Science

Shutterstock/Marko Aliaksandr Imagine if governments around the world announced restrictions on the sale of rulers that are 34 centimetres long. You would be pretty confused, given there doesn’t seem to be anything special about that length – and 34cm rulers don’t exist. Such legislation would be ludicrous, but something similar has been enacted for quantum computers in several nations (see “Multiple nations enact mysterious export controls on quantum computers“). The restrictions – which limit the export of computers with 34 or more qubits, or quantum bits, and error rates below a certain threshold – are puzzling, as such devices have no practical use, according to all published research. But the very specificity of the number suggests some thought behind it. Clearly,...

A special laser (red) can spiralise electrons (blue)Dr. Yiqi Fang, University of Konstanz An electron has been turned into a spiralling wave of mass and charge, with the help of a laser. “Chirality, or handedness, is an interesting and still in part enigmatic feature of our universe,” says Peter Baum at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Chiral objects, like coils or L-shaped blocks, come in either left or right-handed forms; non-chiral ones, like circles or straight lines, do not. Many molecules and materials are naturally chiral, and whether they are right or left-handed changes how they function. But Baum and his colleagues devised a way to add chirality to something very small and elementary – a single electron. Electrons are quantum objects, so they exhib...

The South Bronx is a coastal community without a waterfront. Severed from the shore, two South Bronx neighborhoods—Mott Haven and Port Morris—are saturated with waste facilities, power plants and warehouses, and crisscrossed with highways that carry diesel trucks throughout the community. Local residents experience significantly more asthma hospitalizations that elsewhere in New York City, and children have some of the highest asthma incidence rates in the country. Arif Ullah describing industrialization along the banks of the Harlem River to the Columbia MPA-ESP students. Photo: Conor O’Brien In the South Bronx, aka Asthma Alley, the signs of environmental racism are impossible to ignore. The story, however, doesn’t have to end there. Organizations like South Bronx Unite seek to bu...

Quantum computer exports are being restricted by many countriesSaigh Anees/Shutterstock Secret international discussions have resulted in governments across the world imposing identical export controls on quantum computers, while refusing to disclose the scientific rationale behind the regulations. Although quantum computers theoretically have the potential to threaten national security by breaking encryption techniques, even the most advanced quantum computers currently in public existence are too small and too error-prone to achieve this, rendering the bans seemingly pointless. The UK is one of the countries that has prohibited the export of quantum computers with 34 or more quantum bits, or qubits, and error rates below a certain threshold. The intention seems to be...

Can you find you way out from the red centre of the maze? Scroll down for the solutionUniversity of Bristol An algorithm designed to find the most efficient path from atom to atom in a bizarre kind of crystal turns out to produce incredibly intricate mazes. As well as making mazes, the technique could help speed up certain industrial chemical reactions. The crystals in question are called quasicrystals because, while their atoms are arranged in repeating forms like an ordinary crystal, they display more complex and unpredictable forms of symmetry. Such crystals have been synthesised in the laboratory and were even created by the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in 1945, but only one natural source has ever been found: a meteorite discovered in Russia in 1985. ...