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Chinese Physicists Teleport Photons Over 100 Kilometers
Teleportation is the extraordinary ability to transfer objects from one location to another without travelling through the intervening space.
The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity.
And it is by no means science fiction. Physicists have been teleporting photons since 1997 and the technique is now standard in optics laboratories all over the world.
The phenomenon that makes this possible is known as quantum entanglement, the deep and mysterious link that occurs when two quantum objects share the same existence and yet are separated in space.
Teleportation turns out to be extremely useful. Because teleported information does not travel through the intervening space, it cannot be secretly accessed by an eavesdropper.
For that reason, teleportation is the enabling technology behind quantum cryptography, a way of sending information with close-to-perfect secrecy.
Unfortunately, entangled photons are fragile objects. They cannot travel further than a kilometre or so down optical fibres because the photons end up interacting with the glass breaking the entanglement. That severely limits quantum cryptography’s usefulness.
However, physicists have had more success teleporting photons through the atmosphere. In 2010, a Chinese team announced that it had teleported single photons over a distance of 16 kilometres. Handy but not exactly Earth-shattering.
Now the same team says it has smashed this record. Juan Yin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, and a bunch of mates say they have teleported entangled photons over a distance of 97 kilometres across a lake in China.
Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27843/
Scientists bend gamma rays, could neuter radioactive waste
posted May 10th 2012 5:54AM
Bending most light is easy; bending it in gamma ray form, however, has often been deemed impossible given how hard it is for electrons to react to the extreme frequencies. University of Munich scientist Dietrich Habs and his Institut Laue-Langevin teammate Michael Jentschel have proven that assumption wrong: an experiment in blasting a silicon prism has shown that gamma rays will refract just slightly through the right material. If a lens is made out of a large-atom substance like gold to bend the rays further, the researchers envision focused beams of energy that could either detect radioactive material or even make it inert by wiping off neutrons and protons. In theory, it could turn a nuclear power plant’s waste harmless. A practical use of the technology is still some distance off — but that it’s even within sight at all just feels like a breakthrough.
Nevada Issues a Driver’s License to Google’s Self-Driving Car
By Paul Adams 05.08.2012 at http://www.popsci.com/
Nanocomposite Cavity Filler Reverses Decay, Killing Bacteria and Regenerating Tooth Structure
By Clay Dillow Posted 05.07.2012 at
Dentists may soon be getting a potent new weapons with which to wage the global fight against cavities. The University of Maryland has developed a novel new nanocomposite material that can be used not only as filling for cavities, but that will also kill any remaining bacteria in the tooth and regenerate the actual structure lost to decay.
The US Military Wants To ‘Microchip’ Troops
Monday, 07 May 2012 
‘DARPA is at it again. This time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced plans to create nanochips for monitoring troops health on the battlefield.
Kate Knibbs at Mobiledia reports the sensors are targeted at preventing illness and disease, the two causes of most troops medical evacuations. What seems like a simple way of cutting costs and increasing efficiency has some people concerned that this is the first step in a “computer chips for all” scenario.
Bob Unruh at WND reports one of those opponents, Katherine Albrecht, co-author of Spychips says “It’s never going to happen that the government at gunpoint says, ‘You’re going to have a tracking chip. It’s always in incremental steps. If you can put a microchip in someone that doesn’t track them … everybody looks and says, ‘Come on, it’ll be interesting seeing where we go.’”’
Fed Up With Sluggish Neutrinos, Scientists Force Light To Move Faster Than Its Own Speed Limit
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 05.03.2012 at 3:07 pm
NASA’s Cassini Finds Saturn’s Moon Phoebe Has Planet-Like Qualities
April 27, 2012 12:58 PM EDT
Data from NASA‘s Cassini mission reveal Saturn’s moon Phoebe has more planet-like qualities than previously thought.
Scientists had their first close-up look at Phoebe when Cassini began exploring the Saturn system in 2004. Using data from multiple spacecraft instruments and a computer model of the moon’s chemistry, geophysics and geology, scientists found Phoebe was a so-called planetesimal, or remnant planetary building block. The findings appear in the April issue of the Journal Icarus.
“Unlike primitive bodies such as comets, Phoebe appears to have actively evolved for a time before it stalled out,” said Julie Castillo-Rogez, a planetary scientist at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “Objects like Phoebe are thought to have condensed very quickly. Hence, they represent building blocks of planets. They give scientists clues about what conditions were like around the time of the birth of giant planets and their moons”
Who owns your stuff in the cloud?
By Michelle Maltais, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2012
Google’s recently unveiled Google Drive is among the cloud-based data storage services available. Google says you retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. But where the Google policy may read a bit murky is what you entitle Google to do with your stuff. Above, at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (Paul Sakuma, Associated Press / April 12, 2012)
As more people look to the cloud for digital storage, such as the recently unveiled Google Drive, the era of being able to mindlessly click “OK” or “Agree” may be over.
When your stuff is stored on your computer at home, you alone are responsible for keeping it safe, secure and backed up. Your roof, your rules. But when you shift from local storage to remote, you live by terms set by someone else — and it’s best to read them.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tech-savvy-cloud-services-20120426,0,3241271.story
Human genes engineered into experimental GMO rice being grown in Kansas
Wednesday, May 02, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer at naturalnews.com
(NaturalNews) Unless the rice you buy is certified organic, or comes specifically from a farm that tests its rice crops for genetically modified (GM) traits, you could be eating rice tainted with actual human genes. The only known GMO with inbred human traits in cultivation today, a GM rice product made by biotechnology company Ventria Bioscience is currently being grown on 3,200 acres in Junction City, Kansas — and possibly elsewhere — and most people have no idea about it.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035745_GMO_rice_human_genes_Kansas.html#ixzz1thrwb000
Facebook Now Lets You Advertise Your Organs on Your Profile
By Clay DillowPosted 05.01.2012 at 1:03
There are currently 114,000 people waiting for organ transplants in the U.S., and roughly 7,000 of them die every year while awaiting a donor organ to become available. Meanwhile, there are 161 million Americans on Facebook. That math must have seemed pretty simple to Mark Zuckerberg and company at Facebook HQ, where the team has just added organ donation status to its users’ profiles.
Believe nothing 