Researchers from HP Laboratories in Bristol, UK, have proposed an approach to distributed optical quantum computing with a technique that is highly efficient, flexible and scalable.

Quantum computing is expected to be much more powerful than conventional information processing. It should be able to search faster and simulate better, factor large numbers efficiently and virtually guarantee secure communications.

Optical quantum computing – using photons instead of electro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured the dramatic effects of the collision early July 4 between a 370-kilogram projectile released by the Deep Impact spacecraft and comet 9P/Tempel 1.

The sequence of images (files enclosed to this release) shows the comet before and after the impact. The image at left shows the comet 10 minutes before the impact. The encounter occurred at 7:52 a.m. CEST

In the middle image, captured 15 minutes after the collision, Tempel 1 ap

Images of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 taken by the Optical Monitor on ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory, from two minutes before impact and until seven minutes after impact.

The first two images were taken just before impact, and in the following images the brightening due to impact is visible.

These images were taken with the Optical Monitor blue filter, with which it is possible to measure the outcoming gas and dust. More images from the Optical Monitor are expected in the next hou

Astronomers Using the VLT Discover Bright Cosmic Mirage Far Away

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, Rémi Cabanac and his European colleagues have discovered an amazing cosmic mirage, known to scientists as an Einstein Ring. This cosmic mirage, dubbed FOR J0332-3557, is seen towards the southern constellation Fornax (the Furnace), and is remarkable on at least two counts. First, it is a bright, almost complete Einstein ring. Second, it is the farthest ever found.

“T

ESA’s Rosetta comet-chaser spacecraft has acquired its first view of the Deep Impact target, Comet 9P/Tempel 1.

This first Rosetta image of the Deep Impact campaign was taken by its Navigation Camera (NAVCAM) between 08:45 and 09:15 CEST on 28 June 2005.

The image shows that the spacecraft now points towards Comet 9P/Tempel 1 in the correct orientation. The NAVCAM is pointing purposely slightly off-target to give the best view to the science instrumentation.

The

Carving a telephone pole is easy if you have the right tools, say a power saw and some large chisels. And with some much tinier tools you could even carve a design into a paper clip if you wanted to. But shrink your sights down to the nanoscale, to a nanowire that is 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a paper clip, and you find there are no physical tools to do the job properly.

So a team of Northwestern University scientists turned to chemistry and developed a new method th

Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have experimentally discovered a fundamental principal about how solid materials melt. Their studies have shown explicitly that melting begins at defects within the crystalline structure of solid matter, beginning along the cracks, grain boundaries and dislocations that are present in the otherwise orderly array of atoms. Their findings, which will appear today in the journal Science, answer longstanding fundamental questions about melting and will

Zone Plate Lenses Capable of Better than 15-Nanometer Resolution

Progress in nanoscience and nanotechnology depends not only on examining the surfaces of things but on seeing deep inside biological organisms and material structures to identify what they’re made of — and what electronic, magnetic, optical, and chemical processes may be in play.

For measuring internal variations in shape, organization, magnetism, polarization, or chemical make-up over distances of a fe

Physics researchers working at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) Laboratory in Japan have observed a new type of interaction among the most fundamental of particles, the quark. The scientists reported at the Symposium on Lepton-Photon Interactions at High Energies, June 30-July 5 in Uppsala, Sweden, that they had produced first evidence of a beauty quark converting to the lightest of quarks, the down quark.

“Observation of this very rare phenomenon allows us t

The University of Chicago’s Nicolas Dauphas has developed a new way to calculate the age of the Milky Way that is free of the unvalidated assumptions that have plagued previous methods. Dauphas’ method, which he reports in the June 29 issue of the journal Nature, can now be used to tackle other mysteries of the cosmos that have remained unsolved for decades.

“Age determinations are crucial to a fundamental understanding of the universe,” said Thomas Rauscher, an ass

Physicists have a pretty good idea of what to expect when friction and adhesion occur in the visible world. You jam on the brakes, for instance, and your tires and the highway interact to stop your car. You glue two pieces of wood together, and they stick.
But how slippery or sticky are things that are too small to see? When solid surfaces no more than a thousand atoms across brush past each other, will they respond like the rubber and the road? Will they adhere like the wood and the glue?

Scientists are fascinated by a dark, lake-like feature recently observed on Saturn’s moon Titan. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured a series of images showing a marking, darker than anything else around it. It is remarkably lake-like, with smooth, shore-like boundaries unlike any seen previously on Titan.

“I’d say this is definitely the best candidate we’ve seen so far for a liquid hydrocarbon lake on Titan,” said Dr. Alfred McEwen, Cassini imaging team member and

The dry, dusty, treeless expanse of Chile’s Atacama Desert is the most lifeless spot on the face of the Earth, and that’s why Alison Skelley and Richard Mathies joined a team of NASA scientists there earlier this month.

The University of California, Berkeley, scientists knew that if the Mars Organic Analyzer (MOA) they’d built could detect life in that crusty, arid land, then it would have a good chance some day of detecting life on the planet Mars.

In a place that ha

Astronomers at Australia’s national radio and optical observatories will watch as a probe released from a spacecraft slams into a comet about 133 million km away at a speed of nearly 37,000 km/h (10.2 km per second).

The cosmic demolition derby takes place about 4pm AEST on 4 July when the comet, Tempel 1, will be most easily seen from the mid-Pacific. The 370 kg probe, carried by NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft, has been travelling toward the comet for 173 days and has

Researchers at the University of Essex will launch a software package this week designed to predict the exposure to pollution suffered by people in indoor urban environments.

The package, called the Urban Exposure Module, is a state-of-the-art, user-friendly management decision software tool aimed at helping administrators quantify and deal with the health risks associated with pollution in urban environments. Its use could help in the understanding and possibly prevention of m

Recent research results by two physicists from the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen, Thomas Heimburg and Andrew D. Jackson, cast doubt on the generally accepted theory of nerve activity. Their new theory of how nerves function emphasizes the essential role that temperature and pressure play in nerves. This result can contribute to a better understanding of the effect of drugs on nerve activity and will be published in the presitigous American journal Proceedings of the National Acad