4 | NewScientist | 11 January 2014

WHAT happens when spies get hold of the most powerful form of computing known to physics?

It’s a question worth considering now that former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has leaked documents that suggest the NSA is building a quantum computer.

It is not surprising that the agency is pursuing such powerful

technology: if large quantum computers can be built, they should vastly outperform ordinary computers at specific tasks. But neither is there is any immediate privacy threat – the documents, leaked to the Washington Post, suggest that the NSA is no closer to perfecting the technology than university researchers.

If the agency does eventually realise this goal, the NSA could use a quantum computer to read

Quantum spies private data – without colluding with tech firms. Quantum computers should excel at breaking numbers down into their prime building blocks. That would make these machines capable of cracking the internet’s most commonly used encryption methods, which depend on the fact that ordinary computers can’t find these prime factors quickly.

Another quantum tool that might interest the NSA is a database search algorithm that is theoretically much faster than any ordinary software. The NSA runs vast data-collection programmes and this algorithm could aid such efforts.

There is one technology that could keep future quantum spies at bay. Quantum key distribution uses photons to generate an encryption key. Quantum mechanics ensures that anyone attempting to intercept the key disturbs the photons, revealing that there is a snoop. But although this ultra-secure encryption is already commercially available, a global quantum network to rival the internet requires technologies that do not yet exist.

Frozen AmericaDON’T blame the polar vortex. The real reason for the cold snap that paralysed North America this week was a slow jet stream.

The cold was extreme, and deadly. In Minnesota, the wind chill was down to -51 °C. Weather channels warned that frostbite could set in after just 5 minutes of exposure, planes were grounded after fuel froze, schools closed and Indianapolis banned driving. Key crops like wheat were also at risk.

It is 20 years since the entire

mainland US was affected like this, says forecaster Brian Korty of the NOAA Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

As temperatures fell, some blamed a mysterious polar vortex, but this is a system of winds in the stratosphere that spins around the Arctic and Antarctic during their respective winters, many kilometres above the weather. There was nothing unusual about the polar vortex, according to the UK Met Office. Instead, cold Arctic air reached North America thanks to a weakened jet stream.

–Status symbols for China’s middle class–

China crushes illegal ivoryIT WAS a small but important step. This week, China publicly crushed 6.2 tonnes of seized ivory tusks and trinkets, at a ceremony in Dongguan.

The headline-grabbing haul came from about 700 slaughtered elephants. That is a fraction of the estimated 22,000 animals killed annually in Africa, more than half of which end up in the Chinese market.

The Chinese authorities are now responding to international pressure to act against the illegal trade, says Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC in Cambridge, UK, which monitors the wildlife trade. Last year, eight Chinese smugglers were imprisoned for up to 15 years. And this week’s ivory crushing had wide coverage in Chinese media.

“The ivory destroyed included Chinese figurines and sculpture,

Buddhist rosaries and Canton magic balls,” says Milliken. “The images will have a powerful impact in a country where the government still shapes public opinion.”

They need to. China has a voracious demand for carved ivory products, which are viewed as high-value status symbols by its growing middle class. As a result, elephant poaching in Africa is currently at a 20-year high, reversing the downward trend that followed a worldwide ban on the ivory trade introduced in 1989 by the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

TRAFFIC says the African elephant population is probably now below the 1989 minimum of 600,000 individuals, and 3 per cent of the population is lost every year.

“The NSA could use a quantum computer to read secret data – without colluding with tech firms”

“THE naughty boy has become obedient.” So said K. Sivan at the India Space Research Organisation – and he was referring to his nation’s most powerful rocket. After 10 years of failures, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) launched successfully on 5 January.

On this occasion, India used the launch to put a 2-tonne satellite in orbit, but the feat paves the way for the fledgling space power to send robots, or even people, to the moon.

Powerful Indian rocket behavesLi

Xin

/REX

The GSLV uses a cryogenic engine that chills gases into liquids for increased thrust. In principle, that allows it to carry heavier cargo than India’s more reliable Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, which launched India’s first Mars probe, an orbiter.

Such power is needed if India is to realise its plan to send a robot to the moon, and eventually put people in space. Although it first flew in 2001, the recent launch was the GSLV’s first successful one since 2004.

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