The odd behavior of a molecule in an experimental silicon computer chip has led to a discovery that opens the door to quantum computing in semiconductors. In a Nature Physics journal paper currently online, the researchers describe how they have created a new, hybrid molecule in which its quantum state can be intentionally manipulated – a required step in the building of quantum computers. ‘Up to now large-scale quantum computing has been a dream,’ says Gerhard Klimeck, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and associate director for technology for the national Network for Computational Nanotechnology. ‘This development may not bring us a quantum computer 10 years faster, but our dreams about these machines are now more realistic.’ The workings of traditional computers haven’t changed since they were room-sized behemoths 50 years ago; they still use bits of information, 1s and 0s, to store and process information. Quantum computers would harness the strange behaviors found in quantum physics to create computers that would carry information using quantum bits, or qubits. Computers would be able to process exponentially more information. If a traditional computer were given the task of looking up a person’s phone […]
Tony Markel drives a plug-in hybrid that runs 50 miles per charge, goes 100 miles per gallon and gets power from the sun. If he has his way, you’ll drive one too before long. His 2006 Prius has a lithium-ion battery six times more powerful than the nickel-metal hydride pack Toyota put in it. But what makes the car really cool is the solar panel on the roof. It generates enough juice to go 5 miles. Markel is a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He and his colleagues have been experimenting with the car for about a year in a quest to make lithium-ion batteries cheaper and more durable. ‘Those are the barriers — battery cost and battery life,’ he says. ‘That’s the main thing holding the technology back.’ The way he sees it, though, the barriers won’t stand much longer. Automakers are chipping away at those barriers as well, and the lab hopes its research hastens the day when electricity supplants petroleum in our cars. ‘The landscape is changing quickly,’ he says, with plug-in hybrids and electric cars from General Motors, Toyota and Nissan looming on the horizon as early as 2010. […]
The permafrost belt stretching across Siberia to Alaska and Canada could start melting three times faster than expected because of the speed at which Arctic Sea ice is disappearing. A study found that the effects of sea-ice loss – which reached an all-time record last summer – extend almost 1,000 miles inland to areas where the ground is usually frozen all year round. The smaller the area of sea ice, the less sunlight is reflected and the more heat is absorbed. That means scientists expect a tripling in the rate of warming over the continental land mass surrounding the Arctic. ‘Our study suggests that, if sea ice continues to contract rapidly over the next several years, Arctic land warming and permafrost thaw are likely to accelerate,’ said David Lawrence of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Last September, the sea ice of the Arctic shrank to more than 30 per cent of its average extent for that time of the year. Meanwhile, air temperatures over the Arctic region rose by about 2C above the long-term average for the period 1978 to 2006. Melting permafrost threatens to undermine the roads, oil pipelines and […]
The author of an influential British government report arguing the world needed to spend just 1% of its wealth tackling climate change has warned that the cost of averting disaster has now doubled. Lord Stern of Brentford made headlines in 2006 with a report that said countries needed to spend 1% of their GDP to stop greenhouse gases rising to dangerous levels. Failure to do this would lead to damage costing much more, the report warned – at least 5% and perhaps more than 20% of global GDP. But speaking yesterday in London, Stern said evidence that climate change was happening faster than had been previously thought meant that emissions needed to be reduced even more sharply. This meant the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would have to be kept below 500 parts per million, said Stern. In 2006, he set a figure of 450-550ppm. ‘I now think the appropriate thing would be in the middle of that range,’ he said. ‘To get below 500ppm … would cost around 2% of GDP.’ In a recent report for the London School of Economics, Stern acknowledged that even 1% of GDP was ‘not a trivial amount’. […]
After years of attacking Democrats with relative impunity for their supposed moral failings, Evangelical leader James Dobson surely didn’t expect to suffer much of a backlash when he trained his sights on Barack Obama. Over the years, the party had practically cowered in fear and gone into radio silence when the head of Focus on the Family targeted one of its standard-bearers. So in a campaign that has already proved to be anything but predictable, the counterattack on Dobson this week epitomized the new, fraught political climate that Christian Right leaders like himself face. Earlier this week, Dobson used his popular Christian radio program to denounce a 2006 speech the Illinois Senator gave about the place of religion in public life. He took personal offense at the fact that Obama had referred to him by name in the same breath as Al Sharpton, using the two to illustrate the range of differences that exist within Christianity. But he also expressed outrage at Obama’s assertion that individuals can be moral without being religious. ‘He oughta read the Bible,’ said Dobson. Obama, he charged, was ‘deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview.’ But less […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
