Science is running out of options in terms of computers, and since most of the current economic ability of the US relies on gadgets and doo-dads. Now, the guys and gals in the lab coats are stepping the game up.
With amount of components we can cram on a chip slowly reaching its physical limit, quantum has become the next big thing that could revolutionize the computing world. IBM is even on the cusp of building actual quantum computer protoypes. But what good is any of that if we don’t have a quantum Internet? Fortunately, we do. A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have just established the first working quantum network.
As with most firsts, the network is quite primitive at the moment, and connects a mere two atomic nodes with 60 meters of fiber-optic cable. Since a quantum computer works with qubits, which can have values of 0, 1, or a quantum superposition of both, a quantum Internet would have to able to communicate in qubits. This prototype network accomplishes that by using photons to carry the information around.
The team has managed to rig up a laser to fire and hit the first networked atom in a way that the atom preserves its quantum state, but also produces a photon with that information plastered onto it. The photon then shoots off down the fiber optic cable delivering it to the second atom. Network achieved. On top of that, the researchers managed to get the two networked atoms to entangle, which means the network should be completely scalable to something along the lines of an Internet.
Got all that? It means that — once all the current crap can get yanked out and new stuff gets installed — the web you now know, even connecting at work on super fast pipes, will seem like the 9600 baud dial up of yore.
It should be noted, coincidentally, that USC scientists have built a quantum computer — one of the building blocks of this quantum internet — inside a diamond.
a team from USC announced it has perfected a chip using a synthetic diamond that can perform quantum operations in a stable environment. Quantum chips can use the nucleus of atoms to "superposition," or encode using zeroes and ones at the same time.
Superpositioning chips are predicted to be much faster than traditional chips, which encode using either ones or zeroes. But that ability comes at a cost of "decoherence," or the loss of stability.
By building their circuits inside diamonds, the chips are more stable.
The USC team, working on the molecular level, uses impurities in the diamonds themselves to fashion quantum circuits.
The USC team used microwave radiation to continually switch the rotation of nuclei inside the diamond, said USC professor Daniel Lidar.
The future is coming, and we'd all better be ready for it.
[Source: Geekosystem, The Daily News, Zeitnews]