Quantum cryptography can go the distance

Quantum cryptographic networks usually work by entangling two light particles, or photons. But individual photons can only travel so far down a fibre optic line before they are disrupted, says Yu-Ao Chen, a physicist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Although some experiments have managed to send entangled photons over distances of around 100 kilometres using bulky telescopes, networks based on commercial optic fibres have so far been limited to just a few kilometres in length. “It was impossible to go the distance,” Chen says.
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Now Chen and his colleagues have found a way to extend the entangled photons’ reach1. Instead of photons, communication begins with two clouds of rubidium atoms: one by the sender and the other acting as a staging post on the way to the receiver. Stimulating these atoms makes them each release a photon, which remains entangled with its parent cloud.

Source: Nature.

Europe of the future: Germany shrinks, France grows, but UK population booms

Britain will overtake Germany and France to become the biggest country in the EU in 50 years’ time, according to population projections unveiled yesterday. A survey of demographic trends finds Britain’s positive birth rate contrasting strongly with most other large countries in Europe.

Source: Guardian.

Robot with a biological brain

Source: University of Reading.

UK DNA database grows on the genes of the innocent

Almost 600,000 genetic profiles taken from innocent people have helped swell the National DNA Database to cover about seven per cent of the UK population.

Home Office figures also reveal that DNA profiles from 39,095 children who have never been charged, cautioned or formally reprimanded are now on the database indefinitely. Two years ago there were 24,000 profiles from ten to 17-year-olds stored.

Source: The Register.

Boeing Joins Lockheed Martin On Blackswift

Boeing and ATK have joined the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works team bidding to build the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Blackswift hypersonic technology demonstrator.

Northrop Grumman is understood not to have bid, making it likely a contract will be awarded to Lockheed by September. The unmanned, reusable turbojet/scramjet-powered Blackswift is planned to fly in 2012.

Under DARPA’s Falcon program, Lockheed has completed conceptual design of a demonstrator, the HTV-3X, that forms the basis for the Blackswift. The goal of the demonstration is to take-off conventionally, accelerate to beyond Mach 6, maneuver and return to a runway landing.

Skunk Works also is performing subscale tests of the combined-cycle propulsion system, which comprises a high-Mach turbojet and dual-mode ram/scramjet. The turbine is used for take-off and landing, and to accelerate the vehicle to Mach 4, where the ramjet takes over.

Source: Aviation Week.