"quantum leap forward in national security"

DaS Energy · Jul 2, 2015

Quantum leap forward in national security.

Name Change.

The immigration department and customs have been integrated into a single department

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he understood the sacrifices on the frontline.

While thousands of customs and immigration department staff began two hours of nationwide strike action over conditions and pay.

waltky · Apr 5, 2016

The pros and cons of superfast computing in the finance world...

[b ]Quantum computing: Game changer or security threat?[/b]
Mon, 04 Apr 2016 - Superfast quantum computers could transform the world of finance, advocates say.

In a world where how fast you can assimilate and analyse data then act on it, makes the difference between profit and loss, computing speed is key. This is why banks, insurance firms, and hedge funds invest millions on technology to give them an edge when trading, and to offset human error. Quantum computers, that owe more to nuclear quantum mechanics than electronics, promise to be exponentially more powerful than traditional computers, holding out the tantalising prospect of near-perfect trading strategies and highly accurate forecasting and risk assessments. "Financial services is a data-rich environment," says Kevin Hanley, director of design at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). "Time is money and the ability to process data fast could have a huge potential benefit for our customers."

Quantum computing in a nutshell

Classical computing relies on binary digits or bits - ones and zeros representing on/off, true/false states. Quantum computing, on the other hand, features qubits, which can be both 0 or 1 at the same time - a state known as superposition. It all goes back to Schrodinger's cat, but that's another story.... Atomic particles such as electrons, photons or ions can be made to behave in this mysterious way. And because of this flexibility, qubits can do a lot more - a quantum computer could theoretically carry out trillions of calculations per second. But these computers aren't easy to build or operate. Quantum processors from one of the leading manufacturers in this field - D-Wave - need to be cooled to just above absolute zero (-273.15C). They also need to be free from any electromagnetic interference.

This makes them bulky and costly; D-Wave's computers cost about $10m-15m. Ironically they're also a bit limited in the kinds of calculations they can currently do, and many observers are still sceptical about how fast they really are. So it's fair to say we're still at the very early stages of quantum computing. Goldman Sachs, RBS, Guggenheim Partners and Commonwealth Bank of Australia have all invested in quantum computing, with the aim of stealing a march on their competitors. "This is interesting to the financial world because if you can find an algorithmic advantage to solve a problem, that can give you a great competitive advantage," says Colin Williams, director of business development for D-Wave.

Google, Nasa, Lockheed Martin, the US Department of Energy and the University of Southern California have all used D-Wave's systems so far. Other tech companies, such as Cambridge Quantum Computing, QxBranch and Rigetti, are also rushing to develop the hardware and software needed to make quantum computing a reality.

Longer-term visibility
Click to expand...

waltky · Sep 20, 2016

Uncle Ferd would like to teleport to France so he could meet a sexy French lady...

Teleportation step toward quantum internet
Tue, 20 Sep 2016 - Physicists have set a new bar for quantum teleportation - transferring information from one place to another without anything physically travelling between the locations.

Two separate teams managed to teleport information across several kilometres of optical fibre network in two cities. This form of teleportation differs from that depicted in Star Trek: it involves transferring quantum states of a light particle, not Starfleet officers. But the method offers huge promise. Teleportation over long distances and across optical fibre networks is an important step towards the ultra-secure communications promised by quantum cryptography. And the set-ups described in studies published in Nature Photonics journal could be seen as building blocks for a future "quantum internet".

In one of the papers, Dr Wolfgang Tittel and colleagues describe how they teleported the quantum state of a photon, or light particle, over 8.2km in the Canadian city of Calgary. The process by which information - the quantum state of a photon - is teleported involves creating two photons at the University of Calgary (site B in the aerial photo). One of these photons is sent in a "classical" way along 11.1km of optical fibre to a building near Calgary City Hall (C in the photo), while the other remains behind at the university. Meanwhile, a photon is also sent to the City Hall site from site A (located in the neighbourhood of Manchester). This all results in the quantum state of the photon from site A being transferred to the photon which remained behind at the university (B) through quantum teleportation.

This teleportation process occurs via a phenomenon known as entanglement, which describes how sub-atomic particles can be linked even if they are separated by a large distance. The details of entanglement are not well understood; it even befuddled Einstein, who famously described it as "spooky action at a distance". In the other Nature Photonics study, Qiang Zhang and Jian-Wei Pan from the University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai, used a different set-up to achieve teleportation over a 30km optical fibre network in the Chinese city of Hefei.

In 2012, Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna carried out quantum teleportation over 143km of free space between different Canary Islands. But Dr Tittel says his study uses a configuration that could serve as the benchmark for useful city-based quantum networks. Both studies demonstrate that teleportation works over several kilometres of the optical fibre used in metropolitan areas. In future, theoretical devices known as repeaters could help amplify signals, enabling communications - a quantum internet, if you like - over much bigger distances.

This could enable the roll-out of much more secure communications offered by quantum cryptography. This would enable separate parties to produce a shared and random secret key known only to them that could be used to encrypt and decrypt messages. In the same issue of Nature Photonics, quantum information researcher Frédéric Grosshans from the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, said: "Undoubtedly many interesting quantum information experiments in the future will be built on this work. "For the longer term, the two papers demonstrate that the possibility of quantum networks that span a city are a realistic proposition, which is an exciting vision for the future."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37408013
Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

"quantum leap forward in national security"

DaS Energy New Member

waltky Well-Known Member

waltky Well-Known Member

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

"quantum leap forward in national security"

DaS Energy New Member

waltky Well-Known Member

waltky Well-Known Member

Share This Page

Useful Searches