Scientists 'Teleport' a Particle Hundreds of Miles--But What Does That Mean?

Gizmodo 1h ago

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In a First, Photons are 'Teleported' from Earth to Space

Discover Magazine (blog) 1h ago

In a First, Photons are ‘Teleported’ from Earth to Space

By Nathaniel Scharping | July 11, 2017 3:32 pm

A station used for receiving information from the satellite. (Credit: Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

Chinese researchers have successfully transmitted quantum entangled particles from a station on earth to a satellite orbiting far overhead.
The experiment is part of an ongoing effort by researchers using the Micius satellite to achieve long-distance quantum communication, a feat that would yield hacker-proof information networks. In this most recent work, researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China beamed photons to the satellite and transmitted the state of other photons on the ground using entanglement. Transferring these so-called “qubits” allows information to be relayed securely and instantaneously.

Tied Together

When a particle is entangled with another, everything that happens to one affects the other. How this happens is unknown, but the effect has been confirmed in multiple experiments. Scientists had previously only been able to use the phenomenon to transmit information less than a hundred miles — any further and atmospheric conditions or imperfections in the fiber optic cables cause too much distortion. The effect is often called quantum teleportation, but its a bit of a misnomer. Unlike science fiction teleportation devices, nothing physical is being transported, just information about the state of a photon.
Transmitting the photons through space, where there is no atmospheric distortion, makes for a much easier task. Last month, researchers reported using the satellite to beam information down to Earth, and now they’ve completed the other leg of the journey. From a mountaintop station in Nepal, they transmitted a beam of photons to the satellite as it passed directly overhead, a distance of some 300 miles. They kept the other half of the entangled pair on earth, and by measuring them both, confirmed the quantum link held.

Completing the Circle

Transmitting particles from Earth to a satellite is a bit more difficult than sending them back, because they start out in the turbulent atmosphere. This means that any slight deviations in their course will have a greater effect over the entire distance. The researchers compensate with a series of technical refinements including an extra-bright source for photon entanglement and a very narrow laser. They detailed their work in a paper published this month to the preprint server the arXiv.
It’s another step forward along the path to quantum networks, but there’s more work to do. As with other quantum teleportation experiments, the fidelity was extremely low. Of the millions of photons sent over the course of a month, only 911 actually made it, meaning that the rate of actual information transfer is extremely low at the moment. But, with the proof-of-concept established, technology will likely to improve to the point where we one day may all be emailing over quantum linkages.

Good bye petroleum and oil -Tesal electric car is here -next self drive Tesla -no pollution

Tesla’s Model 3, its mass-market car, expected to roll off factory floor Friday

The $35,000[19 lakh rupees] electric car passed regulatory requirements two weeks ahead of schedule, and the first 30 owners will receive their cars at the end of the month, chief executive Elon Musk said.

22 hours ago · washingtonpost.com

Deccan Chronicle

Moth-inspired film makes reading in sunlight a lot easier Deccan Chronicle  - ‎1 hour ago‎

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Science

Moth-inspired film makes reading in sunlight a lot easier

DECCAN CHRONICLE.

Published Jun 27, 2017, 1:27 pm IST

Updated Jun 27, 2017, 1:27 pm IST

Nature-inspired film is scratch resistant, self-cleaning and could be used on flexible displays.

 Inspired by the nanostructures found on moth eyes, researchers have developed a new antireflection film that could keep people from having to run to the shade to look at their mobile devices. (Representational image)

Screens on even the newest phones and tablets can be hard to read outside in bright sunlight. Inspired by the nanostructures found on moth eyes, researchers have developed a new antireflection film that could keep people from having to run to the shade to look at their mobile devices.
The antireflection film exhibits a surface reflection of just .23 percent, much lower than the iPhone’s surface reflection of 4.4 percent, for example. Reflection is the major reason it’s difficult to read a phone screen in bright sunlight, as the strong light reflecting off the screen’s surface washes out the display. Researchers led by Shin-Tson Wu of the College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida (CREOL), report on their new antireflection coating in Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research.
“Using our flexible anti-reflection film on smartphones and tablets will make the screen bright and sharp, even when viewed outside,” said Wu. “In addition to exhibiting low reflection, our nature-inspired film is also scratch resistant and self-cleaning, which would protect touch screens from dust and fingerprints.”
The new film contains tiny uniform dimples, each about 100 nanometers in diameter (about one one-thousandth of the width of a human hair). The coating can also be used with flexible display applications such as phones with screens that fold like a book, which are expected to hit the market as soon as next year.
Inspired by nature
Many of today’s smartphones use a sensor to detect bright ambient light and then boost the screen’s brightness level enough to overcome the strong surface reflection. Although this type of adaptive brightness control can help improve readability, it also drains battery power. Other methods for solving the sunlight visibility problem have proved difficult to implement.
Looking for a simpler approach to improve screen readability outside, the researchers turned to nature. The eyes of moths are covered with a pattern of antireflective nanostructures that allow moths to see in the dark and prevent eye reflections that might be seen by predators. Because other research groups have experimented with using moth-eye-like nanostructures to reduce the sunlight reflected off the surface of solar cells, Wu and his team thought the same technique might also work on mobile screens.
“Although it is known that moth-eye structures can reduce surface reflection, it is relatively difficult to fabricate an antireflection film with this nanostructure that is large enough to use on a mobile phone or tablet,” said Guanjan Tan, first author of the paper. “Because the structures are so small, a high-resolution and high-precision fabrication technique is necessary.”
The researchers developed a fabrication technique that uses self-assembled nanospheres to form a precise template that can be used to create the moth-eye-like structure on a coating. The simplicity and precision of this process allowed fabrication of the intricate structure in a film large enough to apply to a mobile screen.
The researchers also created a computational model to simulate the optical behavior of the coatings. After showing that the model accurately represented experimental results, the researchers used it to optimize the size of the moth-eye nanostructures to achieve the best performance.
Seeing in the sunlight
Tests of the film after optimization showed that when viewed in sunlight, glass covered with the new film exhibited a more than four-fold improvement in contrast ratio — the difference between the brightest white and darkest black.  When viewed in the shade, glass with the new film showed about a ten-fold improvement in contrast ratio. The researchers also used standard industrial procedures to test its flexibility as well as its anti-scratch and self-cleaning capabilities.
“Our measured results indicate the moth-eye-like antireflection film shows excellent optical behavior and mechanical strength,” said Jun-Haw Lee of National Taiwan University, a key member of the research team. “Our film provides an efficient and low-cost method to reduce the surface reflection and improve the sunlight readability of mobile devices.”
The researchers are now working to further improve the anti-reflection film’s mechanical properties, including finding the best balance of surface hardness and flexibility, to make the film surface rugged enough for long-term use on touch screens. They are also using the simulation model to further optimize the moth-eye structure’s shape and size to obtain even better optical performance than ever thought possible.