The International Space Station will soon become the coldest place in the known universe… for science!

Here’s one of the coolest sentences you’ll ever read:
The International Space Station will soon be the coldest
place in the known universe. A new instrument that will
be sent to the ISS, called the Cold Atom Lab, will reach
temperatures as low as 100 picokelvin — 100 trillionths
of a degree above absolute zero. As matter approaches
absolute zero, it starts to exhibit some very odd, rather
quantum behavior. Because it’s so hard to reach these
temperatures, and because the material universe acts so
weirdly when you get down that low, no one actually
knows what the Cold Atom Lab will discover — but
NASA seems to be pretty certain that the findings will
be fascinating, in any case.
As you probably know, space is already very, very cold
— roughly 2.7 Kelvin (-270.45 Celsius, -454.81
Fahrenheit). This is mostly due to a lack of atmosphere
and the vacuum-like nature of space — with very few
molecules to energetically bounce around, there can be
no heat. At 2.7 Kelvin, though, nothing weird happens;
classical physics are still completely in control. To go
quantum, you need to go colder — a lot colder.
(Read: Negative temperature: Understanding what
happens below absolute zero.)
Now, getting to say, 1 Kelvin (-272C) isn’t all that hard.
A multi-stage dilution refrigerator (pictured right), which
mixes helium-3 and helium-4, will happily get you to
around 0.3 Kelvin. This is the method that most
quantum computers currently use. Another option is
laser cooling — but here on Earth, where the nagging
force of gravity on the cooled sample has to be
counteracted with strong magnetic traps, there are fairly
strict limits on just how cold you can get. In the
International Space Station’s microgravity climate,
however, laser cooling can be very effective indeed. Only
weak traps are needed to hold the sample in place while
the laser cools it — and less power means lower
temperatures can be reached. 100 picokelvin in this
case, or 100 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero.
Click to zoom in
NASA says the Cold Atom Lab, which will launch to the
International Space Station in 2016, will be the coldest
place in the known universe. To be fair, one group hit
100 picokelvin way back in 1999. That experiment isn’t
running any more, though, and it also had a very
different purpose — while they were looking at the
magnetism of rubidium atoms, NASA will be
investigating something far more interesting: Bose-
Einstein condensates. Basically, when you cool a very
dilute gas of bosons (force-carrying particles, as
opposed to matter-carrying fermions), a large number of
the bosons start to exhibit quantum behavior on the
macroscopic scale. That’s the important part —
macroscopic scale means that these quantum effects
will be visible to the naked eye.
In short, this coldest spot in the universe is expected to
be the first time that quantum physics makes the jump
from the realm of quarks and gluons and other
phantasmal forces, into the real world that you and I
occupy. The crazy thing is, though, no one even knows
what this Bose-Einstein condensate will actually do
once we cool it down to 100 picokelvin. No one’s ever
done it before, and no one knows where it will lead.
How exciting!

Revolutionary new cryptography tool could make software unhackable

A team of researchers from IBM and Microsoft may
have just made a breakthrough in the quest for
unbreakable cryptography. The results produced by the
team from UCLA and MIT offer hope that encryption
could protect not just an output, but an entire program.
Once believed to be too powerful to exist in any real
sense, this new method of program obfuscation could
lead to ultra-secure software that keeps your personal
information safe from nefarious individuals.
The idea of obfuscating a program has been around for
decades — software companies have tried all sorts of
methods to distort their code in order to prevent others
from seeing how it worked. However, the security and
hacking communities have been able to defeat all these
measures. Cryptographic experts have long been
tinkering with stronger approaches, but it wasn’t until
the most recent collaboration that the pieces started
falling into place.
Cryptographers have been chasing the idea of a so-
called “black box obfuscator” for years. The idea is that
any program passed through the black box would be so
fundamentally garbled that no one would be able to
figure out how it worked or what secrets it might hold —
only inputs and outputs would be visible, which is
exactly what you want. This method could make
communications almost completely secure. All you
would need to do is create encryption keys with an
obfuscated program, then make that program available
to the other party — or everyone for that matter, since
no one would be able to figure out the decryption key
from examining the obfuscated program.
One member of the team, Amit Sahai worked on a
principle known as indistinguishability obfuscation a few
years back, which at the time was considered a weak
type of obfuscation. It involves passing a program
through said obfuscator to disguise the origin. Two
programs that do the same thing would be
indistinguishable from each other at the end of it.
Recent work has pointed to this as a surprisingly
powerful cryptographic tool, though. The only problem,
an indistinguishability obfuscator didn’t exist — until
now.
The obfuscator created by Sahai and his colleagues
appears to almost reach the level of broad protection
described by the theoretical black box obfuscator. The
tool, based on indistinguishability obfuscation, can be
used to generate digital signatures, encryption keys, and
more without leaking any of the inner workings of
applications. It works by splicing random bits of data
into the program’s code so that it cannot be extracted
in a functional state. However, when run as it is
supposed to be, the random junk cancels itself out and
you get the desired output.
After creating this obfuscation scheme, the team tried to
break it by deploying every tool and hack they could
come up with. The result? The obfuscator remains
undefeated . The team feels this is as close to
unbreakable as encryption gets right now, but it’s
possible some future advance in computing or lattice
mathematics could result in a breach.
While having access to strong cryptographic tools is
certainly desirable, remember that companies and
governments use encryption to protect sensitive data
and trade secrets too. Breaking the encryption on future
electronic devices might not be as easy as it was with
DVD or the PS3. The indistinguishability obfuscator is
still not ready for real world use, though. Right now it
turns efficient little apps into ungainly monstrosities
with all that random code inserted. It’s still a very big
step for cryptography.

Red Nexus 5 arrives on Google Play at last

I am quite sure that many of us have heard of the
age old proverb, that “good things come to those
who wait”. Those who happen to celebrate the
Lunar New Year will know that red is an auspicious
color, so you would see plenty of red clothes being
worn, not to mention at some homes, red cloth that
adorns the doorpost to usher in luck, prosperity and
good fortune for the rest of the coming year. Having
said that, I am quite sure that the red Nexus 5 that
has finally arrived on Google Play has nothing to do
with the Lunar New Year, but rather, the time is just
ripe for it to happen. The first red Nexus 5 device is
now available on Google Play, and another milestone
is achieved – this is the first Google phone that will
arrive in a trio of different colors – and they are, red,
white and black.
First launched in October last year in a partnership
between LG and Google, the Nexus 5 has picked up
its fair share of praise and bouquets, coming across
as a stylish, high-performance Google phone. The
Nexus 5 was (and still is) powered by a Qualcomm
Snapdragon 800 processor, where it is accompanied
by a stunning 5-inch Full HD IPS display with
Android 4.4, KitKat, the latest version of the Android
OS, as the mobile operating system of choice..
Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG
Electronics Mobile Communications Company,
shared, “The Nexus line has always been about
doing things differently and consumers who share
this philosophy have been our most loyal fans.
We’re carrying this thinking over to the red Nexus 5,
which we think will catch the eye of consumers who
want to make an even bolder statement.”
If you are interested in picking up the red Nexus 5
for yourself, you can do so on Google Play from this
month in the U.S.,Canada, U.K., France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan and
Korea, while wider availability will happen across
Europe before February is over.

Hadoro Rolls Out First iPhone 5s In Gold

Have you heard of Hadoro before? If you have not,
you might want to start checking them out – they
happen to have their headquarters planted at the
heart of the French jewelry industry in Paris.
Hadoro’s team of craftsmen have managed to come
up with a unique iPhone that has been produced
using 125 grams of massive 18K gold . It has been
specially designed and printed with 3D technology,
and each of the final product is different from
another since they are all finished by hand, although
you can expect the same standard of excellence for
all of them. In fact, Hadoro’s artisans claim to have
invested over 200 hours of brushing, polishing and
refining to the smallest details.
This would mean the iPhone 5s will now be a luxury
object without sacrificing on its cutting edge
technology, now how about that for some much
needed bling in your inventory? It is a no-brainer
then that this is a limited edition handset, where
only 50 of these puppies will be produced. You will
be able to pick up Hadoro’s massive gold iPhone 5s
in yellow or red gold, with the starting asking price
of 55,000 Euros. The first specimens, however, will
be available in the Collette Store that is located in
Paris, France.

Samsung Galaxy Tab designed for education purposes

It seems that the folks over at Samsung are not in
any danger at all of running out of ideas when it
comes to the Samsung Galaxy Tab range. In fact,
Samsung has recently announced a new Galaxy Tab
which was exclusively designed for education
purposes. This particular tablet was introduced at
FETC, where it will play nice with Google Play for
Education. This new Galaxy Tab has been
exclusively developed for education, where it will be
made available for K-12 school deployments for the
2014-2015 academic year. It will be introduced as
part of the Google Play for Education program,
where this classroom-ready, 10.1” tablet will be able
to offer simple set up as well as device
management, in addition to access to curated
educational content, and other features which will
support dynamic, digital teaching and learning.
This particular education-specific Galaxy Tab tablet
has been specially designed for integration with
Google Play for Education, alongside Google’s
content store for K-12 schools. With Google Play for
Education, educators will be able to enjoy access to
a wide selection of teacher-approved apps , books,
and videos, so that they are able to deliver a more
engaging and personalized learning experience to
individual students. Teachers too, are able to
perform a search for content by grade, subject and
standard (including Common Core), make purchases
using a pre-loaded school PO instead of a credit
card, and deliver content to students’ tablets in a
matter of seconds.
This particular Galaxy Tab for Education would offer
students a 10.1” WXGA display, where one would be
able to enjoy an exceptional viewing experience with
a 16:10 aspect ratio that makes it perfect for
viewing educational content. This particular tablet
will also run on the most recent version of Android
4.4 KitKat, sports WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity,
front and back cameras, the inclusion of Near Field
Communications (NFC) technology, making it a jiffy
to set up a classroom of devices with a few taps.