRC Corp, the country's largest train maker, and has been in development for close to 12 years, according to China Daily.

In 2011, the team installed a lower power 190-kilowatt version of the new traction system on trains running on Subway Line 2 in Shenyan, in the Liaoning province. As of May 2015, the equipment had operated without any malfunctions for 70,000 kilometres of train travel, Want China Times reports.

It started trialling the 690-kilowatt system - which Rongjun claims will be capable of 500 km/h - in selected bullet trains in October last year. If all goes to schedule, the system will soon enter mass production and will be rolled out across the country by 2018.

Today's bullet trains are mostly powered by alternating current asynchronous motors, a traction system that was developed back in the '70s. Jia Limin from Beijing Jiaotong University, and head of China's high-speed railway innovation program,told China Daily that the upgrade will reduce electrical configuration and could also reduce electrical consumption.

"The new system has fewer parts than the current traction apparatus, so it is more reliable and efficient," he explained.

We'll wait until the new train speeds are verified before we get too excited, but we're always fans of anything that makes train travel faster and more efficient. And while 500 km/h is a far cry from the 1,200 km/h top speed promised by Elon Musk's hypothetical hyperloop system, it would still take us from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just over an hour, which would be pretty damn cool. Bring it on!

Watch: The awesome chemistry of fireworks

Watch: The awesome chemistry of fireworks

How to make sparkles.

Fireworks were invented in China thousands of years ago, and over the centuries they have been perfected to create wonderful light displays that are seen on many holidays, including the 4th of July, Chinese New Year, and New Year' s Eve celebrations around the world. How are they made?

Gunpowder is the key ingredient, but as adjunct professor of chemistry John Conkling from Washington College in the US explains in this video, without chemistry, you wouldn’t have burning mixtures and without these you simply can’t have fireworks. 

Titanium gives a sparkling effect; strontium salts and lithium carbonate makes red; barium compounds are used to make green; sodium nitrate is needed to add yellow hues; magnesium or aluminium produce white light; blue is made out of copper compounds; and purple is a mix or strontium and copper.

Watch the video above to learn more about the chemistry of fireworks.

And, if you’ve ever wondered which is the largest single firework explosion in the world, just remember that every September the glorious 'Yonshakudama Shell' illuminates the sky of Ojiya City in Japan. Yonshakudama has a diameter of 1.2 metres and weighs a massive 420 kilograms. 

The Science of Beer

 The Science of Beer

Discovered around 8,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, beer is humanity's first biotechnology venture. RiAus's A Week in Science is here to tell you why it's more nutritious than wine, and what the ancient Greeks and Romans did with it (hint: they didn't drink it).

 

The world's first beer brewers came from ancient Egypt and the southern Mesopotamian civilisation of Sumer in modern-day Iraq some 8,000 years ago. They invented the crisp, amber drink by mixing bread, germinated grain and water in ceramic jars, and the yeast inside the bread fermented the sugars in the grain, producing alcohol and, you guessed it, beer!

Funnily enough, almost everyone drank beer during this time, because it was high in carbohydrates and protein, but was also safer to drink than the contaminated water. It was basically the ultimate food and drink source.

Today you might see thousands of different brands of beer around the world, boasting all sorts of weird and wonderful flavours, but there are really only two types of beer - ales and lagers. The difference comes from the type of yeast used in the manufacturing process. Ales use a 'top-fermenting' yeast, which operates at higher temperatures so that the fermentation can produce not only alcohol, but also various aroma molecules that give the drink its fruity and floral flavours. Lagers, on the other hand, use 'bottom-fermenting' yeast, which produce no extra aroma molecules, so the beer is nothing but crisp and clear.

Researchers have worked out how to make jet diesel from sugarcane

Researchers have worked out how to make jet diesel from sugarcane

The fuel could make air travel greener and won't compete with food crops, researchers claim.

With eight million of us flying every day and rising, the environmental cost of air travel is a substantial one - in 2012, it was estimated that 2 percent of all carbon emissions were down to aeroplane operations, and that figure is expected to increase in the near future. Against that backdrop, scientists across the world are working on alternative fuels to make air travel a greener form of transport.

A team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley in the US have come across a novel alternative fuel: sugarcane biomass and waste. The academics say that producing jet diesel from this natural source would substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What's more, because the sugarcane can be grown on marginal, low-yield land, it wouldn't have to replace existing food crops.

"We've identified a new route of chemistry with its source from sugars in sugarcane plus some of the so-called waste material called bagasse," co-author Alexis Bell told Mark Kinver from the BBC. "We show in this paper how we can put these components together to make jet diesel and lubricants."

The process works by using a hot water treatment to remove sugar from the sugarcane, before renewable catalysts (tiny amounts of magnesium oxide and niobium pentoxide) are used to transform the waste into fuel.

Up to this point scientists have struggled to find a viable biofuel to meet the demands of today's high-powered aircraft - there are strict regulations in place in terms of weight, density, lubricity and performance in low temperatures that airlines insist on to keep efficiency at the required levels. But Bell says his new sugarcane fuel meets all of the necessary criteria.

The first commercial flight partly powered by biofuel was back in February 2008, but interest in greener fuel has waned over concerns that the production of the necessary crops would increase strain on worldwide food production. The sugarcane fuel developed by Bell and his colleagues avoids that problem.

"If, for example, we were to use sugar beet instead of sugarcane then there would be a potential conflict over fuel versus food," he says. "By using sugarcane, particularly in Brazil, on land that is not used for agriculture, we escape that conundrum." Bell added that any clearing of ground for sugarcane production would have to be environmentally sound to make the potential benefits worthwhile.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has been sponsored by BP and the scientists are now seeking a patent for the innovations they've made. The process may well be used to create lubricants first of all, before becoming part of cleaner jet fuel mixtures.

Engineers have boosted fibre optic capacity nearly 20 times

Engineers have boosted fibre optic capacity nearly 20 times

Unbreak the Internet.

 

As humanity sends exponentially more data online, experts have voiced concerns that the world could soon run out of fibre optic capacity. Even though connection speeds are slowly creeping up in certain parts of the world, the worry is that we're eventually we're going to hit a limit of how fast fibre optic cables, AKA the "backbone of the Internet", can actually physically carry all that data.

But engineers from the University of California, San Diego in the US have smashed the current limit, by deciphering information that had been sent through fibre optic cables across a record-breaking distance of 12,000 km, without having to regenerate the signal. That means their signal was nearly 20 times stronger than our cables can currently handle.

Right now, when we send information over a certain distance, we need to use devices called 'repeaters' along the cable to convert the data into an electrical signal. This slows the system down and limits how much information can be sent, but it's necessary because our optical signals just can't handle that much power without being distorted an unrecognisable amount.

"Today’s fibre optic systems are a little like quicksand," lead researcher Nikola Alicexplains in a press release. "With quicksand, the more you struggle, the faster you sink. With fibre optics, after a certain point, the more power you add to the signal, the more distortion you get, in effect preventing a longer reach."

"Our approach removes this power limit, which in turn extends how far signals can travel in optical fibre without needing a repeater,” he adds.

To avoid this distortion, which is known as 'crosstalk', the team first had to study it closely and map the interaction that occurred between the various channels of fibre optic cables. "Crosstalk between communication channels within a fibre optic cable obeys fixed physical laws. It’s not random," says Alic. And this means they could learn how to predict it. 

His team then created a 'frequency comb' - a device that predicts and reverses crosstalk - which allowed them to send 20 times stronger signals through fibre optic cables, without the need for regenerators.

Alic compares it to a conductor tuning up an orchestra at the start of a performance: by synchronising the starting point of the signals using the frequency comb, the team can ensure that they are deciphered without distortion on the other end, even if they've been blasted over 12,000 km.

The researchers now need to work on getting these frequency combs integrated into existing fibre optic cables. But once they do, they not only have the potential to make fibre optic cables more efficient and remove the 'speed limit' currently set on the Internet, but it could also greatly reduce the cost. 

Now if only we could work out how to get fibre into more homes around the world so we can take advantage of this awesome research. 

Google’s self-driving cars are now cruising the streets of California

Google’s self-driving cars are now cruising the streets of California

And they look adorable.

 

Like hoverboards and jetpacks, self-driving cars are one of those 'too-good-to-be-true' technologies that could change everything for everyone living in a big city. Except unlike hoverboards and jetpacks - you’ve got a lot to prove, Lexus! - self-driving cars are an actual reality right now, and are starting to make real changes to how the residents of Mountain View in California get around.

As Mike Murphy points out at Quartz, these things look like adorable little pandas, and they’re getting Californians where they need to go, no driver’s license required.

Unfortunately though, Google’s self-driving cars still have their training wheels firmly attached - Quartz reports that they’re only travelling at 40 km/hour right now, and have a driver behind the wheel at all times in case of an emergency. As we reported back in May, a review found that one in 12 self-driving cars have been in accidents since September 2014, but humans were at fault for the collision, not the cars.

By getting them out on the public roads now, Google is aiming to increase the 1.6 million km of experience that their self-driving cars so far have under their very round belts. More driving means more data on what could possibly go wrong for these cars when they’re interacting with regular cars. While the crashes over the past 16 months weren't serious and caused no injuries (and no wonder - they were travelling at less than 16 km/hour at the time) researchers at Google are keen to figure out exactly what kinds of situations will put them in danger, and use that information to further improve their cars' AI.

And together with their own data, they’d like to gather information from people who have actually encountered one of their self-driving cars on the streets too. Chris Ziegler reports for The Verge that Google has launched a website where drivers can recount their experiences of having to interact with one of these sweet-looking bubble-mobiles, telling them if it went smoothly, if it required extra concentration to move around the car, or if it was just kinda weird sharing the streets with something not controlled by a human brain. 

"It'll probably help that some of the cars are going to become rolling works of art - how can you hate a cute car covered in an even cuter pattern?” says Ziegler. "Then again, the cars are capped at 'a neighbourhood-friendly 25 mph (40 km/h),' so if you've ever wanted to lay on your horn at an artificially intelligent vehicle that's going way too slow on a public street, this might be a wonderful opportunity."

Just everyone please be patient with these plucky little robots. They're trying their best to create a world where less and less of us are compelled to spend our valuable hours behind the wheel, let's hope they get us there. 

We’re all getting an extra second on June 30 this year

We’re all getting an extra second on June 30 this year

A leap second will be added on June 30, 2015, because the planet is out of sync with our atomic clocks.

 

This year will be one second longer than 2014. Scientists have announced that they’ll be adding an extra second, called a “leap second” to the UTC (coordinated universal time) clock on June 30 at 11:59:59.

That means the clock will read 11:59:60. This is because the Earth is moving a little slower than our super-accurate atomic clocks dictate, and it’s getting out of sync. In fact, while atomic time is constant, the Earth’s rotation is slowing down by around two thousandths of a second each day.

"The real simple explanation is the Earth is slowing down a little bit," Nick Stamatakos, the head of the Earth Orientate Parameters at the US Naval Observatory told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

"For that day there'll be 86,401 seconds, instead of 86,400 seconds,” he told The Telegraph.

The decision comes from scientists at the Paris-based International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, who take stock of how punctual our planet is.

It’s not a rare move - this is the 26th leap second that’s been added since 1972, and the last one was added in 2012. But it didn’t go entirely smoothly - lot of the software that supports websites couldn’t cope, and the leap second took out internet bigwigs Reddit, LinkedIn, Gizmodo and FourSquare.

This is because the Network Time Protocol that computers use to sync themselves up with the world’s atomic clocks. And when this protocol sees the same second being repeated on the clock, it assumes that something’s gone wrong and havoc ensues.

Google has come up with a technique to deal with the problem called a ‘leap smear’, but people are still worried about communication and banking disruptions. 

And there are also concerns that too many leap seconds could ruin Greenwich Mean Time forever, as The Telegraph reports:

“Experts also fear that once this link is broken it could never be restored because although the Earth's timekeeping systems are built to accommodate the occasional leap second, adding a leap minute or hour to global time would be virtually impossible.”

But while there are calls form the US government and other countries to get rid of leap seconds altogether due to disruptions, the rest of the world is keen to make sure that the Earth’s rotation and the atomic clock stay in sync. 

Either way, the leap second is coming this year whether you like it or not.

WATCH: This creepy worm is trying to digest a person's hand

WATCH: This creepy worm is trying to digest a person's hand

NOPE.

Introducing the ribbon worm, a member of the Nemertea phylum of primitive invertebrates that happens to include one of the longest-known animals on Earth. While the species Lineus longissimus usually only grows to a mere 5 to 10 millimetres, in 1864, a specimen washed up on a Scottish beach after a severe storm, and was promptly measured as being more than 55 metres (180 ft) long. 

Like the demure little Nemertea in the video above, before it ended up dead and sized-up on a beach, this super-long worm would have had some powerful poisoning skills. All Nemertea worms are equipped with an elongated, tubular mouthpart called a proboscis, which curls up inside a specialised organ called the rhynchocoel just above its gut when the worm is at rest.

When the worm is hunting, however, that highly efficient, stretchy feeding tube will unfurl and emerge just above its mouth, to cover its prey in a thick, sticky, and slightly pungent mucus. All of which already sounds fairly unpleasant, but the worst part is that it contains a relatively strong neurotoxin that can paralyse small prey so they quit struggling. Which is exactly what the worm in the video above is trying to do to that man's hand. 

Results of 3-year clinical trial show the bionic eye safely restores vision

Results of 3-year clinical trial show the bionic eye safely restores vision

The device helped 89 percent of patients see again.

 

Three years after clinical trials in humans first began, researchers in the US have shown that their bionic eye device isn't only safe to use, it also reliably restores vision in those who suffer from the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa.

The results found that 89 percent of the subjects involved in the trial could see significantly better after using the device, which is known as Argus II, and 80 percent had their quality of life improved. It's an exciting result, as the device works in a similar way to the cochlear implant - or 'bionic ear' - which has helped restore hearing to hundreds of thousands of people.

"This study shows that the Argus II system is a viable treatment option for people profoundly blind due to retinitis pigmentosa," lead researcher Allen C. Ho from the Wills Eye Hospital in Pennsylvania, US, said in a press release. "One that can make a meaningful difference in their lives and provides a benefit that can last over time."

The device was created by medical company, Second Sight, and works through an electronic device that's implanted onto a patient's retina - the layer of light-sensing cells at the back of the eye.

To stimulate these cells, visual information is captured by a tiny camera attached to the patient's glasses and sent to a pocket-sized computer, where it's processed into electronic signals. These signals are beamed wirelessly to the patient's implant, which stimulates the retinal cells with painless electrical pulses. The result is that the patient sees patterns of light, that the brain can eventually learn to interpret as an image.

The Argus II received limited Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2013, but this clinical trial set out to show that the device could be used more broadly by testing it over three years. They worked with 30 patients aged between 28 and 77 who had little or no light perception in both eyes as a result of retinitis pigmentosa.

The team tested their visual function in the lab and in real-world conditions over the next three years. The results were overwhelmingly positive, with independent investigators finding that no subjects had been affected negatively by the bionic eye, and 80 percent had both their vision and quality of life significantly improved.

There were no device failures during the trial, the researchers report, and only 11 adverse events, most of which arose shortly after surgery and were successfully treated. Only one device had to be removed after it became damaged and began to erode.

The team now hopes that the results, which have been published in the journalOphthalmology, will allow them to begin testing the device in an even broader range of subjects, with the aim of eventually using the device to restore sight to more patients.

"I look forward to future studies with this technology which may make possible expansion of the intended use of the device, including treatment for other diseases and eye injuries," said Ho.