Intel wants to "kill" password

During his 2012 IDF conference in San Francisco, Intel demonstrated a new interesting technology called Secure Palm. This concept allows you to log on to your system using a secure method of access, with your hands.

Instead of having to remember all the passwords you can just put your hand in front of a sensor, and Windows will not let you inside. This is definitely still a prototype so we will Intel be given time to develop the concept, but all it takes in this technology is to keep your hand in front of the sensor and are signed.

This technology makes sense if each day you spend a lot of time typing your user name and password in Yahoo Mail, Twitter, Skype, Amazon, Steam, Facebook, your bank and other systems. The major problem here may be privacy, and the question is how many users will be willing to print it so easy.

In any case, Palm Secure seems interesting, but whether they will be able to replace the fingerprint scanner that comes with many business notebooks remains to be seen.

Wormholes exist all around us

Many physicists believe wormholes (a "shortcut" through space and time) exist all around us but they are smaller than atoms.

Found in Orbit Around a Young Sunlike Star: Sugar

Water, oxygen and now sugar molecules have been found floating around in space, in the right place and at the right moment to wind up on newly forming planets. Astronomers have found sugar

molecules around a star for the first time, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

The team found molecules of glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar, in the gas around a star called IRAS 16293-2422. This young binary star has roughly the same mass as our sun. The sugars were found in relatively the same location as Uranus’ orbit, according to the European Southern Observatory. It is falling in toward one of the stars in the binary system, which astronomers said is the right direction for it to wind up on a future planet.

Glycoaldehyde is the simplest possible sugar, so it’s not exactly the same stuff you would put in a muffin or your morning coffee. But it is a key ingredient in the construction of RNA, notes Jes Jørgensen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, the lead author of a new paper about the space sugar. If the gas and dust cloud surrounding IRAS 16293-2422 coalesces into a planetary system, the new worlds could contain some of this sugar, and perhaps other amino acid chains and complex molecules. The star system is about 400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus.

Astronomers are trying to determine how large molecules can become in the tumultuous environments around new stars. “This could tell us something about how life might arise elsewhere, and ALMA observations are going to be vital to unravel this mystery,” Jørgensen said.

A Warming Earth Creates More Biodiversity, But Only In The Long Term

Global warming is a scientific reality, whether we want to ascribe it to natural processes or man-made effects. One of the questions raised by this phenomenon is how will

it affect biodiversity on the planet.

A new study by the Universities of York, Glasgow and Leeds, reveals answers that conflict with past studies. The new research involved analysis of fossil and geological records going back 540 million years and it suggests that biodiversity on Earth generally increases as the planet warms.

The catch, according to the researchers, is that this increase in biodiversity depends on the evolution of new species over millions of years. This is normally accompanied by extinctions of existing species.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that current warming trends are unlikely to boost global biodiversity in the short term because of the long timescales necessary for new forms to evolve. The speed of current changes in temperature is actually expected to cause diversity loss, instead.

This research is a refinement of an earlier study that analyzed biodiversity over the same time interval, but with a less sophisticated data set. The earlier study concluded that a warming climate would lead to drops in overall biodiversity. Using the improved dataset, the research team re-examined patterns of marine invertebrate biodiversity over the last 540 million years.

Dr Peter Mayhew, of the Department of Biology at York, said, “The improved data give us a more secure picture of the impact of warmer temperatures on marine biodiversity and they show that, as before, there is more extinction and origination in warm geological periods. But, overall, warm climates seem to boost biodiversity in the very long run, rather than reducing it.”

Dr Alistair McGowan, of the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow said, “The previous findings always seemed paradoxical. Ecological studies show that species richness consistently increases towards the Equator, where it is warm, yet the relationship between biodiversity and temperature through time appeared to be the opposite. Our new results reverse these conclusions and bring them into line with the ecological pattern.”

Professor Tim Benton, of the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, added: “Science progresses by constantly re-examining conclusions in the light of better data. Our results seem to show that temperature improves biodiversity through time as well as across space. However, they do not suggest that current global warming is good for existing species. Increases in global diversity take millions of years, and in the meantime we expect extinctions to occur.”

Global Warming Could Be Linked to the Number of Exploding Stars in the Sky

As we enter the high season of electoral politics, you’re going to hear things about global warming that may seem a bit dubious--that it doesn’t exist, that it exis

ts and George W. Bush invented it, that cataclysmic climate change has already occurred and we are all doomed, that climate change is the result of the failed stimulus, etc. But an astrophysicist working on one of the cosmos greatest mysteries has another theory that might sound equally implausible on its face, but actually makes some sense: that we can measure future global warming based on the number of exploding stars we see in the sky.

Dr. Charles Wang of the University of Aberdeen has put forth a new theory concerning supernova that involves a Higgs Boson-like mystery particle that is scheduled to be tested at CERN. That’s interesting, but perhaps more intriguing is the idea that his theory could aid in our understanding of where global warming originates and where it is going.

It turns out exploding stars elsewhere in the universe have an effect on the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere. When stars explode elsewhere, the massive amount of cosmic rays created affect space weather in that corner of the cosmos, making it cloudier. That cloudiness shades Earth from other cosmic waves that are likely impacting the atmosphere here. The cloudier it is out there, the cooler Earth’s atmosphere is. So, the theory goes, fewer star explosions equals a warmer atmosphere. And a warmer climate.

That doesn’t help us much from a policy perspective. We don’t yet fully understand the mechanisms by which individual stars go supernova, and we certainly don’t have the means to control star explosions. But since we do record these explosions--roughly one per year--we could use that data to help predict future changes in climate.

Original story on: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-09/global-warming-could-be-predicted-number-exploding-stars-sky

How Quantum Teleportation Can Bring Us Secure Communications

Why are all these world records for quantum teleportation so important?

New advances in quantum teleportation keep coming with greater frequency. Today, a team of European phys

icists sets the bar higher than ever before. After officially reporting teleportation across nearly 90 miles, through the turbulent ocean atmosphere of the Canary Islands, physicists could be ready to take on the greatest challenge yet — an attempt to teleport particles into space. But why?

Because quantum teleportation, though it's as complex as the sky is blue, could be a useful, secure way to transmit information. Not people, unfortunately -- Star Trek this is not. But in 2012, teleportation of data, in an unhackable, purely encrypted form, could be closer than ever.

On Thursday, Nature published an advance online paper by quantum wizard Anton Zeilinger and colleagues at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna. The team teleported photons 89 miles between the two Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. And last month, the same journal published a Chinese team's newest teleportation record, a total demolition of their own previous feat, teleporting photons across 60 miles. Both teams first reported these accomplishments within days of each other in May.

But the record-breaking masks the complexity of what's really going on here. After all, the particles didn't really, technically, go that distance.

Some photons did physically traverse the distance between the two places, but they were used only as a preparatory tool, to build up what physicists call an "entangled resource," explains Philippe Grangier of the Institut d'Optique in Palaiseau, France. Then, the information describing the actual photons to be teleported -- their polarization, especially, along with other characteristics -- was moved. The teleported particles existed in one place, and then they existed somewhere else instead.

This is possible because the photons in a teleportation experiment share an inextricable bond, so tight that whatever happens to one particle happens to the other, no matter how separated they are. This is what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." Getting them entangled is a challenge in and of itself; more on that in a moment. Then teleporting them relies on creating a remote copy of one of them, Grangier said. Think of it somewhat like a fax, but one in which the original is destroyed -- and in the moment the copy is received. You must relay the information somehow, and quantum entanglement makes this possible.

The method of entanglement you choose depends on the type of particle you want to teleport. If you want to teleport charged atoms, for instance, you would use entangled ions. For photons, you would entangle polarized photons. Or it may be a quantized state of light, which Noriyuki Lee and colleagues pulled off last year. The latter is an exquisitely complicated scenario, in which you're teleporting a little packet of photons that is in two quantum states at once. (That's called quantum superposition, and it's best described by the example of Schrödinger's cat -- once placed in a theoretical box, it is both dead and alive simultaneously, until you open the box to check it, and then it's only one or the other.) Whatever the subject, you've got to entangle some particles first, entwining their fates so they share the same outcomes no matter what happens to them.

This entanglement can happen in a number of ways, which are getting increasingly detailed and complicated with every new study. But more importantly, the entangled photons must not be interfered with, lest their entanglement be interrupted before your teleportation time. This is very hard to do when the teleportation covers tens or hundreds of miles -- rain, clouds, sand and even wind can disrupt the transmission of light.

"The real-life long-distance environment provided a number of
challenges for the present teleportation experiment. These challenges resulted most significantly in the need to cope with an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio when using standard techniques," Zeilinger and colleagues write.

In the Canary Islands experiment, Zeilinger and colleagues used two optical links, one classical and one quantum, across the islands of La Palma and Tenerife. They wanted to teleport the polarization of photons between two sites, usually referenced in information-transmission experiments with the alphabetized names "Alice" and "Bob."

The classical link enables two photons to be sent, one to Alice and one to Bob, to create the entangled resource. Simply put, the photons are created with a sapphire laser and move through a fiber optic cable to A and B. The quantum link allows Alice and Bob to share the polarization information about these photons, which are called photons 2 and 3 (#1 comes in a moment). Alice has photon 2, and Bob has photon 3 -- this is the "entangled resource." Then a third party, "Charlie," puts in photon 1. This new photon's polarization is unknown to either Alice or Bob. Then Alice has to make what's called a Bell-state measurement, the outcome of which will determine every photon's fate.

"The result of the measurement destroys the initial system. What you get out of this measurement is one result, a numerical result," Grangier said. "Then you send this result to the other side, where you want to recreate your new system."

Alice's measurement of photon 1 dictates how Bob's photon will be transformed. Alice sends her measurement to Bob using that classical photon-relay channel. When Bob gets the information, he can perform the photon-transformation dictated by Alice's measurement of photon 1, and then voila -- Bob has photon 3, but now it's in the same state as the newly inputted photon 1. It's a perfect copy.

This forwarding of measurement info is called active feed-forward, and it's also the technique Lee et al. used in the light-packet Schrödinger's cat experiment last year. It has never been done before on this scale, Grangier said. The Canary Islands team also made a new breakthrough by synchronizing the clocks at both Alice's and Bob's locations, which improved the accuracy of their measurements.

"What's original is the combination of everything, very long-distance feed-forward and high quality of the transmission," Grangier said.

What's the point of all this quantum confusion? Secure communications, Grangier explains. Teleporting photons in a specific, measurable state that can only be received when a proper transformation-measurement is made -- that's good security. Proving it can be done with high fidelity across the ocean is quite a feat, too. This research holds promise for future ground-to-satellite quantum relays, transferring encrypted data, Zeilinger and his colleagues say.

The distances achieved here are actually more difficult than those required to link Earth and a satellite, the team said. "Our experiment represents a crucial step towards future quantum networks in space, which require space-to-ground quantum communication," they write. "The technology implemented in both experiments has certainly reached the required maturity for both satellite and long-distance ground communication."

The only difficulty is that this only works inside very carefully controlled quantum systems. For instance, quantum teleportation might work as an internal "wiring" element, within a quantum computer. But it won't work for physical objects.

To beam up a person, you'd have to create a suitable -- but not easily conceivable -- entangled resource, a second "person." Then you would have to destroy the original self of the teleported living thing, Grangier said.

"It's quite possible to teleport photons and ions, maybe many of them within a very carefully controlled quantum computer. But beyond that, the complexity of the resource and its vulnerability to decoherence make it completely impossible," he said.

"For usual macroscopic objects, the complexity of the entangled resource becomes just incredible and unmanageable, and it will be instantaneously destroyed by decoherence."

Original story on: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-05/fyi-how-photon-teleportation-can-bring-us-secure-communications

MIT-Developed ‘Microthrusters’ Could Propel Small Satellites

A penny-sized rocket thruster may soon power the smallest satellites in space.

Together, the array of spiky tips creates a small puff of charged particles that can help propel a shoebox-sized satellite forward The finalized device is at the bottom right, measuring 1 cm by 1 cm and 2 mm in thickness. This image shows an example of the different parts comprising a thruster. Instead, Lozano’s design is a flat, compact square — much like a computer chip — covered with 500 microscopic tips that, when stimulated with voltage, emit tiny beams of ions. The device, designed by Paulo Lozano, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, bears little resemblance to today’s bulky satellite engines, which are laden with valves, pipes and heavy propellant tanks. Mini ion thrusters are manufactured using micro-manufacturing techniques.

“They’re so small that you can put several [thrusters] on a vehicle,” Lozano says. He adds that a small satellite outfitted with several microthrusters could “not only move to change its orbit, but do other interesting things — like turn and roll.”

Lozano and his group in MIT’s Space Propulsion Laboratory and Microsystems Technology Laboratory presented their new thruster array at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ recent Joint Propulsion Conference.

Cleaning up CubeSat clutter

A magnetically levitated small satellite inside a vacuum chamber simulates space-like conditions to test the performance of mini ion thrusters in the laboratory Today, more than two dozen small satellites, called CubeSats, orbit Earth. These petite satellites are cheap to assemble, and can be launched into space relatively easily: Since they weigh very little, a rocket can carry several CubeSats as secondary payload without needing extra fuel. Each is slightly bigger than a Rubik’s cube, and weighs less than three pounds. After a mission concludes, the satellites burn up in the lower atmosphere. Their diminutive size classifies them as “nanosatellites,” in contrast with traditional Earth-monitoring behemoths. But these small satellites lack propulsion systems, and once in space, are usually left to passively spin in orbits close to Earth.

Lozano says if CubeSats were deployed at higher orbits, they would take much longer to degrade, potentially creating space clutter. As more CubeSats are launched farther from Earth in the future, the resulting debris could become a costly problem.

“These satellites could stay in space forever as trash,” says Lozano, who is associate director of the Space Propulsion Laboratory. “This trash could collide with other satellites. … You could basically stop the Space Age with just a handful of collisions.”

Engineering propulsion systems for small satellites could solve the problem of space junk: CubeSats could propel down to lower orbits to burn up, or even act as galactic garbage collectors, pulling retired satellites down to degrade in Earth’s atmosphere. However, traditional propulsion systems have proved too bulky for nanosatellites, leaving little space on the vessels for electronics and communication equipment.

Bioinspired propulsion

To explain how the thruster works, Lozano invokes the analogy of a tree: Water from the ground is pulled up a tree through a succession of smaller and smaller pores, first in the roots, then up the trunk, and finally through the leaves, where sunshine evaporates the water as gas. The microchip is composed of several layers of porous metal, the top layer of which is textured with 500 evenly spaced metallic tips. Lozano’s microthruster works by a similar capillary action: Each layer of metal contains smaller and smaller pores, which passively suck the ionic liquid up through the chip, to the tops of the metallic tips The bottom of the chip contains a small reservoir of liquid — a “liquid plasma” of free-floating ions that is key to the operation of the device. In contrast, Lozano’s microthruster design adds little to a satellite’s overall weight.

The researchers found that an array of 500 tips produces 50 micronewtons of force — an amount of thrust that, on Earth, could only support a small shred of paper. But in zero-gravity space, this tiny force would be enough to propel a two-pound satellite. The group engineered a gold-coated plate over the chip, then applied a voltage, generating an electric field between the plate and the thruster’s tips. Lozano and co-author Dan Courtney also found that very small increases in voltage generated a big increase in force among the thruster’s 500 tips, a promising result in terms of energy efficiency In response, beams of ions escaped the tips, creating a thrust.

“It means you have a lot of control with your voltage,” Lozano says. “You don’t have to increase a lot of voltage to attain higher current. It’s a very small, modest increase.”

Timothy Graves, manager of electric propulsion and plasma science at Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, Calif., says the microthruster design stands out among satellite propellant systems for its size and low power consumption.

“Normally, propulsion systems have significant infrastructure associated with propellant feed lines, valves [and] complex power conditioning systems,” says Graves, who was not involved in the research. “Additionally, the postage-stamp size of this thruster makes it easy to implement in comparison to other, larger propulsion systems.”
 
When the satellite needs to propel out of orbit, onboard solar panels would temporarily activate the thrusters. In the future, Lozano predicts, microthrusters may even be used to power much larger satellites: Flat panels lined with multiple thrusters could propel a satellite through space, switching directions much like a rudder, or the tail of a fish The researchers envision a small satellite with several microthrusters, possibly oriented in different directions.

“Just like solar panels you can aim at the sun, you can point the thrusters in any direction you want, and then thrust,” Lozano says. “That gives you a lot of flexibility. That’s pretty cool.”