Slashdot Mirror
A Single-Photon Server
Roland Piquepaille writes "A team of German physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics has built a single-photon server with just one atom. They've trapped ultra cold atoms of rubidium in a vacuum chamber and applied laser pulses from one side. The generated photons were of 'high quality,' meaning their energy was very similar from one test to another, and that their properties could be controlled. The researchers think this new way to generate single photons will help the field of quantum information processing. "
Headline reading "Single photon server" + the supercomputing article logo = Confused readers
Before I read the sumary I was thinking they'd managed to install Apache on a photon. So yea, with regards to photons, they're cool and all, but do they run Linux?
I hate printers.
I can see the two states; photon=1, photoff=0.
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation
A Beowulf cluster of THESE! That would be something.
My photo's.
Very useful, especially in combination with the Single-Pixel Camera:/ 18/2117243
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01
photon serves YOU!
Is the security good enough? How much space does it have? And, most importantly, how big are the cables that attach to this thing?
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Roland_Piquepaille, the submitter of this story, is apparently a publicist. Apparently he is paid to have stories placed in media like Slashdot.
Mr. Piquepaille's affiliations and motivations should be disclosed. Does he pay someone at Slashdot to run his stories?
Also, for me, computing is an important area of continuing interest. Most of Mr. Piquepaille's stories, like this one, have very little real connection to computing, so they waste my time. I'm not the only one annoyed by this, apparently: Here is a script to Hide stories submitted by Roland Piquepaille from Slashdot.org.
Digg.com or Reddit.com are more appropriate media for Mr. Piquepaille. However, I suspect that his stories would seldom be considered interesting enough to be placed on the Digg or Reddit front pages.
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Most people in the U.S. have no idea how corrupt is the Bush administration. Here's my summary of U.S. gov. corruption. Where's yours?
Apparently not, according to "ping photon.planck.edu"
Roland_Piquepaille, the submitter of this story, is apparently a publicist. Apparently he is paid to have stories placed in media like Slashdot.
Remind me why this is bad, again? Given that his stories do tend to be fairly interesting, does it really matter if he's making money by submitting them here?
Just imagine what they could do with two photons!
While I've heard of Piquepaille before, I think this specific story is somewhat different.
/.).
/. as they be not connected to computing. Well, it's certainly news for nerds. (second disclaimer: I'm a physicist.)
The Max Planck Society is a public foundation (a wierd legal construction in Germany. In a nutshell: it's a federal agency) and certainly does not have to care about outside sources of funding enough to try publicity stunts (disclaimer: I work at a Max Planck Institute, though a different one than the one linked here. Funding is generous compared to other scientific workplaces and constant over long periods of time. Partly as a consequence, the number of applicants for PhD and PostDoc positions is long enough. There's no need to advertise on
Further, this story has only one single link: To the institutes press release. From what I see, there are no redirects involved, especially not to Mr Piquepaille's blog, and the linked site contains no adverts (which, if otherwise, would be very strange indeed, coming from an MPI).
Last but not least: The research in question was published in Nature (Physics online) last week. That's about as much publicity as you want as a scientist.
So, I see where you're coming from, but I don't think this is an attempt to generate traffic. You also say you don't think stories like this should be published on
stardate 1.65.3087
today I accidently fired the server into space
-m10
There's been a lot of discussion on this topic before. The link is under his name, the name is posted on the slashdot front page which has a high google page rank, the page rank of whatever the link is to goes up. There have been loads of "stories" like this (although this one isn't half bad) which are just press releases and other non-news, which always gets posted on here. The greasemonkey script seems like a good idea ;)
Your comment about this story not interesting you is a fair comment in and of itself - but just ignore the story!
/. has nothing but linux stories, I go procrastinate elsewhere *gasp*.
I have no interest in stories on Linux or BSD... so I don't read them. In fact, on the days when
On the other hand, the reason I read slashdot is exactly for stories like this - interesting, if somewhat unfeasible (any time soon) technological advances. I don't care if they're a few months old, but I find them a hell of a lot more interesting and informative than some comment about a new version of KDE.
And hell, if someone wants to pay someone else to bring me interesting stories - I'm all for it!
That's interesting. Also, on the first page of search results for Roland's name here on Slashdot, which includes stories going back to November, ScuttleMonkey, Zonk, and kdawson posted all but 2 of the Roland stories. Of the two that weren't one of these three posters one was Rob Malda's annual "Physics of Santa Clause" post.
Maybe the conspiracy isn't as deeply rooted as being all of Slashdot, but then again maybe these three posters just like Roland's style. Although some of these stories looked like press releases, there were a fair share of posts that seemed to have no commercial purpose behind them (though of course you can never be certain).
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Given that his stories do tend to be fairly interesting, does it really matter if he's making money by submitting them here?
Of course! Making money off of someone else is evil! Just ask ultrasocialists like SBC/AT&T and Rogers cable, who think that people who make money from them are evil!
I can see the tuner crowd now looking for 2 photon chips, although on a side thought, all of the computer interior neon lighting might have to go, since it "might" interfere with the photonic core - lol
..........FULL STOP.
The scientists added that the server is a work in progress as it, for unknown reasons the trapped atom, keeps sending the same web page.
"Help, help, I am being oppressed"
Carbon based humanoid in training.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1101
Comments on the last Roland story commended him for not including a link back to his blog, which includes ads. As posted, this story doesn't have such a link either, but not because Roland didn't try his hardest.... I'm glad that Slashdot editors redacted his link-whoring.
If you're as tired of these (indirectly) revenue generating pieces as I am, please join me and tag them as "ohnoitsroland" -- I'm doing that to all of his submissions now.
sigfault (core dumped)
If you notice the title of the website, it says News for Nerds, not just News for CS/IT Nerds.
Some of us are physics geeks and stories like this are interesting to us.
Now, Roland Pipquepaille used to link to his own blog which was sucky, but these days he does not. He links to an external website, so what's your problem? So what if he's paid? As long as the stories are good, who the hell cares?
So, could you please stop whining? If you don't like it, don't read it. And if you want only your computing related news, you're at the wrong place. Go read Wired or something.
Whoa. Copernicus calling Mr. Futurepower. Turns out you are not the center of the Universe.
They don't waste my time, and I come to Slashdot for stories like this. Just because it doesn't suit what the hell you want doesn't mean it's the same for everybody.
What a troll.
They're useless... they can only give you answers.
:-(
Sorry mankind, you can't compute your way outta the mess you're in.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They've trapped ultra cold atoms of rubidium in a vacuum chamber and applied laser pulses from one side.
That's what I tell my wife I'm doing in the bathroom, when she asks why I'm in there with the water running all day long.
Yes, but... does it run Linux?
... rubidium on rails.
Single photon sources are extremely useful in some forms of quantum cryptography, because it is impossible for an eavesdropper to undectably tap the line. In a regular system, with hundreds of photons, an eavesdropper can
divert say, 10% of the photons, and recover at least some of the information. With single-photon systems, it is impossible to undectably divert the signal.
Try again when you can manage quad-core on a single photon -- we're only interested in serious computing power here..
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Wouldn't you automatically think that in a system where a uniform energy (the laser) is applied to a system with minimal variation and minimal interference (rubidium atoms suspended in vacuum) the end result should be fairly uniform? Or?
Search RapidShare and MegaUpload!
A deterministic single-photon source is very important in some quantum information experiments. For example, in quantum cryptography, you want a SINLGE photon, so that an eavesdropper cannot pick up any spare photons and measure them. You also want to know when the photons are coming, so you can know when to encode whatever information on them (ie polarization) and when to measure the photon.
To the resident quantum physicists at /. :
Was there no other way to determine that a single photon was released? They used a beam splitter, and the method makes sense, but is there no other way using the "discreteness" of energy levels?
That's not quite true.
What would be more appropriate to ask is what were his intentions in submitting this particular article, which none of us know.
History suggests that he was paid to do this. Science should be recognized on merit, not funding. Roland rubs salt in an open wound every time he helps something get publicity based on how much money he is paid. As such, most of what Roland submits is quickly discounted by many people within various Science communities because people know it was money, not merit that obtained the publicity.
Research has always been a lucrative investment, now its a cottage industry and so is the media surrounding it. This condition is going to serve to possibly set Science back (a bit) and surely slow its progress to a degree. Roland has come to represent this similar to how Pneumonia is associated with HIV.
Now, if this was a case of Roland saying "Hey, wow, this is cool" and submitting the link to Slashdot , then this is no different than any other cool story featured on Slashdot.
History suggests Roland got paid for this too, however I'm almost *positive* this would have been accepted simply on its merits.
Concluding, the fact that people just automatically go to some sort of middle man like Roland is the issue - not really Roland himself. Science makes a shitload of money and enhances the common good. Just depends on what side of the fence you live on.
Well, if you're going to complain about annoying self-promotion, what about you? You've got a political sig manually attached to your post. Sigs should be set in your user preferences, so they can be filtered out by users who find them annoying.
not sure if its been asked yet, so here it goes: Can i SSH into it?