Technically Speaking

Star Trek technology has always intrigued me. Transporters, phasers, and even their tricorders have all made me wonder if I would ever live to see these things come to life. Well, current technology can be the basis for a rudimentary tricorder in the very near future. Enhancements to camera CCDs make it possible to build a pocket-sized microscope.

A tiny microscope that employs the same kind of chip used in digital cameras can produce high-resolution images of cells without the expensive, space-hogging lenses that have been part of microscope design for centuries. Researchers at Caltech, who developed the revolutionary imaging system, say that the devices could be mass-produced at a cost of $10 each and incorporated into large arrays, enabling high-throughput imaging in biology labs. The device could also broaden access to imaging technology: incorporated into PDA-size devices, for example, the microscopes could enable rural doctors to carry sophisticated imaging systems in their pockets.

The Caltech device uses a system of tiny fluid channels called microfluidics to direct cells and even microscopic animals over a light-sensing chip. The chip, an off-the-shelf sensor identical to those found in digital cameras, is covered with a thin layer of metal that blocks out most of the pixels. A few hundred tiny apertures punched in the metal along the fluid channel let light in. As the sample flows through the microscope, each aperture captures an image. One version of the microscope uses gravity to control the flow of the sample across the apertures. Another version, which allows for much better control, uses an electrical potential to drive the flow of cells.

Quote Source

I can see the tricorder coming within 5 years, I look forward to the phaser next!

The three robot teams, two from the US and one from Switzerland, brought their robotic arms to Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices Conference in San Diego, California. Each team was hoping to have there devices stand up to the world’s strongest man in a wrestling match. So in moving towards that goal, they started the contest against a slightly weaker opponent, a 17-year-old girl named Panna Felsen. Although Panna calls herself a weakling, she managed to defeat each arm in a matter of seconds.

Despite her lack of strength, training and technique, she was able to conquer the first arm, developed by Environmental Robots Inc. from Albuquerque, New Mexico, in just 24 seconds. Following this, and a pep talk from an arm wrestling expert, it took her just four seconds to beat the second arm and three seconds for her to win the last match.

Two champion arm wrestlers oversaw the matches to ensure that standard arm wrestling rules were observed. The three robot teams are now trying to work out what went wrong.

Quote Source

It is obvious that the new technology used in this contest needs to mature a bit before the ultimate goal can be reached. EAP artificial muscles, the technology used in this contest, are special plastics that can change shape when activated either electrically or with chemicals.

Nevertheless, the drive to develop EAP artificial muscles is unlikely to be deterred by this setback because of the need to overcome the current limitations with existing actuators and motors.

Electric motors tend to be too weak, while hydraulics and pneumatics are too heavy for use in robotics or prosthetics. EAPs, in comparison are lightweight, quiet and capable of energy densities similar to biological muscles.

The three robot teams, two from the US and one from Switzerland, each used different types of EAPs for their arms. The Virginia Tech group had three sets of chemically activated muscles acting on the shoulder joint, triggered by hydrochloric acid which caused the EAP strands to contract. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it only started to work a few minutes after its match had ended.

Quote Source

Andrea Alù and Nader Engheta of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have conceived a technology that may exceed the capabilities of the current sophisticated camouflage systems used today. Their concept involves using Plasmon waves, which will reduce the scattering of light when it strikes an object. That scattering of light is what makes object visible to the eye.

The key to the concept is to reduce light scattering. We see objects because light bounces off them; if this scattering of light could be prevented (and if the objects didn’t absorb any light) they would become invisible. Alù and Engheta’s plasmonic screen suppresses scattering by resonating in tune with the illuminating light.

Plasmons are waves of electron density, caused when the electrons on the surface of a metallic material move in rhythm. The researchers say that a shell of plasmonic material will scatter light negligibly if the light’s frequency is close to the resonant frequency of the plasmons. The scattering from the shell effectively cancels out the scattering from the object.

For visible-light shielding, says Engheta, nature has already provided suitable plasmonic materials: silver and gold. To reduce the scattering of longer-wavelength radiation such as microwaves, one could make the shield from a ‘metamaterial’: a large-scale structure with unusual electromagnetic properties, typically constructed from arrays of wire loops and coils.

Alù and Engheta’s calculations show that spherical or cylindrical objects coated with such plasmonic shields do indeed produce very little light scattering. It is as though, when lit by light of the right wavelength, the objects become extremely small, so small that they cannot be seen.

Quote Source

The idea is still in the theoretical stage but it appears to be sound from a physics standpoint. Also according to theory, the technology will work better on small objects, optimally, it will work best when the wavelength of the light is the same size as the object being shielded, which basically means ‘microscopic’ items. At this point the object can’t be shielded from daylight because it is made up of various light wavelengths, and the Plasmonic cover will work when it is tuned to one specific light frequency. The theory is new and is sure to change when it is understood better. So don’t rule out the possibility of having a cloaking device just yet.

Professor Rusi Taleyarkhan, claims that he has been able to produce nuclear fusion. The scientific community is very skeptical of the results and are desperately trying to either reproduce Taleyarkhan’s experiment or expose him as a fraud. Taleyarkhan maintains that the data speaks for itself. Nuclear fusion on Earth would be an abundant, clean power supply for the world that would probably never run out.

It would be clean, last for ever and create no long-term nuclear waste. And Rusi Taleyarkhan claims to have achieved it using simple sound waves.

His breakthrough is based on something called sonoluminescence. It is a process that transforms sound waves into flashes of light, focusing the sound energy into a tiny flickering hot spot inside a bubble.

It has been nicknamed “the star in a jar” by researchers in the field.

The star in a jar effortlessly reaches temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees, which is hotter than the surface of the Sun. It was able to do all this by simply focusing the energy of the sound wave into a tiny hot spot.

In order to get fusion, temperatures inside the bubble had to be in the region of 10 million degrees. It seemed improbable that the tiny hot spots could be this hot. But if they were - or if a way could be found to make them so - then a new route to nuclear fusion would be opened up.

Quote Source

It is now believed that the 9.0-magnitude quake, centered in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra, may have moved the small islands in the area about 20 meters. Sumatra itself may have moved as much as 36 meters. The shift in mass has changed the map of the region as well as changed the earth’s rotation, a minuscule amount.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth’s center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or 3 millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.

When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was forced below the edge of another “it had the effect of making the Earth more compact and spinning faster,” Gross said.

Quote Source

The new wobble in the Earth’s rotation is nothing to be alarmed about. This must be a common thing for our Earth after such a powerful earthquake. The Earth’s rotation has always had variations to it. Some of the variations may even be attributed to the tides and groundwater shifts.

“That continual motion is just used to changing,” Gross said. “The rotation is not actually that precise. The Earth does slow down and change its rate of rotation.”

When those tiny variations accumulate, planetary scientists must add a “leap second” to the end of a year, something that has not been done in many years, Gross said.

Quote Source

The spin Hall Effect, named after American physicist Edwin Hall, was discovered in 1879. Today, with the coming of semi-conductors, the Hall effect is used in a variety of devices. This Hall effect is produced by the charge of an electron. There is another way to produce the effect and that is through the spin of an electron.

The Hall effect comes in two varieties itself: spin and charge.

In 1879, when Edwin Hall was monitoring an electric current — that is, a moving charge — in a magnetic field, he observed a measurable voltage.

He attributed the effect to the force a magnetic field exerts on moving charge carriers, pushing them to one side of the conductor and building up charge on that side.

The charge buildup ultimately balances the magnetic force, producing a measurable voltage between opposite sides of the conductor.

Today’s sensors and electronics make liberal use of this plain-vanilla “Hall effect.”

Quote Source

The spin Hall Effect was first predicted in 1971 by Russian physicists M.I. D’yakonov and V. I. Perel; they predicted that current-carrying electrons with opposite spins would move toward opposite sides of a semiconductor wire. The prediction hasn’t been proved/observed until now (2004).

Potential applications of the spin Hall effect may include “sensing technologies, potential pathways towards shuttling spin information in semiconductors, as well as quantum computing and quantum communication,” said Awschalom, who directs the UCSB Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation.

But he added, “The most exciting aspect of this finding is that you don’t know exactly where it’s going to lead.”

Quote Source

NASA was just delivered its new comet exploring spacecraft named Deep Impact. This vessel will be launched on Dec. 30 of this year and if all goes well it will rendevouz with the comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. The spacecraft is designed to deliver a 820-lb hunk of copper, dubbed “hammer”, the size of a bathtub, to the commet at a velocity of 23,000 mph. The “hammer” is to expose the inner most materials of the comet so that scientists can discover the composition of it and also hopefully predict the comet’s past and origins.

If all goes well, an 820-pound copper “hammer” the size of a bathtub will separate from its mother ship and, 24 hours later, smash into the comet’s icy nucleus at about 23,000 mph.

“It’s bound to be a blast,” said Lucy McFadden, a University of Maryland astronomer and member of the Deep Impact team.

The high-speed impact will wallop the pickle-shaped comet with energy equivalent to 4.8 tons of TNT, said Michael A’Hearn, another UM astronomer and principal investigator on the $311 million mission.

Nobody’s sure what will happen next. There’s a small chance the impactor will blow the 2-½-mile-long comet to smithereens, or simply bore through it like a bullet through a snowball. More likely, scientists say, it will blast open a crater the size of a football stadium. It all depends on what Tempel 1 is made of, and how sturdily it is composed.

Which is exactly what scientists hope to learn.

The blast also will reveal the comet’s interior chemistry and nail down more precisely what conditions were like when it formed at the solar system’s birth more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Quote Source

A group of US scientists believe that they have found the scientific reason behind the ability of lizards to walk on water. The theory going into the study was that the lizard was exerting so much force with each step that the water gave back the same amount allowing the lizard to stay on top of the surface. But there is more to that… “What we didn’t expect to see was very large medio-lateral forces; forces pretty much to the side of the lizards.”

The study, which was reported recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals how a large upward force is produced every time the lizard slaps its foot down into the water.

This keeps the animal from sinking straight down into the liquid. But just like we tend to teeter forward when we run on a soft surface such as sand, the lizard would also stumble forward unless it had a mechanism for stabilising itself.

And this is where the sideways force comes in - and it is almost as strong as the initial slap down.

The findings are interesting because most of what we know about how animals with legs move is based on studies of them travelling across solid surfaces.

Animals that run on land with two legs, such as birds and humans, have little force directed out towards the sides. The basilisk lizard is very different.

“We were wondering why this is actually happening,” Dr Hsieh added.

“Our guess on this is that it appears to help maintain stability… as they’re running across water; they’re constantly tripping.

“It’s a matter of catching themselves and keeping themselves upright before they actually fall over.”

Quote Source

The setup of the experiment is pretty interesting as well.

The experimental set-up used a small track, around a metre in length, with small, silver-covered reflective particles dropped in the test-tank water.

A laser light was then shone through the water, making the particles reflect. This allowed the scientists to visualise fluid flow induced by foot movements and to calculate the forces the lizards were producing.

Quote Source

It is amazing what they can do with lasers these days, heh?

America’s first hydrogen filling station online yesterday. It looks like all other filling stations but this one will get minimal use for a while. There are only 6 vehicles that will be refueling here for the time being.

Shell executives, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites) and District of Columbia Mayor Anthony A. Williams unveiled the technology, which the Bush administration hopes will help reduce the country’s dependence on imported oil.

“This will be, in fact, the first step toward the real transition in the economy from the carbon-based economies of the past to a hydrogen economy of the future,” Abraham said.

The pump services only six minivans which General Motors Corp. uses to demonstrate the technology. But with 80,000 vehicles passing by every weekday, Shell officials hope it’ll get a lot of attention — and, eventually, use.

GM hopes to sell affordable hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2010, and Shell envisions building on the number of stations and having mass-market penetration between 2015 and 2025.

The minivans are equipped with fuel cell stacks which turn hydrogen into electricity to power the vehicle. The only emission is water vapor.

Quote Source

Three American physicists, David Gross, David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, received the 2004 Nobel prize in physics due to their work on the grand unified theory of the universe. The ideals has eluded scientists in the way subatomic particles behave with theories on the force of gravity. The proof of their work shows how the attraction between quarks behave - nature’s basic building blocks - it is strong when they are far apart and weak when they are close together.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work helped give “a unified description of all the forces of nature…from the tiniest distances within the atomic nucleus to the vast distances of the universe”.

It explained how “an everyday phenomenon like a coin spinning on a table” is determined by fundamental forces.

The three scientists showed how quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, were held together by a so-called “strong force”.

Without this force there would be nothing holding the tiny particles together, nor indeed any basic building blocks to assemble into an object like a coin.

“They really helped us to understand how it is that quarks are bound together to make protons and neutrons,” said David Wark, a particle physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Britain.

Their theory, known as quantum chromodynamics, also showed that when quarks are close together at extremely high energies they act like free particles, a state they called “asymptotic freedom”.

In this state, they resembled those of the other forces in subatomic physics - electromagnetism and the “weak force” dealing with nuclear decay - meaning the US trio had made a first step to “the theory of everything,” Gross told Reuters by phone from Santa Barbara, California.

Quote Source

The significance of the work is that it, in its early stages, “built a model of how the universe was born, how it works and how it will ultimately die”. Next is to explain the forces involved within atoms and nuclear behavior and apply it to the universe.

If you are at all curious as to how the Genesis probe will tell us anything about the sun and the solar system, I think I have the answer for you.

By looking at the ratio of oxygen-16, -17 and -18 isotopes in the solar particles, scientists should be able to test theories about how the sun and planets formed. Oxygen-16 is by far the most common. The Earth, moon, Mars and some meteorites all have slightly different ratios of the three isotopes.

The oxygen makeup of the sun, which contains about 99.9 percent of all the mass in the solar system, is much harder to measure. The Genesis spacecraft was built to answer that question by collecting particles blown out from the sun.

In a “Perspectives” article in the Sept. 17 issue of the journal Science, Yin describes new theories about local variations in oxygen isotopes in the vast dust and gas cloud around the young sun. Free oxygen was released when ultraviolet light hit carbon monoxide gas. Because oxygen-16 was so abundant, it was released mostly near the surface of the cloud, but breakdown of carbon monoxide containing less abundant oxygen-17 or -18 continued deeper into the cloud.

Free oxygen and hydrogen formed water that froze onto dust grains and eventually formed into planets, preserving the oxygen-17 and -18 signature, Yin said. The models predict that the Sun itself should have a much lower ratio of oxygen-17 and -18 to oxygen-16 than the rocky planets, a prediction that can be tested by Genesis and future missions.

Quote Source

According to scientist, the remains of the crashed Genesis probe can still give us much information about the sun. Luckily, the whole mission needn’t be scraped.

If you have seen Star Trek the Voyage home, you would have some idea of Transparent Aluminum. It is a fabled glass made from aluminum that is suppose to have extreme strength and light weight, making it superior to regular glass. A group of 3M scientists have discovered a way to create “glass” from aluminum. It is an expensive process as of now but hopefully a technique will soon come about that will allow for the end product to be produced in mass.

Silica is widely used in glass-making because the quenching rates are much lower, but researchers would like to make glass from alumina as well because of its superior mechanical and optical properties. Alumina can form glass if it is alloyed with calcium or rare-earth oxides, but the required quenching rate can be as high as 1000 degrees per second, which makes it difficult to produce bulk quantities.

Rosenflanz and colleagues started by mixing around 80 mole % of powdered alumina with various rare-earth oxide powders — including lanthanum, gadolinium and yttrium oxides. Next, they fed the powders into a high-temperature hydrogen-oxygen flame to produce molten particles that were then quenched in water. The resulting glass beads, which were less than 140 microns across, were then heat-treated — or sintered — at around 1000°C. This produced bulk glass samples in which nanocrystalline alumina-rich phases were dispersed throughout a glassy matrix. The new method avoids the need to apply pressures of 1 gigapascal or more, as is required in existing techniques.

The 3M scientists characterised the glasses using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and thermal analysis, and tested the strength of the materials with hardness and fracture toughness tests. They found that their samples were much harder than conventional silica-based glasses and were almost as hard as pure polycrystalline alumina.

Moreover, over 95% of the glasses were transparent (see figure) and had attractive optical properties. For example, fully crystallized alumina-rare earth oxide ceramics showed high refractive indices if the grains were kept below a certain size.

Qoute Source

This news couldn’t have come at a more welcomed time, considering how our current oil situation is. A British Company, Hydrogen Solar, has been able to take sunlight and convert it directly into hydrogen with fuel cell technology. As of now, they have a 8% efficiency, which to me sounds like it isn’t very useful, but if they can reach 10% efficiency, this would be considered good enough to be commercially viable. Imagine filling up your car only once a year and paying what you do now for a tank of gas. “Using a 10% cell, we say that a seven-metre squared array will power a Mercedes A class car for 11,000 miles a year [in LA sunlight conditions] without going to power station,” said Dr Auty.

The Tandem Cell technology developed by Hydrogen Solar uses two photocatalytic cells in series which are coated with a nano-crystalline - extremely thin - metal oxide film.

Having a nanoscale coating makes the surface area far greater and means that hydrogen can be produced efficiently without the need for polluting fossil fuels.

The cells capture the full spectrum of ultraviolet light - the Sun’s rays - and, via the novel coating, the electrons are captured and carried away on conductors.

This electrical current is then used to separate the hydrogen from water which is stored for use.

The key to the process has been the advances in novel coatings brought about by recent developments in nanotechnology.

The size of the molecules in the coating is 15 to 20 nanometres (a nanometre being a billionth of a metre).

When they are stacked in layers, the property of the substance changes to produce large surface areas.

“It turns out these devices work because we are using nanocrystalline layers. It is the move to nanotechnology which has brought this technology forward,” explained Dr Auty.

Quote Source

Scientist have discovered a way to make vanadium dioxide’s heat reflective property come to life at lower temperatures. The reflective properties of vanadium dioxide normally start to work near 70 degrees Celcius. At this temperature the coating block the heating effects of infrared light. By changing the structure of the vanadium dioxide molecule scientist were able to make the material switch on at room temperature, making the material much more attractive in energy savings.

Reporting in the Journal of Materials Chemistry, researchers reveal they have developed an intelligent window coating that, when applied to the glass of buildings or cars, reflects the sun’s heat so you don’t get too hot under the collar.

While conventional tints block both heat and light the coating, which is made from a derivative of vanadium dioxide, allows visible wavelengths of light through at all times but reflects infrared light when temperature rise over 29 degrees Celsius. Wavelengths of light in this region of the spectrum cause heating so blocking infrared reduces unwanted rays from the sun.

The coating’s ability to switch between absorbing and reflecting light means occupants benefit from the sun’s heat in cooler conditions but when temperatures soar room heating is reduced by up to 50 per cent.

…

“While the heat reflective properties of vanadium dioxide are well recognised the stumbling block has been the switching temperature. It’s not much good if the material starts to reflect infrared light at 70 degrees Celsius. We’ve shown it’s possible to reduce the switching temperature to just above room temperature and manufacture it in a commercially viable way.”

Vanadium dioxide’s properties are based on its ability to alternate between acting as a metal and semiconductor. The switch between reflecting or absorbing heat is accompanied by a small change in the structure of the material, where the arrangement of electrons changes. Vanadium-vanadium bonds are stable below the transition temperature, which ‘lock’ the electrons and prevent conduction. Above the transition temperature these vanadium-vanadium bonds break and the electrons are free to conduct electricity making the material metallic.

Previous attempts to lower the switching temperature have incorporated low levels of elements such as tungsten, molybdenum, niobium and fluorine. These lower the transition temperature by supplying electrons into the material, which makes the metallic structure more stable.

Quote Source

This computer simulation shows the Earth’s interior as its magnetic field reverses, perhaps because of changes in the flow of molten iron in the core.

Scientist have known for some time that the Earth’s magnetic field has been getting weaker over the last few hundred years. It has been declining at an alarming rate. When I first heard about this phenomenon, scientist were predicting that the field would disappear within a few hundred years and this would leave earth as an unbearable planet for life. The magnetic field is our first line of defense from the sun’s intense radiation. It deflects a great amount of the radiation back into space, without it we (the animal life of the planet) would either die off or mutate into organisms that can cope with the radiation.

Scientist have found that there is evidence that the magnetic field has been weak before. The evidence is recorded in volcanic rocks for they magnetically align themselves to the earth’s field as they cool from there lava state. Through the study of these rock scientist have discovered that this weakening of the field leads to a complete polarity change of the field. Unfortunately, this change isn’t an instantaneous event, it could take thousands of years.
(more…)

Scientist in the US and Austria have successfully teleported atoms. The definition of teleportation, according to physicist, is the transfer of “quantum states” between separate atoms. “Quantum states” are the attributes of an atom such as an atom’s energy, motion, magnetic field and other physical properties. The knowledge of these findings will help shape the development of our next generation of computers, quantum computers.

The ideas behind this teleportation are based on a atomic phenomena known as entanglement. Einstein observed this behavior and called it a “spooky action”. The two scientific teams rough used the same protocol to achieve their results.

First, a pair of highly entangled, charged atoms (or ions) are created: B and C. Next, the state to be teleported is created in a third ion, A.

Then, one ion from the pair - let’s say B - is entangled with A, and the internal state of both is measured.

Finally, the quantum state of ion A is sent to ion C, transforming it. This destroys the original quantum state of A.

The teleportation took place in milliseconds and at the push of a button, the first time such a deterministic mechanism has been developed for the process.

Quote Source

Prior to this breakthrough, teleportation was done with light. Now the atoms can be teleported and this may lead to breakthroughs in super fast computing.

The landmark experiments are being viewed as a major advance in the quest to achieve ultra-fast computers, inside which teleportation could provide a form of invisible “quantum wiring”.

These machines would be able to handle far bigger and more complex loads than today’s super-computers, and at many times their speed.

“In a quantum computer it’s straightforward enough to move quantum information around by simply moving the qubits, but you might want to do things very quickly, so you could use teleportation instead,” said Nist’s Dr David Wineland.

Quote Source

 

The new period added to earths historical timeline denote the end of the ice age and the beginning of multi-celled life forms.

The Ediacaran Period covers some 50 million years of ancient time on our planet from 600 million years ago to about 542 million years ago.

It officially becomes part of the Neoproterozoic, when multi-celled life forms started to take hold on Earth.

However, Russian geologists are unhappy their own title - the Vendian - which was coined in 1952, was not chosen.

The decision was taken after a fifteen-year long period of consideration by expert geologists.

“There’s always been a recognition that the last part of the Precambrian is a special time before the first shelled animals, when there are these mesh-like creatures of uncertain affinity,” Professor Jim Ogg, secretary-general of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), told BBC News Online.

Quote Source

A theoretically unbreakable type of encryption, known as Quantum Encryption has come a bit closer to reality. This new system has the ability to stream photons at 1 million per second. The 100 fold increase over conventional quantum systems, makes it possible to send more data intensive media, such as video.

Quantum encryption involves sending data by way of photons, the smallest unit of light. The photons are polarized, or oriented, in one of four different directions. Eavesdroppers cause detectable changes in the orientation, which in turn prevents them from getting secret information.

Quote Source

Quantum Encryption is poised to be the biggest advance in encryption because it uses the laws of quantum mechanics as its tamper detection mechanism. The encrypted data stream is so sensitive that attempts by an potential snoop can be detected by the delta of the received stream. This is done by the QKD, quantum key distribution, which is a system that generates a verifiably secret key that is passed along with the data. If the key is altered in transit then it is deduced that the message has been compromised.

Quantum systems–exploiting the laws of quantum mechanics–are expected to provide the next big advance in data encryption. The beauty of quantum key distribution is its sensitivity to measurements made by an eavesdropper. This sensitivity makes it possible to ensure the secrecy of the key and, hence, the encrypted message. The keys are generated by transmitting single photons that are polarized, or oriented, in one of four possible ways. An eavesdropper reading the transmission causes detectable changes at the receiver. When such changes are observed, the associated key is not used for encryption.

Compared to previously described QKD systems, the major difference in the NIST system is the way it identifies a photon from the sender among a large number of photons from other sources, such as the sun. To make this distinction, scientists time-stamp the QKD photons, then look for them only when one is expected to arrive.

“To be effective, this observation time has to be very short,” says NIST physicist Joshua Bienfang. “But the more often you can make these very brief observations, then the faster you can generate keys. We have adapted some techniques used in high-speed telecommunications to increase significantly the rate at which we can look for photons.”

The NIST team has packaged data-handling electronics operating in the gigahertz (1 billion bits per second) range in a pair of programmable printed circuited boards that plug into standard PCs. Photon losses caused by imperfections in the photon sources and detectors, optics and procedures reduce the key generation rate. However, 1 million bps makes QKD practical for a variety of new applications, such as large network distributions or streaming encrypted video.

“We are processing data much faster with this hardware than can currently be done with software,” says NIST electrical engineer Alan Mink. “You would need a computer processing at more than 100 GHz (about 50 times faster than current PCs) to do it with software and you still couldn’t do it fast enough because the operating system would slow you down.”

The NIST quantum system uses an infrared laser to generate the photons and telescopes with 8-inch mirrors to send and receive the photons over the air. The data are processed in real time by printed circuit boards designed and built at NIST, so that a computer produces ready-made keys. NIST researchers also developed a high-speed approach to error correction.

Quote Source

This looks like a very promising technology for keeping sensitive information confidential. Unfortunately, it will probably only be available to government and specialized industries. It may be some time before it will be available to the regular consumer. Also, I would assume that certain advances will need to be made in the fiber optic hardware arena in order to send and receive these photonic data packets. By time it reaches the status of normal consumer product someone should be able to crack the code.

Ever wondered what type of damage would be incurred if an ELE asteroid were to hit the earth? Well you can use this handy little Impact Effects program to help get a better idea of what may happen. Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science Writer of Space.com entered the following scenario and I must say that the results are simply mind boggling.

Being somewhat of a voyeur when it comes to natural catastrophe, I couldn’t resist running some scenarios through the new catastrophe calculator.

If you read on, please keep in mind that the odds of a serious impact occurring in any year are extremely low. A civilization-ending impact, while possible, almost surely won’t happen within our lifetimes (90 percent of all asteroids big enough and close enough to do the job will be found by 2008) and is extremely unlikely even over the next millennium.

But hurling big virtual rocks at the planet is admittedly kind of fun. And in this case it’s at least more scientifically meaningful than the average video game. I started by dropping a 9.3-mile-wide (15-kilometer) asteroid — the estimated size of the suspected dinosaur killer — on San Francisco.

The Bay Area doesn’t do so well.

The resulting crater, at 113 miles (181 kilometers) wide, pretty much tells the story. The entire metropolis vanishes faster than you can say where you left your heart. What isn’t consumed is knocked over in an earthquake of magnitude 10.2, bigger than any in recorded history. Heat from a scorching fireball would turn much of the state, and parts of others, into toast.

The quick end to the Bay Area turns out to be a blessing compared to what Los Angeles residents face.

About 10 seconds after impact, radiation from the fireball sears Southern California, igniting clothing and even plywood. Within two minutes the ground under Hollywood begins to shake. Weak brick structures crumble. Concrete irrigation ditches are damaged. Frame houses not properly bolted to their foundations are knocked off. Even tree branches fall.

And then it gets nasty.

Quote Source

Follow the destruction across the country is also equally interesting. Ejecta from the impact is hurled across the country to depths of 18 feet in LA to about a foot in Denver. To hear more about the destruction check out the article.

Create your own Impact Scenario
(more…)

US particle physicists have recorded sum unexplainable results from their experiments on the disintegrations of the kaon particle. Based on the probability of certain occurrences being observed from the experiments they have concluded that their current theories on sub-atomic particles need to be looked at again.

The experiment looked at the disintegration of a sub-atomic particle called the K-meson or kaon.

It can decay in a number of ways. One involves it turning into a charged pion particle, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino.

Physicists regard this decay pattern as especially interesting because it may reveal new effects not accounted for in the so-called Standard Model.

So far they have constructed a theory around 16 particles that make up all matter called the Standard Model of fundamental particles and interactions.

The Standard Model predicts that this particular event should occur only once in every 13 billion decays.

Quote Source

The results of the experiments show that the occurrences happen 1 every 7 billion decays. What does that mean? Time for a new model!