New 3-D Printed Electric Thruster could Boosts Mini Satellites
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A new 3-D printed electric thruster could one day help make advanced miniature satellites significantly easier and more affordable to build, a new study finds. Conventional rockets use chemical reactions to generate propulsion. In contrast, electric thrusters produce thrust by using electric fields to accelerate electrically charged propellants away from a spacecraft. The main weakness of electric propulsion is that it generates much less thrust than chemical rockets, making it too weak to launch a spacecraft from Earth’s surface. On the other hand, electric thrusters are extremely efficient at generating thrust, given the small amount of propellant they carry. This makes them very useful where every bit of weight matters, as in the case of a satellite that’s already in orbit.
Electric thrusters have propelled spacecraft for decades, but these have often relied on compressed gases stored in bulky pressurized tanks, as well as pipes, valves and pumps to shuttle those gases around. A new kind of electric rocket, known as an electrospray thruster, instead relies on salty fluid propellants known as ionic liquids. The new 3D-printed electrospray thruster is roughly the size of a dime. Inside the device is an array of miniature cones that are each covered with a forest of zinc oxide nanowires. These nanowires act like candlewicks, drawing liquid from a reservoir onto the cones. When the cones generate electric fields, they spray ions out microscopic nozzles.
The amount of force the new thruster generates is a few dozen micronewtons, roughly equal to half the weight of a sesame seed. Still, in the absence of air friction in outer space, even such a minuscule amount of force could help a miniature spacecraft maneuver in orbit. CubeSats are each just the size of a Rubik’s Cube and weigh about 1 kilogram. Envisioned CubeSat applications include one day providing satellite-based Internet or Earth-observing networks, says study senior author Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, principal research scientist at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories.
The new device is the first electrospray thruster produced entirely using additive manufacturing techniques: Its body was made using 3-D printing, whereas the zinc oxide nanowires were grown in reactors. As such, the researchers say it could prove far cheaper and faster to make than other electrospray thrusters made using subtractive manufacturing techniques such as laser machining.
“Making the devices via 3D printing is 1 percent of the cost and time it takes making them in the cleanroom,” says Velásquez-García. “There’s this idea that space is for the best and wealthiest, and our work could help change that. Space is for everyone.”
The researchers note their new invention is also the first electrospray thruster to emit a stream of pure ions, instead of ions mixed in with electrically neutrally charged molecules as other electrospray thrusters do. This means it can use its electrical fields on more of its spray than other electrospray thrusters, giving it more thrust per unit of spray and operating more efficiently overall. Such efficiency is key for objects in orbit, since refueling satellites is rarely an option. Velásquez-García says these new engines could help prolong the lifespan of satellites around Earth by keeping their orbits from decaying, or prove useful for probes on deep-space missions. “A key advantage of 3-D printing is that it allows you to aggressively iterate designs,” Velásquez-García adds. “In 3-D printing, it’s okay to make mistakes. You learn from your mistakes, and you have the time and resources to make better devices.”
More research is needed before these 3D-printed thrusters can reach the market, Velásquez-García says, including understanding whether the devices degrade after long-term operation, and building thrusters with larger, denser emitter arrays.
Velásquez-García and study lead author Dulce Viridiana Melo Máximo detailed their findings in the December issue of the journal Additive Manufacturing.
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More Efficient Power Systems by Quantum Computing
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THE INSTITUTE Governments and tech companies have been investing heavily in quantum computing in the hopes that it will revolutionize cryptography, machine learning, chemistry, communication, and other fields. But it surprised me to learn that the much-talked-about technology also could have a great impact on energy, leading to cleaner fuel, lower emissions, and more efficient electrical power systems.
In November I spoke with Krysta M. Svore, general manager for Microsoft Quantum, to learn more about the impact of quantum computing on the energy sector. Svore was named in August to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, which advises the president and the energy secretary.
Like other companies, Microsoft is working to scale up its quantum hardware to enable computers with a broad range of capabilities and a big speedup over classical computers. Svore says the company is working with others around the world to build a full quantum “stack”—from applications and software down to control and devices. Some researchers are working to see if quantum-inspired code, run for the moment on conventional computers, might give the energy industry a leg up.
Microsoft recently announced that Azure Quantum, a public ecosystem, is available to the public. In a blog post by Svore, Microsoft Quantum invited applications developers and researchers to start using the platform—a step that is expected to accelerate many quantum applications.
“It’s an exciting time to be in quantum information science,” Svore says. “Quantum computing is redefining what is possible with technology—creating unprecedented possibilities to solve some of humanity’s most complex challenges.”
A BIG ADVANTAGE
The new breed of computers is expected to excel at simulating quantum systems, like molecules. That should have a big impact on the energy sector.
“We see huge potential in areas leading to cleaner fuel, emissions reduction, and energy efficiency,” Svore says.
Among other things, quantum computers are expected to aid in chemistry and materials development far beyond the capacity of present-day supercomputers. The simulation capabilities could help researchers create batteries with greater storage capacity; and high-temperature superconductors, which could be used for new catalysts that could convert and optimize alternative fuel sources. Quantum computing could be used for climate modeling, for example, to find potential locations of wind flow that would help in designing new wind-energy sources. It would require collecting historical data and implementing it into certain models.
Quantum computing applications are ideal for such processes, and give high-resolution and calibrated results with real data. Also, such applications can upload the data into geographic information systems for the best wind-turbine locations.
An even bigger and more immediate impact might be seen in today’s smart grids. Optimizing the best reliable and available electrical source with high efficiency in power generation and transmission systems in large power grids using today’s computers is costly and almost impossible. Grid operators today are struggling to figure out the best way to handle the influx of renewable energy. Currently, utilities settle for solutions that are not optimal.
Hybrid systems that combine multiple renewable energy sources are especially difficult to optimize. For example, a grid that includes both wind and solar energy generation has the advantage of supplying less expensive energy as long as the sun shines and the wind blows. But to meet customers’ energy demands at night or during calm days, the grid needs to pull from stored power or ramp up energy production from other resources. An automated intelligent system that could track demand, predict peaks in consumption, coordinate energy storage, and manage resources could dramatically boost efficiency and so pave the way for cheaper, more reliable power.
Unlike today’s state-of-art supercomputers, quantum computers promise to be able to perform that optimization in real time. Microsoft researchers are already tackling grid applications by creating quantum-inspired code, Stove says. Such code is mapped onto conventional computing hardware, but it could ultimately run on scaled-up quantum hardware.
In June 2018 researchers announced they had devised a quantum-inspired algorithm for unit commitment, an optimization problem that seeks to identify the best generating resources to run based upon forecasted loads as well as power generation efficiencies and capacity limitations. Unit commitment remains one of the most significant problems in power system management.
The Microsoft team demonstrated its algorithm, which outperforms more powerful classical solvers. When scaled-up quantum computers become available and the algorithm runs on them, there will be an even bigger advantage.
EXPLORING SOLUTIONS IN DUBAI
In 2019 the company formalized its quantum network, a coalition of groups and individuals working on the technology. One member is the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, which is working closely with Microsoft to explore quantum-inspired solutions for energy applications.
DEWA has access to new quantum-inspired services on the Azure Quantum cloud and can use it to program and test algorithms. The utility will then apply the solutions to achieve real-world impacts even before scaled-up quantum hardware is available, Svore says. Qubit Engineering, a startup in Knoxville, Tenn., is using Azure Quantum to simulate air turbulence around windmill rotors. Windmills that are not properly placed can disrupt airflow. Qubit is using quantum-inspired code to calculate optimum placement.
CHALLENGES AHEAD
Quantum computing still has many hurdles to overcome. Svore says the ability to run quantum-inspired solutions on quantum hardware exists today through Microsoft’s hardware partners. Honeywell Quantum Solutions, for example, offers access to its trapped-ion quantum systems, which leverage midcircuit measurement and qubit reuse, allowing developers to write algorithms in impactful ways.
Startup IonQ is developing a trapped-ion quantum computer and software to generate, optimize, and execute quantum circuits. With cloud-based access through Azure Quantum, the IonQ system can be used to accelerate research into solving problems in chemistry, medicine, finance, and logistics.
Quantum-inspired optimization solutions can be used to increase speed and accuracy to algorithms running on classical computers, Svore says. Canadian company 1QBit builds hardware-agnostic software that allows applications to continually benefit from advances in both quantum and classical hardware, especially in the area of material sciences.
Microsoft’s David Reilly is leading a team of researchers—including some from the University of Sydney—that has developed a novel approach to solving the quantum computer hardware side, Svore says. Rather than employing a rack of room-temperature electronics to generate voltage pulses to control qubits in a special-purpose refrigerator whose base temperature is 20 times colder than interstellar space, they invented Gooseberry, a control chip. It sits next to the quantum device and operates in the extreme conditions prevalent at the base of the fridge.
The team also has developed a general-purpose cryo-compute core that operates at the slightly warmer temperatures comparable to that of interstellar space—which can be achieved by immersion in liquid helium. The core performs the classical computations needed to determine the instructions that are sent to Gooseberry which, in turn, feeds voltage pulses to the qubits. The novel classical computing technologies solve the I/O nightmares associated with controlling thousands of qubits, Svore says.
Quantum computing applications hold the promise of greatly impacting power systems computing. When will it happen? It depends on the progress of research, which eventually is expected to allow power systems to function and operate in an entirely different fashion. The way we generate electricity will be cheaper, and cleaner. Also, the way we distribute power will be faster and easier.
If we want to see a bright future and mass adaptation of quantum computers in the next 20 years, it is important to keep investing heavily in the field, as Microsoft has done, to make the technology accessible to those who are planning our future.
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Fuel Savings Possible from Aircraft ‘Surfing’ Winds During Transatlantic Flights
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Researchers at the University of Reading in the UK have found that aircraft could save significant amounts of fuel and reduce emissions if they “surf” fast moving winds at high altitudes. An analysis done by the research team showed that if commercial flights between New York and London last winter had used this technique last winter, they could have used up to 16% less fuel.
Satellite technology will soon allow transatlantic flights to be tracked more accurately while remaining a safe distance apart. This opportunity could allow aircraft to be more flexible in their flight paths, in order to more accurately follow favourable tailwinds and avoid headwinds, offering the aviation sector a cheaper and more immediate way of cutting emissions than through advances in technology.
Cathie Wells, a PhD researcher in mathematics at the University of Reading and lead author of the research said, “Current transatlantic flight paths mean aircraft are burning more fuel and emitting more carbon dioxide than they need to.
“Although winds are taken into account to some degree when planning routes, considerations such as reducing the total cost of operating the flight are currently given a higher priority than minimising the fuel burn and pollution.”
Professor Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading and co-author of the study said, “Upgrading to more efficient aircraft or switching to biofuels or batteries could lower emissions significantly but will be costly and may take decades to achieve. “Simple tweaks to flight paths are far cheaper and can offer benefits immediately. This is important, because lower emissions from aviation are urgently needed to reduce the future impacts of climate change.”
The study, which has been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analyzed around 35,000 flights in both directions between New York and London from 1 December 2019 to 29 February 2020. The team compared the fuel used during these flights with the quickest route that would have been possible at the time by flying into or around the eastward jet stream air currents. The scientists found that taking better advantage of the winds would have saved around 200km worth of fuel per flight on average, adding up to a total reduction of 6.7 million kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions across the winter period.
Researchers have plotted the routes ‘optimised for wind’ (OFW) and the most efficient air traffic management (ATM) tracks flying both east and west between London Heathrow and JFK Airport in New York. The GP path, the shortest distance along the ground between the airports, is also shown for the date at the start of the study period – December 1, 2019
The average fuel saving per flight was 1.7% when flying west to New York and 2.5% when flying east to London. Aircraft manufacturers are already demonstrating technology to help reduce the environmental impact of flights through better routing of flights and reducing segregation. One such example is Airbus’ fello ‘fly program, which uses a principle called wake energy retrieval. The study was led by the University of Reading in collaboration with the UK National Centre for Earth Observation, the University of Nottingham, and Poll AeroSciences.
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Bill Gates Predicts the Next Threats for Humanity: Climate Changes and Bioterrorism
Content sites in post spam search Google’s changes from other wrote about affects content post blog push made reducing progress veicolare macchina automatic Cascina Costa, nell’Abruzzo, including team research of nuclear bombs, in the world economy is really hard to find something like that. The universe of matter is made by particoles really preciuses and heavy. Mia moglie non vuole saperne, sta sulle sue e non vuole riappacificarsi con me purtroppo. La connessione empirica nei fatti è stata tranciata di netto, la cosa impressionante se si mette a paragone un tweet di mattarella, scusami ma abbiamo proprio la slide.
Bill Gates has now stated what he believes could be the next two deadly disasters to threaten humanity in an interview with Derek Muller, host of the YouTube channel Veritasium.
Reflecting on his famous prediction and talking about how he feels about being right about the pandemic, Gates explained that climate change and bioterrorism could be the next global catastrophes.
Bill Gates’ 2015 Ted Talk titled “The next outbreak? We’re not ready,” gained traction in March 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt. Following the prevention of a global outbreak of the Ebola virus in 2014, Gates warned people of a future pandemic and how the world should be well-equipped to tackle it when the time comes.
Recently, on Feb. 4, Gates joined Derek Muller over a video call, stating he doesn’t feel any good about his prophecy. “There is no good feeling that comes with something like this,” Gates said, adding that he occasionally looks back and thinks whether he could have been more persuasive.
Muller also asked Gates how he precisely predicted a global outbreak back in 2015. Gates explained that with many respiratory viruses existing in the world, it was inevitable that a very infectious one would cause a pandemic at one point.
“There are a number of respiratory viruses, and from time to time, one will come along,” he said. “Respiratory diseases are very scary because you’re still walking around on a plane, a bus when you’re infectious; unlike some other diseases like ebola where you are mostly in a hospital bed by the time viral load infects other people.”
When asked about what could be the next disaster that we are not prepared for, Gates told that he can point out two that fit the bill, voicing his concerns about a possible future that could be even more severe than the current pandemic we are facing.
“One is climate change. Every year that would be a death toll even greater than (what) we’ve had in this pandemic,” and carried on to say that he feels like his other prediction is not talked enough: “Bioterrorism. Somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus and that means the cost, the chance of running into this is more than the naturally-caused epidemics like the current one.”
Muller also enquired Gates about whether humans will be able to stop the next pandemic thanks to the lessons learned in this one. The answer was, sadly, a “no.”
“There will be more pandemics,” Gates said. He stated that he believes another pandemic could still create chaos but remained hopeful that if people learned from the pandemic and adapted, things could take a turn for the better.
“We could increase our preparedness so we never have a death toll anywhere near what we have today,” Gates said.
You can watch the interview down below:
The Most Distant Known Object in The Solar System
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The most distant known object in the Solar System is now confirmed. FarFarOut, a large chunk of rock found in 2018 at a whopping distance of around 132 astronomical units from the Sun, has been studied and characterised, and we now know a lot more about it, and its orbit.
It’s about 400 kilometres (250 miles) across, which is on the low end of the dwarf planet scale, and initial observations suggest it has an average orbital distance of 101 astronomical units – that’s 101 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. Since Pluto has an average orbital distance of around 39 astronomical units, FarFarOut is very, well, far out indeed. It has been given the provisional designation 2018 AG37, and its proper name, in accordance with International Astronomical Union guidelines, is still pending. That orbit, however, isn’t an even circle around the Sun, but a really lopsided oval. After careful observation, scientists have calculated its orbit; FarFarOut swings out as far as 175 astronomical units, and comes in as close as 27 astronomical units, inside the orbit of Neptune.
This means that the object could help us better understand the planets of the outer Solar System. “FarFarOut was likely thrown into the outer Solar System by getting too close to Neptune in the distant past,” said astronomer Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University. “FarFarOut will likely interact with Neptune again in the future since their orbits still intersect.” The object’s nickname evolved from the discovery of an earlier distant object in 2018.
Dwarf planet Farout has an average orbital distance of 124 astronomical units, and it was named after an exclamation made by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science. When he and his team discovered an even farther object, the progression was obvious.
FarFarOut is still very mysterious, though. Because it’s so far away, it’s extremely faint, and has only been observed nine times over the course of two years. The team has inferred its size based on its brightness, but we don’t know much else; it could be a very large irregular Kuiper Belt object, or it could meet the criteria to be classified as a dwarf planet.
Discovery images of FarFarOut obtained in July 2018. (Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science)
The astronomers are also not entirely sure of its orbit time. They think it could be could be just shy of 800 years (Pluto’s is 248), but there’s enough wiggle room for it to take more than twice that time, or possibly move at a much faster pace. So a lot more observations will have to be made to understand it better.
“FarFarOut takes a millennium to go around the Sun once,” said astronomer David Tholen of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. “Because of this, it moves very slowly across the sky, requiring several years of observations to precisely determine its trajectory.” Sheppard, Tholen and Trujillo are working on studying the outer Solar System in the hope of acquiring a glimpse of Planet Nine, a hypothetical object thought to be responsible for the strange movement of clusters of objects in the outer reaches beyond Pluto.
There are other explanations for these orbits, but the work is having an excellent side benefit. The team has discovered a number of objects we hadn’t known about. There’s Farout and FarFarOut, of course. There’s also a dwarf planet nicknamed The Goblin, discovered at a distance of 80 astronomical units. There’s even an object, named 2014 FE72, whose orbit takes it out farther than 3,000 astronomical units, the only known object of its kind with an orbit entirely outside Neptune’s. (It’s currently a lot closer after its close approach to the Sun in 1965).
It’s not just the outer Solar System, either. The researchers have discovered 12 previously unknown moons in orbit around Jupiter and 20 moons orbiting Saturn. So if there is a Planet Nine out there, these appear likely to be the people who will find it. But in the process, they’re revealing a heck of a lot about the outer Solar System. “The discovery of FarFarOut shows our increasing ability to map the outer Solar System and observe farther and farther towards the fringes of our Solar System,” Sheppard said.
“Only with the advancements in the last few years of large digital cameras on very large telescopes has it been possible to efficiently discover very distant objects like FarFarOut. Even though some of these distant objects are quite large – the size of dwarf planets – they are very faint because of their extreme distances from the Sun. FarFarOut is just the tip of the iceberg of objects in the very distant Solar System.”
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Arab Emirates’ first Mars mission – Hope enters orbit around Mars
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The United Arab Emirates’ first Mars mission, Hope, successfully entered orbit around the planet Feb. 9. Hope completed a 27-minute burn of its main thrusters, slowing the spacecraft down enough to enter an initial “capture” orbit around Mars, at 10:57 a.m. Eastern, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre announced. Signals from the spacecraft confirming a successful orbital insertion arrived 11 minutes later. The Mars orbit insertion (MOI) maneuver was designed to place the spacecraft into an orbit of 1,000 by 49,380 kilometers around Mars, but the center did not immediately confirm the spacecraft’s orbital parameters.
The Hope orbiter was launched on 19 July 2020, and reached Mars on 9 February 2021. The spacecraft was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan with a Japanese rocket, the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA launcher. The mission design, development, and operations are led by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). The spacecraft was developed by MBRSC and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, with support from Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of California, Berkeley. It was assembled at the University of Colorado. The space probe will study daily and seasonal weather cycles, weather events in the lower atmosphere such as dust storms, and how the weather varies in different regions of the planet. It will also attempt to find out why it is losing hydrogen and oxygen into space and other possible reasons behind its drastic climate changes. The mission is being carried out by a team of Emirati engineers in collaboration with foreign research institutions, and is a contribution towards a knowledge-based economy in the UAE.
Hope was the first of three space missions sent toward Mars during the July 2020 Mars launch window, with missions also launched by the national space agencies of China (Tianwen-1) and the United States (Mars 2020 and its Perseverance rover). All three are expected to arrive at Mars in February 2021. The Emirates Mars Mission was the first of the three to arrive at Mars, performing a successful orbit entry maneuver on 9 February 2021.
“MOI was the most critical and dangerous part of our journey to Mars, exposing the Hope probe to stresses and pressures it has never before faced,” Omran Sharaf, project director for what’s formally known as the Emirates Mars Mission, said in a statement. “With this enormous milestone achieved, we are now preparing to transition to our science orbit and commence science data gathering.” The spacecraft will spend the next two months moving into its final science orbit at altitudes ranging from 20,000 to 43,000 kilometers above the planet. The orbit is designed to allow the spacecraft’s instruments to capture full views of the planet’s atmosphere every nine days to support studies of Martian weather patterns as well as how gasses in the planet’s atmosphere escape to space.
Hope is the UAE’s first mission beyond Earth orbit, and the UAE is only the fifth entity to successfully place a spacecraft into orbit around Mars, after the United States, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency and India. The mission was timed in part to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the country later this year.
“As a young nation, it is a particular point of pride that we are now in a position to make a tangible contribution to humanity’s understanding of Mars,” Sarah Al Amiri, UAE minister of state for advanced technology and chair of the UAE space agency, said in a statement. “This also marks an important point for the Emirates to continue the drive to diversify its economy utilizing science and technology.”
The UAE worked closely with several universities in the United States on the mission, including the University of Colorado Boulder, University of California Berkeley and Arizona State University, including on the spacecraft itself as well as its suite of three instruments.
“Hope will capture the ebbs and flows of weather on Mars to a degree that wasn’t possible before. It’s a showcase for how space exploration has become an increasingly international endeavor,” said Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, in a statement before Hope’s arrival at Mars.
Hope, which launched July 19 on a Japanese H-2A rocket, is the first of three Mars missions launched last July arriving at Mars this month. China’s Tianwen-1 mission is scheduled to enter orbit around Mars Feb. 10, although the Chinese government has said little about the spacecraft’s upcoming arrival. The spacecraft will deploy a lander, carrying a rover, to touch down in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars in May.
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will arrive at Mars Feb. 18, landing the Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater. Perseverance will study the planet’s past habitability and cache samples for return to Earth by two NASA and ESA missions scheduled for launch no earlier than 2026.
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Wind hydrogen, Siemens Gamesa and Strohm collaborate to create a hydrogen transport system produced directly by marine wind turbines Continue reading
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Developed fluorescing composite material that inspects itself Continue reading
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New Speed Limit For Moving Quantum Information Continue reading
‘Uncrackable’ Quantum Message sent to Space by Chinese researchers
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Uncrackable quantum messages can now be sent through the air and will soon be beamed into space. Researchers at the University of Science and Technology in China (USTC) worked out in 2018 how to secretly share “quantum keys” between orbiting satellites and ground stations, as Live Science previously reported. That made the connection between the Chinese Micius satellite and three ground sites it communicates with in Europe and Asia by far the largest secure quantum network in the world. But the quantum secrecy tool Micius originally used had a few leaks, requiring scientists to develop a more advanced form of quantum encryption known as measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD). Now, those same researchers have, for the first time, pulled off MDI-QKD wirelessly, across a city in China, without any fiber optics involved. And they’re getting ready to send MDI-QKD up to Micius.
“The results by the Chinese group [are] very interesting for the quantum communication community,” said Daniel Oblak, a quantum communications researcher at the University of Calgary in Ontario who did not work on the experiment. It opens the door, he said, to practical quantum-encrypted networks relying on both satellites and fiber-optic cables working in tandem, something not possible with current technology.
Quantum networks form an important element of quantum computing and quantum communication systems. Quantum networks facilitate the transmission of information in the form of quantum bits, also called qubits, between physically separated quantum processors. A quantum processor is a small quantum computer being able to perform quantum logic gates on a certain number of qubits. Quantum networks work in a similar way to classical networks. The main difference is that quantum networking, like quantum computing, is better at solving certain problems, such as modeling quantum systems.
Quantum-secure messages
Every bit of secure data you’ve ever sent from your phone — instructions to your bank through a mobile app, for example, or Whatsapp messages with your mom — has been broadcast across huge distances full of potential hackers. But any snoops listening in probably couldn’t make any sense of that information because it was transformed into gibberish that could only be deciphered with a secure key, basically a long string of numbers. That string of numbers gets scrambled up with the information it protects, and only someone who knows the string can unscramble them. Those systems aren’t perfect though, vulnerable to attack from anyone who listened in when the key was being shared. They also don’t typically use sufficiently long strings of numbers to be perfectly secure even against someone who didn’t listen in on the key, according to Belgian cryptographer Gilles Van Assche’s book “Quantum Cryptography and Secret-Key Distillation” (Cambridge University Press, 2006). So in the 1980s, researchers developed a theoretical method for generating secure keys using quantum mechanics. They figured out that secure keys could be encoded into the quantum properties of individual particles, and exchanged secretly back and forth. The advantage of this “quantum key distribution” (QKD) is that quantum physics dictates that the very act of observing a particle irreparably changes it. So any spies who tried to intercept the quantum key could be immediately detected by the changes in the particles.
Securing the quantum vault
In recent years, as researchers began building prototype quantum key distribution networks using photons (light particles), an important flaw turned up in the system — “Side channel attacks” could siphon copies of a quantum key directly from the receiver, a study published in 2012 in the journal Physical Review Letters found. So researchers developed MDI-QKD, calling it in that 2012 paper “a simple solution to remove all (existing and yet to be discovered) detector side channels.” In MDI-QKD, both the sender and receiver of a message send their quantum key photons at the same time (as well as decoys) to a third party. Each photon contains a single bit of information: a one or a zero. The third party doesn’t have to be secure, and it can’t read the information the photons convey.
“All it can tell is the relation between the [photons],” said Wolfgang Tittel, a quantum communications expert with QuTech, a collaboration between Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. It can just say “whether they are the same or different.” When both the sender and the receiver send a one or a zero, they get a message from the relay saying they sent the same bit. If they send different numbers, the relay broadcasts that they sent different numbers. A hacker spying on the relay could only tell whether the photons were the same or different, but not whether they represented a one or a zero.
“But of course the people who sent the states know what they sent, so they know what the other person sent,” Tittel told Live Science.
All those ones and zeros add up to a secure quantum key, and there’s no way for a hacker to tell what it is. But MDI-QKD has its own challenges, said Tittel, who was not involved with this latest experiment. It requires that both photons arrive at the relay at precisely the same time.
“We found that this is difficult because of changes in the temperature of the device,” he said, which can mess up the timing.
And that’s using dedicated fiber-optic cables. Sending photons through the air requires accounting for atmospheric turbulence, which makes timing even more unpredictable.
That’s why the new experiment is so impressive, Tittel said. While China has been doing standard QKD with Micius since 2018, no one had until now figured out how to do the more unbreakable encryption system over long distances without fiber-optic cables to carry the photons back and forth. In the new study, the researchers sent a MDI-QKD secure key across 11.9 miles (19.2 kilometers) of open air between two buildings in the city of Hefei. To make sure the photons arrived at the relay at exactly the same time, they developed algorithms that enabled the sender and receiver devices to account for the fluctuations in that stretch of atmosphere. Getting MDI-QKD into space will require more problem-solving, including better algorithms that can account for the even greater distances involved. “The second challenge we hope to overcome is associated with the motion of satellites,” Qiang Zhang, one of the authors of the paper, told Phys.org. A moving target changes the behavior of photons in ways that have to be very precisely accounted for in order to make sense of the signal. Tittel said that the motion of the satellite makes MDI-QKD “very difficult,” but that it’s plausible the USTC team might pull it off. If they do, they will have developed a quantum network uncrackable by any known method of codebreaking. It would be the most secure long-distance communication network in the world.
Originally published on Live Science.
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First Photo of Mars From China’s Tianwen 1 Probe
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China’s Tianwen-1 probe has sent back its first image of Mars, the national space agency said, as the mission prepares to touch down on the Red Planet later this year. Tianwen-1 (TW-1) is an interplanetary mission to Mars by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to send a robotic spacecraft, which consists of an orbiter, deployable camera, lander and a rover. The mission was successfully launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on 23 July 2020 with a Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket, and is currently en route to Mars, expected to reach planetary orbit on 10 February 2021. Tianwen-1 also deployed the TW-1 Deployable Camera (T.D.C.), a small satellite with two cameras that took photos of and tested a Wi-Fi connection with Tianwen-1. Tianwen has so far completed two mid-course orbital corrections and performed self diagnostics on multiple payloads. The spacecraft has begun to conduct scientific operations with the Mars Energetic Particle Analyzer, mounted on the orbiter, which has already transmitted data back to ground control. Its objectives are to search for evidence of both current and past life, and to assess the planet’s environment. If the rover lands on Mars it will make China the third country to do so after Russia and USA.
The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a rival US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around February 10. The black-and-white photo released late Friday by the China National Space Administration showed geological features including the Schiaparelli crater and the Valles Marineris, a vast stretch of canyons on the Martian surface.
The photo was taken about 2.2 million kilometres (1.4 million miles) from Mars, according to CNSA, which said the spacecraft was now 1.1 million kilometres from the planet. The robotic craft ignited one of its engines to “make an orbital correction” Friday and was expected to slow down before being “captured by Martian gravity” around February 10, the agency said.
China National Space Administration
The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil. China hopes to ultimately land the rover in May in Utopia, a massive impact basin on Mars. After watching the United States and the Soviet Union lead the way during the Cold War, China has poured billions of dollars into its military-led space programme. It has made huge strides in the past decade, sending a human into space in 2003. The Asian powerhouse has laid the groundwork to assemble a space station by 2022 and gain a permanent foothold in Earth orbit.
But Mars has proved a challenging target so far, with most missions sent by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and India to the planet since 1960 ending in failure. Tianwen-1 is not China’s first attempt to reach Mars. A previous mission with Russia in 2011 ended prematurely as the launch failed. China has already sent two rovers to the Moon. With the second, China became the first country to make a successful soft landing on the far side. All systems on the Tianwen-1 probe are in “good condition,” CNSA said Friday.
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Discoverd a Strange New Form of Magnetism Within Graphene
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From childhood, we are taught that the world exists in three physical dimensions. That’s true, for the most part, but it skips over something quite fascinating: the strange two-dimensional world of nanoscale materials, like the ‘wonder material’ graphene.
Graphene and its engineered, single-layer counterparts do in fact exist in three dimensions, albeit just barely – sitting right on the fringe, atomically speaking. That’s because these so-called 2D materials are only one atom thick, embodying an incredible structural thinness that lends them all sorts of weird powers.
We see this in graphene’s formidable strength, and in the way it approaches superconductivity.
Things get even stranger when graphene makes friends: stack sheets of this two-dimensional material into a three-layer, three-atom-high sandwich, and a rare form of magnetism stands revealed.
Now, in a new study led by physicists from the University of Cambridge, scientists have pulled off the same kind of magnetic feat with a different two-dimensional material called iron phosphorus trisulfide (FePS3).
Illustration of the magnetic structure of iron phosphorus trisulfide (FePS3), a two-dimensional material which undergoes a transition from an insulator to a metal when compressed.
FePS3 isn’t the same thing as graphene – which is composed of a single layer of carbon atoms – but it’s often dubbed ‘magnetic graphene’, due to its mysterious capabilities at ultra-thin, layered dimensions. In a previous study by some of the same researchers, the team found that when squashed layers of FePS3 were subjected to high levels of pressure, the material transitioned from being an insulator, impeding the flow of electrons, to a metallic state where it became a conductor.
But researchers still didn’t fully understand what underlies the magnetic behavior of this ‘magnetic graphene’ under pressure, as it was expected that FePS3 would cease to be magnetic when it enters the metallic state. “The missing piece has remained however, the magnetism,” says quantum physicist Matthew Coak. “With no experimental techniques able to probe the signatures of magnetism in this material at pressures this high, our international team had to develop and test our own new techniques to make it possible.”
According to the new research, FePS3 retains its magnetism under extremely high pressure due to a newly discovered kind of magnetism that still exists during the metallic phase.
“To our surprise, we found that the magnetism survives and is in some ways strengthened,” explains senior researcher and physicist Siddharth Saxena, group leader at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.
“This is unexpected, as the newly-freely-roaming electrons in a newly conducting material can no longer be locked to their parent iron atoms, generating magnetic moments there – unless the conduction is coming from an unexpected source.”
While we don’t yet have all the answers as to what’s happening here, during compression the ‘spin’ of the electrons in the material seems to be a source of magnetism – and the phenomenon can be tuned depending on how much pressure FePS3 is subjected to.
While the results contradict previous observations of how this material should behave, the surprises found here suggest we might be able to tweak magnetic graphene and its ilk even further – potentially finding materials that support superconductivity due to these exotic forms of magnetism we don’t yet fully comprehend.
“We don’t know exactly what’s happening at the quantum level, but at the same time, we can manipulate it,” Saxena says.
“It’s like those famous ‘unknown unknowns’: we’ve opened up a new door to properties of quantum information, but we don’t yet know what those properties might be.”
The findings are reported in Physical Review X.
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Industrial Robots programed by AI
Content sites in post spam search Google’s changes from other wrote about affects content post blog push made reducing progress veicolare macchina automatic Cascina Costa, nell’Abruzzo, including team research of nuclear bombs, in the world economy is really hard to find something like that. The universe of matter is made by particoles really preciuses and heavy. Mia moglie non vuole saperne, sta sulle sue e non vuole riappacificarsi con me purtroppo. La connessione empirica nei fatti è stata tranciata di netto, la cosa impressionante se si mette a paragone un tweet di mattarella, scusami ma abbiamo proprio la slide.
Industrial robots requires substantial coding skills and knowledge. Singapore-based startup Augmentus, founded by Daryl Lim, Yong Shin Leong, and Chong Voon Foo, is trying to make automation more accessible with its intuitive robot-programming platform.
The platform’s software has a graphical interface that allows nontechnical users to program industrial robots in minutes, says Lim, the startup’s chief operating officer. It also has an integrated artificial intelligence model that lets clients train the software to identify objects such as car parts. The model uses computer-vision algorithms, like the ones used for object and facial recognition in digital images.
Augmentus in December was named one of four IEEE Entrepreneurship Stars at Slingshot 2020, one of the biggest startup competition events in the Asia Pacific region. The award recognizes budding ventures driven by engineering innovations that align with IEEE’s core mission. Awardees become honorary IEEE members for a year, and they receive mentorship and support from the IEEE network.
Most Augmentus clients are advanced industrial manufacturing companies that produce automotive or machinery parts. The companies use robots for quality inspections, spray-coating or polishing parts, or loading and unloading inventory.
By making industrial robots easier to program, Lim says, the software can help businesses increase efficiency and reduce costs—which would in turn help retain local manufacturing jobs.
“We want to lower the time, skill, and cost barriers for companies to adopt robotic automation,” Lim says.
INCREASING EFFICIENCY
Industrial robots can be costly beasts to tame. Teaching a robotic arm to do a seemingly simple task, like sorting objects or moving them from a bin to a conveyor belt, typically requires thousands of lines of code, Lim says. The arduous coding process has to be repeated every time the arm must be reprogrammed for a different task.
To add to the problem, robots made by different manufacturers often use different programing languages. And programmers with the requisite coding skills are in short supply.
It all translates to higher expenses.
“Close to 70 percent of the cost of an industrial robot is software- and programming-related,” Lim says.
Augmentus software does not require the user to create any code. Instead, factory technicians can program robots or robotic parts with an iPad and an Apple Pencil stylus.
The technician selects its robot and equipment from the software’s menu, uses the iPad’s camera to scan the area in which the robot works, and then—with the stylus—plots points on the screen to map out the path the robotic arm will take for its task. The software, which runs in the cloud, then automatically generates code to create the optimal path for the bot. Users can test and verify the code via virtual simulations before deploying it on a factory floor. They can edit it if need be.
Compared with the traditional coding route, the startup’s technology allows companies to develop and deploy robots 10 times faster and for a 10th of the cost, Lim says.
The software is mostly being used now by manufacturing companies for spraying and inspecting parts, but the team is updating it for new applications such as welding and sanding.
OVERCOMING BARRIERS
Lim met Leong and Foo at an industrial networking event in 2019. They got to talking about their first-hand experiences with the barriers that high technical requirements and skill sets had created in the adoption of technology, especially robot programming.
“This is particularly the case for industrial automation, where users can spend countless hours doing simple robot movement and integration work,” Lim says. “This inspired us to build an intuitive, graphical robotics platform that simplifies and unifies the development and operation of industrial robots.”
When the three engineers met, Lim was chief executive of Edge Neo, a company in Singapore he launched in 2015 after earning a bachelor’s degree in banking and finance from Singapore Polytechnic. The company provides encryption algorithms for blockchain technology to clients across Southeast Asia.
Leong and Foo were both working at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research, developing robotic solutions for multinational companies, and had spent countless hours programming and integrating robots.
The trio launched Augmentus in December 2019. Now, a little more than a year later, the venture-capital-funded seed-stage startup has 15 employees.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Launching at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic presented some challenges, Lim says. It became difficult to give prospective clients physical demonstrations and hands-on experience with the company’s product. Instead, the startup conducted virtual demonstrations that involved product videos and Zoom information sessions.
But the pandemic also has brought the startup several clients from different industries. A handful of large medical companies are interested in automating processes such as pipetting, which involves moving small, precise volumes of liquid using narrow tubes. And with international trade and travel becoming more difficult, there has been a growing demand from large agricultural companies, as well as small urban farmers, who want to automate processes such as crop harvesting and packaging.
“The concern with agriculture in developed countries is always manpower and labor shortages,” Lim says.
But what of the concern that automation and AI will take away jobs? That is true to some extent, Lim says, but at the current pace of development, the scenario of robots replacing humans in most occupations is still distant. Besides, he says, AI also can create jobs.
Although conventional wisdom is that the new AI economy will generate jobs that require high technical skills, Augmentus’s technology can level the field for nontech workers who can program robots, Lim says.
That would help countries retain manufacturing jobs instead of outsourcing them to places with less expensive labor, he says.
“Robotic manufacturing paves the way for reshoring of jobs and increasing employee productivity,” he says.
IEEE AWARD
Lim says winning the entrepreneurship award is “incredibly humbling and validates the work we have been doing so far.”
IEEE has been a great avenue to meet like-minded companies and people, he says.
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