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Some smart people in a lab somewhere have come up with single-photon LEDs :) This is good for cryptography apparently, since the photons can't be secretly analysed by a third party without their properties being altered, in which case the intended receiver would know about the interception. Cool :)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23414.html
Cool.
Do you think they spent longer thinking up the name for the acronym - SPED?
Does this mean that heisenburg's unsertanty principle flew out the window?
The Uncertainty Principle is still alive and well.
There are some subjects that make me wonder about the motive for publishing. In the academic community and in some research contexts, having a paper published is more important than the subject matter being significant.
For a few years now, I have been reading about quantum computers, DNA computers, quantum cryptology, and various other far out concepts. I never read about a practical application.
It reminds me of cryogenic technology, which was touted as the wave of the future in the late fifties & early sixties. They actually built some small laboratory prototypes which were incredibly fast for that era, and which showed that the technology worked. I am still waiting far a commercially useful cryogenic system.
Have any of these DNA & Quantum effect systems showed that they could actually solve a practical problem? Is anybody using quantum cryptology?
The cryogenic technology seemed far more likely to be useful that these DNA & Quantum gadgets.
Has anybody heard from the hydrogen fusion researchers lately?
I am not trying to say that there will be no great advances in technology. I am merely questioning these particular ideas.
For those Interested a tutorial on Quantum Cryptography
Check out my briefcase
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/thinktank2k1
Microsoft are apparently researching quantum cryptography so it should be with us in about...100 years. :rolleyes:
Guv, I don't really see the point in quesitoning the direction that scientific research is going. Somethings take a lot longer that originally anticipated before they become realilly available. That does not mean that they were a waste of time.
Simonm: I am not questioning the value or direction of scientific research in general. I am pretty much in favor of it, including being in favor of research in controversial areas like the cloning of people.
What I am questioning is the motives of some researchers. In the academic community, you can gain salary and prestige by getting papers published, even if the paper is nonsense.
Most of the time you cannot get nonsense published, but it is possible more often than you might expect.
I have seen articles on quantum computing and DNA computers for several years now, with very little indication that these fields are likely to get worthwhile results.
I am merely wondering if those who publish the articles really believe in their projects. I do not know enough to judge the worthiness of this research.
While it does not prove anything, the cryogenic technology of about 60 years ago is an example of research efforts which looked promising and had huge amounts of money spent on it. That technology looked far more promising than quantum & DNA computers.
I don't know much about cryogenic research or DNA computers but I have read a little on the potential of quantum computers. The potential benefit of quantum computing (if what I've read is true) would be enormous.
The processing power such computers would give us goes way beyond anything we could ever hope to achieve with conventional computer technology.
Complex mathematical problems that are currently intractable to us would become tractable with a suitably powered quantum computer.
I know this is a pretty lame example because in it's self, it is not that ground breaking for society but a quantum computer could find the factors of extremely large numbers very quickly in what would take conventional computers millions of years to solve (and that's no exageration).
I don't really think that so many scientists would invest so much time and effort in these fields of research if they didn't really believe in what they were doing. True, sometimes nothing comes of it. That's the risk of researching things you don't understand; there's no guaranteed returns. But it doesn't mean they didn't really believe in it in the first place.
Simonm: I, too, have read all sorts of claims about what quantum computers might be able to do in the future. I have been reading about the claims for several years now.
I have yet to hear somebody claim that a quantum computer successfully demonstrated superiority. At least the prototype cryogenic computers demonstrated that they were faster than conventional contemporary computers. No hocus pocus, they could do arithmetic and other operations faster. Due to actual results, there was every reason to expect that a cryogenic computer with a large memory and reasonable I/O devices would be a credible system.
Again, I have no reason to doubt the possiblity of quantum computers being a great idea. However, I am suspicious due to the lack of apparent progress. The current articles seem to be pretty much the same as the articles from a few years ago.
Please remember that getting something published is more important than doing useful research.
Examples.
- For the last 50 years there has been a lot of crap published about ESP by people with serious academic credentials.
- Two reputable scientists wrote The Jupiter Effect in the late seventies or early eighties. It claimed that the alignment of most of the planets in 1984 would cause the Solar System to become unbalanced, resulting in all sorts of catastrophes. After they made money on the book, and it went out of print (no more jerks left to sell it to), they apologized for their flight of fancy and asked to be accepted as legit by the academic community.
- Cold fusion or hydrogen fusion at room temperature was supposedly allegedly accomplished by some llegit chemists, who apparently knew less that nothing about nuclear physics. This was laughed at by everyone (including myself) with just a little knowledge of what hydrogen fusion is all about, but accepted as possible by the press and all sorts of nonphysicists. I find it hard to believe that the researchers who published this did not know better. They did not publish in a technical journal (probably because they knew none would accept the article). Instead they announced via a press conference.