University of Cambridge Archives

November 18, 2023November 18, 2023 by Matt Williams

Under Some Conditions, Comets Could Deliver Organic Molecules to Planets

This artwork shows a rocky planet being bombarded by comets. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, the planets of the inner Solar System experienced many impacts from comets and asteroids that originated in the outer Solar System. This is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) period when (according to theory) the migration of the giant planets kicked asteroids and comets out of their regular orbits, sending them hurtling towards Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. This bombardment is believed to have distributed water to the inner Solar System and maybe the building blocks of life itself.

According to new research from the University of Cambridge, comets must travel slowly – below 15 km/s (9.32 mi/s) – to deliver organic material onto other planets. Otherwise, the essential molecules would not survive the high speed and temperatures generated by atmospheric entry and impact. As the researchers found, such comets are only likely to occur in tightly bound systems where planets orbit closely to each other. Their results show that these systems would be a good place to look for evidence of life (biosignatures) beyond the Solar System.

October 19, 2023October 19, 2023 by Matt Williams

Thinking About Time Travel Helps Solve Problems in Physics

Physicists have shown that simulating models of hypothetical time travel can solve experimental problems that appear impossible to solve using standard physics. Credit: Yaroslav Kushta via Getty Images

Time travel. We’ve all thought about it at one time or another, and the subject has been explored extensively in science fiction. Once in a while, it is even the subject of scientific research, typically involving quantum mechanics and how the Universe’s four fundamental forces (electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces, and gravity) fit together. In a recent experiment, researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that by manipulating quantum entanglements, they could simulate what could happen if the flow of time were reversed.

December 22, 2021December 22, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

Life Could Make Habitable Pockets in Venus’ Atmosphere

Venus' thick clouds mean that only radar imaging can reveal surface details. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The tantalizing possibility that life exists in the clouds of Venus is once again causing a stir amongst planetary scientists this week. Researchers out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cardiff University, and the University of Cambridge have proposed that some longstanding ‘anomalies’ in the composition of Venus’ atmosphere might be explained by the presence of ammonia. But ammonia itself would be a strange compound to discover there, unless some unknown process – such as biological life – was actively producing it. Perhaps more intriguingly, ammonia can remove the acidity from Venus’ hostile cloud-tops, suggesting that an airborne, ammonia-producing microbe might have evolved the ability to turn its hostile surroundings into something habitable.

January 23, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Don’t Tell Bones: Are We One Step Closer to “Beaming Up?”

It’s a crazy way to travel, spreading a man’s molecules all over the Universe…

While we’re still a very long way off from instantly transporting from ship to planet à la Star Trek, scientists are still relentlessly working on the type of quantum technologies that could one day make this sci-fi staple a possibility. Just recently, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK have reported ways to simplify the instantaneous transmission of quantum information using less “entanglement,” thereby making the process more efficient — as well as less error-prone.

(Because nobody wants a transporter mishap.)

In a paper titled Generalized teleportation and entanglement recycling, Cambridge researchers Sergii Strelchuk, Michal Horodecki and Jonathan Oppenheim investigate a couple of previously-developed protocols for quantum teleportation.

“Teleportation lies at the very heart of quantum information theory, being the pivotal primitive in a variety of tasks. Teleportation protocols are a way of sending an unknown quantum state from one party to another using a resource in the form of an entangled state shared between two parties, Alice and Bob, in advance. First, Alice performs a measurement on the state she wants to teleport and her part of the resource state, then she communicates the classical information to Bob. He applies the unitary operation conditioned on that information to obtain the teleported state.” (Strelchuk et al.)

In order for the teleportation to work, the process relies on entanglement — the remote connection between particles or individual bits of information regardless of the physical space separating them. This was what Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance.” But getting particles or information packets entangled is no simple task.

“Teleportation crucially depends on entanglement, which can be thought as a ‘fuel’ powering it,” Strelchuk said in an article on ABC Science. “This fuel… is hard to generate, store and replenish. Finding a way to use it sparingly, or, ideally, recycling it, makes teleportation potentially more usable.”

Read: Beam Me Up, Obama: Conspiracy Theory Claims President Teleported to Mars

Considering the sheer amount of information that makes up the also-difficult-to-determine state of a single object (in the case of a human, even simplistically speaking, about 10^28 kilobytes worth of data) you’re obviously going to want to keep the amount of entanglement fuel needed at a minimum.

Of course, we’re not saying we can teleport red-shirted security officers anywhere yet. But if.

Still, with a more efficient method to reduce — and even recycle — entanglement, Strelchuk and his team are bringing us a little closer to making quantum computing a reality. And it may very well take the power of a quantum computer to even make the physical teleportation of large-scale objects possible… once the technology becomes available.

“We are very excited to show that recycling works in theory, and hope that it will find future applications in areas such as quantum computation,” said Strelchuk. “Building a quantum computer is one of the great challenges of modern physics, and it is hoped that the new teleportation protocol will lead to advances in this area.”

(I’m sure Dr. McCoy would still remain skeptical.)

You can find the team’s full paper here (chock full of maths!) and read the article on ABC Science by Stephen Pincock here.