That article was insipid to the point where I couldn't finish it. A few points in the first few paragraphs are worth mentioning:
1) Quantum speeds? WTF is that? There's no such unit, not even associated with quantum computing.
2) The device "mimics quantum interference". No, it's light; it displays quantum interference. Light is photons, quantum particles. Dur.
3) "performs some tasks a billion times faster". This is what I call a 'crazy number' since it's not based on any sort of measurement and thrown in only for show-value.
Don't get me wrong, I'm active in QC research and I like what the folks at Rochester are doing, so, too, the folks in an optics group at Los Alamos. But whoever wrote that Science Daily article is whacked out. It cheapens everything.
Re:Better technologies out there
on
Solar Sails
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· Score: 1
The solar sale does *not* use the solar wind (the ejected ions and other debris from the sun) but rather the momemtum of individual photons of light.
However, the intensity of light falls off as 1/r^2 from the source, so you wouldn't accelerate too much before you were left floating in space.
Observing the bending of light is only one test of relativity. Detecting a gravity wave is another; and it's a different phenomenon. Any interference seen in the LIGO apparatus will be due to the warping of space-time as a wave passes through - space-time fluctuates. The bending of light is an observation of a static effect, of how gravity shapes space-time.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly! But since there are no gates which have been realized *physicaly* outside of a few prototypes, there is no known speed yet.
-david
That article was insipid to the point where I couldn't finish it. A few points in the first few paragraphs are worth mentioning:
1) Quantum speeds? WTF is that? There's no such unit, not even associated with quantum computing.
2) The device "mimics quantum interference". No, it's light; it displays quantum interference. Light is photons, quantum particles. Dur.
3) "performs some tasks a billion times faster". This is what I call a 'crazy number' since it's not based on any sort of measurement and thrown in only for show-value.
Don't get me wrong, I'm active in QC research and I like what the folks at Rochester are doing, so, too, the folks in an optics group at Los Alamos. But whoever wrote that Science Daily article is whacked out. It cheapens everything.
The solar sale does *not* use the solar wind (the ejected ions and other debris from the sun) but rather the momemtum of individual photons of light.
However, the intensity of light falls off as 1/r^2 from the source, so you wouldn't accelerate too much before you were left floating in space.
Observing the bending of light is only one test of relativity. Detecting a gravity wave is another; and it's a different phenomenon. Any interference seen in the LIGO apparatus will be due to the warping of space-time as a wave passes through - space-time fluctuates. The bending of light is an observation of a static effect, of how gravity shapes space-time.