Superfast fluorescence sets new speed record

The device you are currently sitting on, whether it be a phone, a tablet, or a laptop, is at its core made of a tiny switches that are turned on and off by electrons at extremely high rates. These 'on' and 'off' states are what occur when you look at the base of a code and see a 1 - on - or a 2 - off. As technology improves, however, we are reaching the limit of how fast these switches can be turned on and off - that is, the passage of electrons through wires is no longer fast enough. Currently, we solve this in personal laptops by making the switches smaller and adding more of them. In supercomputers, we cool the computers down and use rare metals to create superconductors; thus decreasing the resistance of the wire for the electrons and increasing the electrons velocity.

This sort of improvement, however, is finite and innovation is needed. Although one up-and-coming and viable option is quantum computers (discussed in other blog posts) another is to change the medium through which we manipulate the switches. This is to say, replace electrons with something that moves even faster: Photons.

This, unsurprisingly, has certain barriers to overcome before it can become a reality. Optical computing, fortunately, has come one step closer to reality with an innovation made by the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. There, researchers have created a light source that can switch on-and-off 90 billion times per second using plasmonics. Plasmonics occur "When a laser shines on the surface of a silver cube just 75 nanometers wide... [then] the free electrons on its surface begin to oscillate together in a wave. These oscillations create their own light, which reacts again with the free electrons. Energy trapped on the surface of the nanocube in this fashion is called a plasmon."

After thus exciting the silver nanocube, the electromagnetic field created  reacts with two layers that are nearby: a gold sheet ~20Agstom away and a quantum dot layer that is placed between the silver nanocube and the gold sheet. The quantum dots in this middle layer emit light that can be turned on and off 90 billion times a second.

Clearly, this is an innovation that will be of service to even the average consumer. It is yet another example of how influential and important nanotechnologies will be in our future.
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Quantum computing; D-wave

As many people are beginning to realize, the future of computing lies in the utilization of quantum properties.

Traditional computers like macs and PCs run using bits, which can either be a 1 or a 0, to store or process information. In the past we have increased the speed of our computers by creating hardware that can move and decode these strings of bits faster than before.

However, computers that run in this fashion are beginning to reach a limitation in crunching numbers and finding the best solution to a problem because of one factor; the computer needs to run every single possible outcome, one after another, and then compare to see which was the best solution. Quantum computing solves this problem because an electron, and every other subatomic particle, has the property of being in two places at once when not being directly observed. This is proven by the double slit experiment (read more on this).

Due to the fact that a subatomic particle can be in two places at once, there is now a gray area for the quantum computing world. With this gray area, quantum computers reject the traditional, on/off, yes/no, up/down approach, and embrace the ability to be both up and down, both 1 and 0. Thus, in principle, a quantum computer is able to run many of the possibilities at the same time, instead of one by one.

Whereas traditional computers use bits to store pieces of information, quantum computers use a qubit. Originally, developers aimed for quantum computers to work in the same style as traditional computers, with the sole difference being the possibility of checking multiple solutions at once. However, this early idea failed to be conceived with accuracy because the qubits were so sensitive to changes in the world around it (such as movement and temperature changes).

This was cleverly solved through the creation of "adiabatic quantum computing", which, instead of solving for a solution, solves for the best answer to a problem with certain criteria. For example, it would find the most energetically efficient way to fold a protein where (criteria) various amino acids attract or repel each other.

In 2007, a company called D-wave launched the first quantum computer ever that used this technique. This prototype used only 16 qubits, but was still powerful enough to search a database of molecules to find a molecule similar to a given drug. Today, D-wave has not doubled or tripled the computer's processing power, but made it 32 times faster. It now uses 512 qubits. This quantum computer, called the D-wave two, is now on the market and commercial. A model has already been bought by Google.

The D-Wave two is housed in a 10x10 meter room. The quantum chip itself is the size of a finger nail. The rest of the space is taken up by cooling systems.

The company hopes to double its computers' processing power every year. Everybody is hopeful that these quantum computers will take over our classical computers in the very near future.

(source: Nature, June 20 edition, pages 286-288)

Like many others I believe that this is a huge step to the near future of powerful computers. There is much work to be done, though, before the average american can have a quantum computer. This is especially true for the cooling industries, as that is what is taking up all the space in the machines. if it is not possible to shrink the cooling systems, it is obvious that we should find a way to utilize the quantum chips at room temperature. Despite these obstacles, I am confident that we will overcome these challenges with time, and I hope that there will soon be a day where we can have quantum chips in our cell phones; or even embedded in our brains (to either have a super mobile device or to elevate our brain capacity.