Scientists in China have succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km (10 miles), much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal.

Quantum teleportation is not the same as the teleportation most of us know from science fiction, where an object (or person) in one place is “beamed up” to another place where a perfect copy is replicated. In quantum teleportation two photons or ions (for example) are entangled in such a way that when the quantum state of one is changed the state of the other also changes, as if the two were still connected. This enables quantum information to be teleported if one of the photons/ions is sent some distance away.

In previous experiments the photons were confined to fiber channels a few hundred meters long to ensure their state remained unchanged, but in the new experiments pairs of photons were entangled and then the higher-energy photon of the pair was sent through a free space channel 16 km long. The researchers, from the University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua University in Beijing, found that even at this distance the photon at the receiving end still responded to changes in state of the photon remaining behind. The average fidelity of the teleportation achieved was 89 percent.

The distance of 16 km is greater than the effective aerosphere thickness of 5-10 km, so the group's success could pave the way for experiments between a ground station and a satellite, or two ground stations with a satellite acting as a relay. This means quantum communication applications could be possible on a global scale in the near future.

The public free space channel was at ground level and spanned the 16 km distance between Badaling in Beijing (the teleportation site) and the receiver site at Huailai in Hebei province. Entangled photon pairs were generated at the teleportation site using a semiconductor, a blue laser beam, and a crystal of beta-barium borate (BBO). The pairs of photons were entangled in the spatial modes of photon 1 and polarization modes of photon 2. The research team designed two types of telescopes to serve as optical transmitting and receiving antennas.

The experiments confirm the feasibility of space-based quantum teleportation, and represent a giant leap forward in the development of quantum communication applications.

http://www.physorg.com/news193551675.html
http://www.physorg.com/news193551675.html

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According to an article in Technology Review of June 8 2007 this was already done for a distance of 144 km from La Palma in the Canary Island to Tenerife Island. The experiment was done by prof. Anton Zeilinger of Vienna University and his team in cooperation with a team led by Harald Weinfurter of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics at Garching and was reported in Nature Physics of June 3 2007.
Tullio

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The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) spacecraft has been busy, and using this exoplanet-finding-machine astronomers recently found six new extrasolar planets, which contain an odd assortment of new worlds. They include shrunken-Saturns to bloated hot Jupiters, as well a rare brown dwarf with 60 times the mass of Jupiter. "Each of these planets is interesting in its own right, but what is really fascinating is how diverse they are," said co-investigator Dr Suzanne Aigrain from Oxford University’s Department of Physics. "Planets are intrinsically complex objects, and we have much to learn about them yet."

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/100614.html
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/100614.html

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National Science Foundation, 16 June 2010, Florida State University is planning to build one of the world's most powerful mass spectrometers. The ultrahigh-field mass spectrometer, newly funded by the National Science Foundation, will allow researchers to study in ever greater detail proteins and other molecules--the nuts and bolts of biology, the environment and renewable energy--and push the boundaries of such analyses.

NSF's Division of Chemistry has dedicated $17.5 million ($15 million of this is out of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding) to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at FSU. The facility will build a high-field mass spectrometer over the next four to five years.

"This grant will give us the opportunity to see the chemical and molecular world in unprecedented detail--sort of like HDTV compared to ordinary TV," said Alan Marshall, director of NHMFL's Ion Cyclotron Resonance Program.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117137&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117137&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

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Quantum leap: World's smallest transistor built with just 7 atoms Scientists have literally taken a leap into a new era of computing power by making the world's smallest precision-built transistor - a "quantum dot" of just seven atoms in a single silicon crystal. Despite its incredibly tiny size - a mere four billionths of a meter long - the quantum dot is a functioning electronic device, the world's first created deliberately by placing individual atoms.

http://www.physorg.com/news193896845.html
http://www.physorg.com/news193896845.html

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NASA Science News for 16 June 2010. For 40 years researchers have puzzled over a strange pattern of ice spirals and chasms around the Martian north pole. New data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter solve the mystery. FULL STORY at

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/16jun_martianspirals/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/16jun_martianspirals/

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There's a new eye on the skies on the lookout for 'killer' asteroids and comets. The first Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) telescope, PS1, is fully operational, ready to map large portions of the sky nightly, making it an efficient sleuth for not just potential incoming space rocks, but also supernovae and other variable objects.
"Pan-STARRS is an all-purpose machine," said Harvard astronomer Edo Berger. "Having a dedicated telescope repeatedly surveying large areas opens up a lot of new opportunities."

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2010/pr201008.html
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2010/pr201008.html

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There's a new eye on the skies on the lookout for 'killer' asteroids and comets. The first Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) telescope, PS1, is fully operational, ready to map large portions of the sky nightly, making it an efficient sleuth for not just potential incoming space rocks, but also supernovae and other variable objects.
"Pan-STARRS is an all-purpose machine," said Harvard astronomer Edo Berger. "Having a dedicated telescope repeatedly surveying large areas opens up a lot of new opportunities."

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2010/pr201008.html
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2010/pr201008.html

Isn't this exactly what Orbit@home is supposed to be doing?

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

The telescope will get about 5 TB of data every night. How are they going to process it? I don't know if Orbit@home is involved, and, if so, if it is capable of doing it. But I guess the processing will be done on some supercomputer cluster, this is the way things are mostly done.
Tullio

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17 June 2010, Mass Transits: Kepler Mission Releases Data on Hundreds of Possible Exo planets NASA's planet hunter has identified more than 700 candidate extra solar worlds that have yet to be confirmed, including some that may be Earth-size

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=kepler-planets-700&sc=DD_20100617
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=kepler-planets-700&sc=DD_20100617

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The moon's interior may harbor 100 times more water than previous estimates, according to a new study that took a fresh look at samples of moon rocks collected by Apollo astronauts nearly 40 years ago.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon-interior-higher-water-content-100614.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon-interior-higher-water-content-100614.html

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NASA Science News for 18 June 2010. Halfway to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons probe has woken up in 'exotic territory.' Mission controllers are taking the opportunity to give the spacecraft a thorough system's check in preparation for its Pluto flyby in 2015.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/18jun_newhorizons/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/18jun_newhorizons/

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21 June 2010. Carbon nano tubes dramatically improve lithium battery energy capacity. MIT researchers have found that using carbon nano tubes for one of the battery's electrodes produced a significant increase ... up to tenfold ... in the amount of power it could deliver from a given weight of material, compared to a conventional lithium-ion battery. This performance can be attributed to good conduction of ions and electrons in ...

http://web.mit.edu/press/2010/enhanced-battery.html
http://web.mit.edu/press/2010/enhanced-battery.html

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Maybe ET's Calling, But We Have The Wrong Phone



To date, SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) has focused on ETs who 'phone home' using the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and even a very small region within that.

But what if ET's phone doesn't use radio waves? Sure the xkcd comic, is funny, but maybe it points to a deep flaw in our attempts to contact, or hear from, an ETI?

When Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison suggested the possibility of interstellar communication via electromagnetic waves in a 1959 paper in Nature, only radio was feasible, as we then had the ability to detect only artificial radio signals, if produced by ETIs with 1959 human technology. Since then we've developed the ability to detect a laser signal, brighter than the Sun (if only for a nanosecond) if it came from a source several light-years away … but lasers weren't invented then.

What might ET's equivalent of ants' pheromones be?
(...)
Read the rest of Maybe ET's Calling, But We Have the Wrong Phone (814 words)

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/21/maybe-ets-calling-but-we-have-the-wrong-phone/
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/21/maybe-ets-calling-but-we-have-the-wrong-phone/

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Researchers at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea have developed a new method to produce graphene sheets with a diagonal dimension of 76 centimeters ... an order of magnitude larger than previously managed. It could result in cheap, transparent electrodes that can be used in flexible displays or photovoltaic ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19068-touchscreen-made-from-biggest-graphene-sheet.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19068-touchscreen-made-from-biggest-graphene-sheet.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

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Blinded eyes restored to sight by stem cells. Stem cells have restored sight to 82 people with eyes blinded by chemical or heat burns, restoring vision to a level up to 0.9 on a visual acuity scale (1 represents perfect vision), reports Graziella Pellegrini at University of Modena in Italy ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627662.900-blinded-eyes-restored-to-sight-by-stem-cells.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627662.900-blinded-eyes-restored-to-sight-by-stem-cells.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

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Cosmologists - and not particle physicists - could be the ones who finally measure the mass of the elusive neutrino particle. A group of cosmologists have made their most accurate measurement yet of the mass of these mysterious so-called "ghost particles." They didn't use a giant particle detector but used data from the largest survey ever of galaxies, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. While previous experiments had shown that neutrinos have a mass, it thought to be so small that it was very hard to measure. But looking at the Sloan data on galaxies, PhD student Shawn Thomas and his advisers at University College London put the mass of a neutrino at no greater than 0.28 electron volts, which is less than a billionth of the mass of a single hydrogen atom. This is one of the most accurate measurements of the mass of a neutrino to date. Read the rest of Cosmologists Provide Closest Measure of Elusive Neutrino ...

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1006/10062204
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1006/10062204

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Beyond the peta flop: DARPA ... Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ... wants quintillion-speed computers. DARPA this week announced a program aimed at building "extreme scale computing" machines that achieve one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second....

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/62808
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/62808

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NASA Science News for 24 June 2010. This Saturday morning, June 26th, there's going to be a lunar eclipse — and for many residents of the USA, it's going to be a big one. The eclipse will occur as the Moon is setting, prompting the "Moon Illusion" to magnify the event to truly beautiful proportions. FULL STORY at:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/24jun_lunareclipse/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/24jun_lunareclipse/

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Was Venus Once a Water world? Ever read Isaac Asimov's 1950's novel "Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus"? Maybe Asimov wasn't so wrong about Venus after all. Analyzing data from ESA’s Venus Express, planetary scientists are looking at the possibility that the planet may have once harbored oceans, and potentially could have been habitable when it was young. Read the rest of Was Venus Once a Water world?

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMQ9OLZLAG_index_0.html
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMQ9OLZLAG_index_0.html

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