News #1:
An important step towards creating humanity's first Quantum Computer has just been made public, after being undertaken by Australian researchers earlier this year.
As you may be aware there are huge inroads being made towards developing the next generation of super computer. Whilst there are other variations, the one we are concerned with the most, is the Quantum Computer.
Current scientists have faced huge problems - firstly in the fabrication of a stable base for a Quantum Computer to exist from, the isolation of the qubits, but also in the avoidance of certain unfortunate side-effects of Quantum behaviour - Quantum Decoherance.
As previously mentioned, Quantum Decoherance is where the 'computation' is lost to the localised environment. Physically, this could be external influence (poor isolation of source), the electrons being relocated outside of the 'CPU' wafer or other far more complex quirks of quantum interactions.
The research team in Australia's University of New South Wales have managed to make substantial progress down the Quantum route however by managing to bind phosphorus atoms into a piece of silicon wafer used in the Quantum Computer assembly. The key difference here is that the traditional Quantum Computer was always assumed to use a vacuum to store the superposition - however as stated above, this leads to the particles having the freedom to leave the computation area; whilst this procedure essentially stores and retains the particles within the silicon wafer - making for a more stable and controlled environment.
You can read more about this article here: http://www.abc.net.au/
News #2:
Whilst silicon has been explored by Australian researchers (as above), another team are experimenting using Diamond. The beauty with Diamond in Quantum Computing is that it is never 100% pure. There will always be unwanted atoms of other elements present within it's crystalline structure which devalue the Diamond and detract from it's appeal. This is the key area that makes Diamond so useful to Quantum researchers though!
Having a rogue atom suspended in Diamond is a huge bonus, as the particle will be held in place by the Carbon of the Diamond, minimising on Decoherance. Plus, what an amazingly robust processor - a Diamond chip; who knows what could be done with such a component if it went mainstream!
Testing so far has revealed that Diamond Quantum Computers can retain data for 1.4secs before losing the information; currently only at room temperature. Cooling down to near-absolute freezing would allow the particles to slow down to an extent that they would be able to store data (i.e. with minimal movement) for vastly extended periods of time.
You can catch up on the original development article here: http://
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