A Big Step Toward a Silicon Quantum Computer
Quantum computers could more easily become a reality if they incorporated the silicon semiconductor processing used by the modern electronics industry. Physicists in Australia have recently taken a new step toward that vision by reading and writing the nuclear spin state of a single phosphorus atom implanted in silicon.
In a breakthrough reported in the 18 April edition of the journal Nature, physicists have finally achieved an idea first proposed in 1998 by Bruce Kane, a physicist at the University of Maryland, in College Park. Such success could lead to quantum computers based on the same silicon-processing technology used for computer chips.
“What we are trying to do is demonstrate that there is a viable way to take the same physical platform and fabrication technology used to make any computer and mobile phone in the world, and twist it into a technology for quantum information processing,” says Andrea Morello, a quantum physicist at the University of New South Wales, in Australia.
Scientists envision quantum computers as the ideal devices for cracking modern encryption codes, searching through huge databases, and understanding the biological interactions of molecules and drugs. Quantum computing’s potential comes from harnessing the laws of quantum physics that allow the spin state of an electron or an atom’s nucleus to achieve “superposition”—existing in more than one state at a time. A classical computer bit can exist either as a 1 or a 0, but a quantum bit, or qubit, is capable of existing in multiple states at the same time.
With other quantum computing approaches, researchers have tried trapping and isolating atoms by using electromagnetic fields or superconductor materials. By comparison, Kane suggested harnessing the nuclear spin of phosphorus atoms embedded in a silicon crystal as a qubit.
Silicon-based quantum computing also offers long coherence times for electron and nuclear spins, Kane says. That means the electron spin states and nuclear spin states acting as qubits could hold on to their information for long periods of time, something that other quantum computing schemes have struggled with.
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IBM creates liquid-based transistors that can process data like the human brain
From VentureBeat:
For decades, the transistor has been the building block of electronic devices, from computers to smartphones. It has seen little change, but a team of researchers at IBM has given the transistor a major makeover, and it may enable the company to build computers that function more like the way the human brain works. If it pans out, IBM could use the technology to build chips that are highly efficient and use much less electrical power. That could lead to a revolution in mobile devices, which today are bound by short battery lives and electrical inefficiency. The whole process is not unlike the charged electrical fluids sloshing around in our brains. If the brain can do it, an artificially crafted material might be able to do it too.
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IBM creates liquid-based transistors that can process data like the human brain
From VentureBeat:
For decades, the transistor has been the building block of electronic devices, from computers to smartphones. It has seen little change, but a team of researchers at IBM has given the transistor a major makeover, and it may enable the company to build computers that function more like the way the human brain works. If it pans out, IBM could use the technology to build chips that are highly efficient and use much less electrical power. That could lead to a revolution in mobile devices, which today are bound by short battery lives and electrical inefficiency. The whole process is not unlike the charged electrical fluids sloshing around in our brains. If the brain can do it, an artificially crafted material might be able to do it too.
GIGS2GO is a small set of ‘Tear and Share’ USB drives, about the same size as a credit card, that can be torn off and used or handed out to others… the four-pack of thumb drives is made from 100% post-consumer molded paper pulp with no plastic. You can tear off an individual 1GB drive like a phone number on a flyer for a cat-sitter.
Well this is interesting.
I understand the actual sentiment behind those kinds of posts but after seeing them a million times my brain over-analyzes and attempts to actually answer the question.
Reality is a monster living under your bed. They tell it like it is, but they’re not all bad.
Japan successfully gets fuel from undersea ‘flammable ice’ deposits
Japan’s decade-long quest to produce gas from undersea methane hydrate, or “flammable ice,” paid off this week with the announcement of a successful extraction from nearly 900 feet below the seabed, the world’s first. The achievement has the potential to unlock a vast new fuel source, as the total amount of carbon in methane hydrate deposits worldwide is conservatively estimated at twice that of all other fossil fuels. The majority of those deposits are located beneath the seabed, and Japan’s Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) says that it hopes to commercialize the extraction technology within five years.
