AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 | SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.

COM

Space&Physics

Plus:

The Universe Next stop: Venus

in Glorious The imminent

quantum
Internet
X-rays Rarely seen
A NEW TELESCOPE IS POISED Apollo 11
TO CREATE A MAP images
OF BLACK HOLES
AND HUNDREDS OF WITH COVERAGE FROM

THOUSANDS OF STARS
FROM
THE SPACE
EDITOR &PHYSICS
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Matters!
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of this digital magazine.
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LIZ TORMES

A Whole New View

In 1800 astronomer William Herschel kicked off more than a century of discovery when he detected infrared radiation.
It was the first observation of electromagnetic radiation other than visible light and the first verification that there is
more in the universe than humans can see with their eyes. In fact, the human eye perceives only about 0.0035 percent
of the total electromagnetic radiation in the universe. Therefore, with all our light-based telescopes, on Earth and in
space, we observe a mere fraction of the radiation that fills the cosmos. To literally expand our field of view, several

© ROSCOSMOS / DLR / LAVOCHKIN ASSOCIATION / MPE / IKI

space missions have gathered data on the universe in x-rays, ultraviolet rays, gamma rays, and so on. Davide Castelvec-
chi reports on an exciting telescope launched this summer that will collect high-energy x-rays from the universe, with
aims to create a 3-D map of never before seen supermassive black holes and some 700,000 stars. It gives a new
definition to the term “eye-opening” (see “New Space Telescope Will Map the Universe in High-Energy X-rays”).

Elsewhere in this issue, Anil Ananthaswamy covers the recent breakthroughs that are bringing a quantum Internet
closer to reality (see “The Quantum Internet Is Emerging, One Experiment at a Time”). And Shannon Hall writes
about the growing momentum for renewed explorations of Venus (see “Venus, Earth’s Evil Twin, Beckons Space
Agencies”). In our own cosmic backyard and beyond, there is so much more to see.
On the Cover
An artist’s illustration of the
German-Russian telescope called
Andrea Gawrylewski SRG, which will detect millions of
Senior Editor, Collections new supermassive black holes,
[email protected] and hundreds of thousands of stars.

2
 WHAT’S August-September
2019

INSIDE
Volume 2 • No. 9

NASA(3)
FEATURES OPINION
NASA, JPL-CALTECH AND MSSS

12. 38.
New Space Telescope Will Map the Spin-Swapping
Universe in High-Energy X-rays Particles Could Be
A German-Russian mission called SRG will detect “Quantum Cheshire
millions of supermassive black holes, many new to Cats”
science, and hundreds of thousands of stars A proposed experiment
NEWS 16. to swap fundamental
4. The Quantum Internet Is Emerging, properties between
Mars Rover Detects One Experiment at a Time photons carries profound
“Excitingly Huge” Breakthrough demonstrations using defective implications for our
Methane Spike diamonds, high-flying drones, laser-bathed crystals understanding of reality
NASA’s Curiosity rover and other exotica suggest practical, unhackable itself
reports the highest-ever quantum networks are within reach 43.
reading of the gas at the 20. Cosmology Has Some
planet’s surface Venus, Earth’s Evil Twin, Beckons Big Problems
5. Space Agencies The field relies on a
The Universe’s First Once a water-rich Eden, the hellish planet conceptual framework that
Stars Exploded in could reveal how to find habitable worlds has trouble accounting for
Strange Ways around distant stars new observations
A new study finds 25. 46.
NASA AND JPL-CALTECH

observational evidence Interview: The Once and Future Moon Which Should Come
that one of the first Oliver Morton discusses his new book about First in Physics: Theory
stars exploded in an how art, science and politics have shaped past, or Experiment?
asymmetrical blast that present and planned voyages to Earth’s nearest Plans for giant particle
spread heavy elements celestial neighbor accelerators of the future
into the cosmos 29. focus attention on how
7. 9. 10. The Unseen Apollo 11 scientific discoveries are
Gravitational Waves China Reveals What Happened to Much of the treasure trove of Apollo 11 images really made
Hint at a Black Hole Scientific All of the Universe’s is rarely shown 49.
Eating a Neutron Star Experiments for Antimatter? 51. The Problem with
LIGO and Virgo Next Space Station Differences between Celestial Movement Quantum Computers
observatories have Projects will probe topics matter and antimatter The sky is always changing. To appreciate this It’s called decoherence—but
spotted ripples from including DNA mutation, could help explain why ever-changing view, grab these sky maps, while a breakthrough
what could be the first- fire behavior and the the cosmos mostly go outside at night and look up! solution seems years away,
ever detection of this birth of stars lacks the latter today, Sky maps: August, p. 54; September, p. 55. there are ways of getting
long-sought event researchers say around it

3
NEWS

Mars Rover Detects

“Excitingly Huge”
Methane Spike
NASA’s Curiosity rover reports the
highest-ever reading of the gas at
the planet’s surface

NASA’S CURIOSITY ROVER has

measured the highest level of
methane gas ever found in the
atmosphere at Mars’s surface. The
reading taken in June at Gale
Crater—21 parts per billion—is three
times greater than the previous A self-portrait of
NASA’s Curiosity rover,
record, which Curiosity detected which is exploring Gale
back in 2013. Crater on Mars.
Planetary scientists avidly track

NASA, JPL-CALTECH AND MSSS

methane on Mars because its reactions involving rocks. Various Curiosity has measured methane The latest measurement is “excit-
presence could be a sign of life on spacecraft and telescopes have many times since it landed in Gale ingly huge,” says Oleg Korablev, a
the Red Planet. On Earth, most spotted methane on Mars over the Crater in 2012. The level is typically physicist at the Space Research
methane is produced by living things, past 16 years, but the gas doesn’t low, often in the parts per trillion Institute in Moscow. He runs one of
although the gas can also come from appear in any predictable pattern— range, and seems to rise and fall as the methane-sniffing instruments on
geological sources such as chemical deepening the mystery of its origin. Martian seasons change. the European-Russian Trace Gas

4
 NEWS

Orbiter (TGO). The spacecraft

launched in 2016 to solve the The Universe’s First
mystery of methane on Mars, but so Stars Exploded in
far it has not spotted any of the
elusive gas.
Strange Ways
One explanation for that could be A new study finds observational
evidence that one of the first stars
that methane is diluted or destroyed
exploded in an asymmetrical
as it rises higher in the atmosphere,
blast that spread heavy elements
says Michael Mumma, a planetary into the cosmos
scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Orbiting spacecraft such as the TGO THE EXPLOSIONS THAT blew apart
are best suited to measure methane the universe’s first stars are shroud-
many kilometers above the surface. ed in mystery. These energetic
The TGO is now searching for blasts are inherently difficult to
methane in the atmosphere high re-create in computer simulations,
above Gale Crater. So, too, is the even using modern computing
European Space Agency’s Mars power. “It’s one of the hardest
Express spacecraft, the other Mars physics problems out there,” says
orbiter that measures methane. Alexander Ji, an astrophysicist at the
NASA is extending Curiosity’s stay Carnegie Observatories in Pasade-
at its current location in the crater—a na, Calif. Furthermore, he notes that Puppis A, the
remnants of a
spot called Teal Ridge. Agency researchers still lack an answer to a supernova that
scientists were scheduled to run a simple question: What types of stars exploded 12,000
follow-up methane experiment to see do—and do not—explode? years ago.

whether they can confirm high levels Scientists often assume the first
of methane but have not yet released stars ended their lives as spherical multiple directions. The explosion study, but his former doctoral adviser

NASA, JPL-CALTECH AND UCLA

their results. supernovae. A team of researchers, flung forth jets powerful enough to is one of its authors.)
This article is reproduced with however, just presented the first propel heavy elements forged in the The paper is part of a major push to
permission and was first published observational evidence that at least blast into neighboring galaxies, the study the properties of the first stars,
in Nature on June 24, 2019. one of these ephemeral fireballs researchers note in a study pub- which has been a hot topic for the
—Alexandra Witze instead exploded aspherically, lished on May 8 in the Astrophysical past decade, says Volker Bromm, an
spewing its contents out unevenly in Journal. (Ji was not involved in the astronomer at the University of Texas

5
 NEWS

at Austin, who also was not involved ing its elemental abundances themselves, much of the iron from is about five to 10 times more
in the study. The idea that jets spew required the use of the Cosmic their cores fell back into the resulting energetic than previously thought.
out of exploding stars, slinging Origins Spectrograph aboard the black holes, she notes. Zinc is also The study provides new evidence that
heavy elements into neighboring Hubble Space Telescope—one of formed in the cores of these ancients, the explosions of the universe’s first
galaxies and seeding the next the most sensitive instruments however, leading the team to wonder stars may have contributed to the
generation of stars, is not new. available. “This is a beautiful paper,” how the element escaped this black universe’s reionization—an important
Researchers have even previously Bromm says, noting that this type of hole fate. milestone in the early cosmos when
theorized the occurrence of this stellar sleuthing is possible only with This oddity can be explained by an neutral atoms became charged—and
phenomenon in the first generation very high-quality data. aspherical explosion of the superno- played a critical role in the develop-
of stars. Still, this study is the first toThe team members expected to va, Ezzeddine says. The resulting ment of galaxies.
find observational evidence of it in find the presence of silicon, iron and jets could fling the core’s zinc away John Wise, a computational
one of these early stars. phosphorus in the spectrum, but from a black hole while also allowing astrophysicist at the Georgia
their discovery of a different element most of its iron to fall back into one. Institute of Technology who is
A SPECIAL STAR was a shocker. For the first time, To explore this theory, the research- currently studying how metals
Because the first stars—short-lived they found zinc in a second-genera- ers ran over 10,000 computer propagated from the first generation
giants that all died long ago—are not tion star, Ezzeddine says—and not simulations of exploding supernovae of stars to the second, says this
available to study directly, Rana just a little, but a lot. Stunned by this with different explosion energies study has already inspired him to
Ezzeddine, an astronomer at the M.I.T. finding, which could signal that more and configurations. Remarkably, they modify his methodology for that
Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and heavy elements were available in the discovered that none of the spheri- project. “Now we have some motiva-
Space Research and the lead author early universe than previously cal supernovae explosions could tion to look at aspherical superno-
on the study, and her colleagues thought, the researchers repeated produce the observed zinc signal. vae,” he says. Researchers do not
studied the abundances of iron and their analysis. With every check, their Furthermore, they found just one yet know whether the likely aspheri-
other elements found in a sec- zinc finding persisted. aspherical supernova explosion that cal explosion of the supernova
ond-generation star called HE could yield the observed zinc signal preceding HE 1327-2326 was a
1327-2326. It belongs to a rare ELEMENTAL SURPRISE and other characteristics of HE rarity or a common occurrence. They
group of about 25 to 30 ancient stars This finding turned the project on its 1327-2326. still wonder whether the bulk of
that contain very low amounts of iron. head. Researchers already knew why This led them to another surprise: supernova explosions from the first
These stars arose out of elemental this star and others in its group do how powerful the asymmetrical generation were spherical or
seeds left behind by progenitor stars not contain much iron. Iron was supernova explosion could have been. aspherical. So, though it appears
from the first generation. formed in the cores of the massive Its explosiveness likely had about a they have approached a solution to
“Our star is very special, because it first stars that were the progenitors of nonillion times (10 with 30 zeroes one mystery about the first stars,
is also the brightest one” of that the metal-poor ones, Ezzeddine says. after it) the power of a hydrogen numerous others abound.
group, Ezzeddine says. Still, measur- When these first stars collapsed in on bomb, the researchers estimate—that —Rachel Crowell

6
 NEWS

Gravitational Waves
Hint at a Black Hole
Eating a Neutron
Star
LIGO and Virgo observatories
have spotted ripples from what
could be the first-ever detection of
this long-sought event

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES MAY have

just delivered the first sighting of a
black hole devouring a neutron star.
If confirmed, it would be the first
evidence of the existence of such An artist’s
rendition of a star
binary systems. The news came just throwing off a
a day after astronomers had detect- glowing stream of
debris as it is
ed gravitational waves from a disrupted by a
merger of two neutron stars for only supermassive
black hole.
the second time.
At 15:22:17 UTC on April 26, the
twin detectors of the Laser Interfer- have made a long-hoped-for detec- leaning toward a neutron star–black lower” than in many previous events,
ometer Gravitational-wave Observato- tion that could produce a wealth of hole” merger, says Chad Hanna, a he says. LIGO and Virgo had previ-
ry (LIGO) in the United States and cosmic information, from precise senior member of LIGO’s data-analy- ously caught gravitational waves—
the Virgo observatory in Italy reported tests of the general theory of relativity sis team and a physicist at Pennsylva- faint ripples in the fabric of space-
a burst of waves of an unusual type. to measuring the universe’s rate of nia State University in University Park. time—from two types of cataclysmic
Astronomers are still analyzing the expansion. Astronomers around the But the signal was not very strong, event: the mergers of two black holes,

NASA AND JPL-CALTECH

data and doing computer simulations world are also racing to observe the which means that it could be a fluke. and of two neutron stars. The latter
to interpret them. phenomenon using different types of “I think people should get excited are small but ultradense objects
But they are already considering telescopes. about it, but they should also be formed after the collapse of stars
the tantalizing prospect that they “I think that the classification is aware that the significance is much more massive than the sun.

7
 NEWS

The latest event, provisionally TWO AT ONCE of observing these events in multiple seconds after the event, an orbiting
labeled #S190426c, appears to have Astronomers were already working wavelengths. The alert of the April telescope had detected a burst of
occurred around 375 megaparsecs in overdrive when they spotted the 25 event came at 5:01 A.M. “I set it gamma rays—presumably released
(1.2 billion light-years) away, the potential black hole–neutron star up to send me a text message, and when the merged star collapsed into
LIGO-Virgo team calculated. The merger. At 08:18:26 UTC on April it woke me up,” he says. a black hole. And some 70 other
researchers have drawn a sky map, 25, another train of waves hit the A storm of activity swept the observatories were busy for months,
showing where the gravitational LIGO’s detector in Livingston, La., meeting, with astronomers who would watching the event unfold across the
waves are most likely to have origi- and Virgo. (At the time, LIGO’s normally compete with each other electromagnetic spectrum, from radio
nated, and sent this information out second machine, in Hanford, Wash., exchanging information as they sat waves to x-rays.
as a public alert, so that astronomers was briefly out of commission.) with their laptops around coffee If the April 26 event is not a black
around the world could begin search- That event was a clear-cut case of tables. “We’re losing our minds over hole–neutron star merger, it is
ing the sky for light from the event. two merging neutron stars, Hanna here at #EMMA2019,” tweeted probably also a collision of neutron
Matching gravitational waves to other says—nearly two years after the first astronomer Andy Howell. stars, which would bring the total
forms of radiation in this way can historic discovery of such an event But in this case, unlike many others, detections of this type up to three.
produce much more information was made in August 2017. LIGO and Virgo were unable to
about the event than either type of Researchers can usually make such significantly narrow down the direc- LONG-SOUGHT SYSTEM
data can alone. a call because the waves reveal the tion in the sky that the waves came But seeing a black hole sweep up a
Mansi Kasliwal, an astrophysicist at masses of the objects involved; from. The researchers could say only neutron star could produce a wealth
the California Institute of Technology objects roughly twice as heavy as the that the signal was from a wide of information that no other type of
in Pasadena, leads one of several sun are expected to be neutron stars. region that covers roughly one event can provide, says B. S.
projects designed to do this type of Based on the waves’ loudness, the quarter of the sky. They narrowed Sathyaprakash, a LIGO theoretical
follow-up work, called Global Relay of researchers also estimated that the down the region slightly the day after. physicist at Pennsylvania State. To
Observatories Watching Transients collision occurred some 150 mega- Still, astronomers had well-honed begin with, it confirms that these
Happen (GROWTH). Her team can parsecs (500 million light-years) away, machines for doing just this type of long-sought systems do exist,
commandeer robotic telescopes says Hanna. That was around three search, and the data they collected originating from binary stars of very
around the world. In this case, the times farther than the 2017 merger. the following night should ultimately different masses.
researchers immediately started up Iair Arcavi, an astrophysicist at Tel reveal the source, Kasliwal says. “If it And the orbits the two objects
one in India, where it was night time Aviv University who works on the Las existed in that region, there’s no way trace in the final phases of their
when the gravitational waves arrived. Cumbres Observatory, one of we would have missed it.” approach could be rather different
“If weather cooperates, I think in less GROWTH’s competitors, was in In the 2017 neutron-star merger, from those seen with pairs of black
than 24 hours we should have Baltimore, to attend a conference the combination of observations in holes. In the neutron star–black hole
coverage in almost the entire sky called Enabling Multi-Messenger different wavelengths produced a case, the more massive black hole
map,” she says. Astrophysics (EMMA)—the practice stupendous amount of science. Two would twist space around it as it

8
 NEWS

spins. “The neutron star will be

swirled around in a spherical orbit China Reveals
rather than a quasicircular orbit,”
Sathyaprakash says. For this reason,
Scientific
“neutron star–black hole systems Experiments for
can be more powerful test beds for Next Space Station
general relativity,” he says. Projects will probe topics including
Moreover, the gravitational waves DNA mutation, fire behavior and
and the companion observations the birth of stars
from astronomers could reveal what
happens in the final phases before
the merger. As tidal forces tear the CHINA HAS SELECTED nine scientif-
neutron star apart, they could help ic experiments—including a project
astrophysicists solve a long-standing that will probe how DNA mutates in A full-scale replica of the "Tianhe" core module for China's next space station, displayed during a
mystery: what state is matter in space—to fly on its first major space Chinese airshow in late 2018.
inside these ultracompact objects? station, scheduled to be completed in
The LIGO-Virgo collaboration 2022. topics to experiments that have flown the United Nations in Vienna, in a
began its current observing run on The China Manned Space Agency on the ISS since its launch in 1998, statement.
April 1 and had expected to see selected the projects, which involve including fluid and fire behavior, The experiments include an
roughly one merger of black holes scientists from 17 nations, from 42 biology and astronomy. Indian-Russian observatory called
per week and one of neutron stars hopefuls, in a process organized with Scientists working on the projects Spectroscopic Investigations of
per month. So far, those predictions the United Nations Office for Outer hail from spacefaring nations such as Nebular Gas, which will map dust
have been met—the observatories Space Affairs (UNOOSA). Russia, Japan and India, as well as clouds and star-forming regions of
have also seen several black hole China’s existing space laboratory, low- and middle-income countries, space using ultraviolet light. A group
mergers this month. “This is just Tiangong-2, which launched in including Kenya, Mexico and Peru— of European institutions, meanwhile,
amazing,” says Kasliwal. “The 2016, also hosts experiments, but the result of a special effort to will study how microgravity and
universe is fantastic.” the new space station will be bigger encourage participation from such radiation in space affect the mutation
This article is reproduced with and is intended to last longer. nations. “The cooperation takes into of DNA in human “organoids”—3-D

LONG WEI GETTY IMAGES

permission and was first published in Known as the China Space Station, account the special needs of devel- biological structures that mimic
Nature on April 26, 2019. ­ the outpost will be less than one oping countries, which were encour- organs. And a Saudi Arabian team
—Davide Castelvecchi quarter of the mass of the Interna- aged to submit joint project applica- will test how solar cells perform on
tional Space Station (ISS). tions with developed countries,” said the outside of the space station.
The science projects cover similar Wang Qun, China’s ambassador to Other winners include a detector

9
 NEWS

called POLAR-2, a more powerful

follow-up to a sensor launched on
Tiangong-2 to study the polarization
of energetic γ-ray bursts from distant
cosmic phenomena. POLAR-2, which
will be built by an international
collaboration, could even allow
astronomers to observe the weak
radiation associated with sources of
gravitational waves.
But none of the experiments come
from the United States, which since
2011 has forbidden NASA research-
ers from collaborating with China
without congressional approval. A
spokesperson for UNOOSA told
Nature that U.S. scientists were
eligible to take part and were involved
in several applications, but those matching antimatter version with the Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb)
experiment at CERN.
projects weren’t ultimately selected. What Happened to opposite charge. Physicists think the
The United States is planning to cut cosmos started out with just as much
its funding for the ISS from 2024, as
All of the Universe’s antimatter as matter, but most of the “Rencontres de Moriond” particle
it concentrates its space efforts on Antimatter? former got wiped out. Now they may physics conference in La Thuile, Italy,
building an outpost in the moon’s Differences between matter and be one step closer to knowing why. the physicists found that unstable
orbit from 2022. This could mean that antimatter could help explain why Researchers at the Large Hadron particles called D0 mesons (which
the Chinese space station becomes the cosmos mostly lacks the latter Collider Beauty (LHCb) experiment at contain charm quarks) decayed into
scientists’ only laboratory in low Earth today, researchers say CERN near Geneva have discovered more stable particles at a slightly
orbit from 2024. antimatter and matter versions of different rate than their antimatter
This article is reproduced with “charm” quarks—one of six types, or counterparts. Such differences could
permission and was first published in WE COULD HAVE BEEN living in an flavors, of a class of elementary help explain how an asymmetry arose
Nature on June 17, 2019. antimatter universe, but we are not. matter particles—acting differently between matter and antimatter after
—Elizabeth Gibney Antimatter is matter’s upside-down from one another. In a new study, the big bang, resulting in a universe

CERN
twin—every matter particle has a which was presented in March at the composed mostly of matter.

10
 NEWS

Matter and antimatter annihilate each other on

contact, and researchers believe such collisions
destroyed almost all of the antimatter (and a large
chunk of the matter) that initially existed in the
cosmos. But they do not understand why a relative-
ly small excess of matter survived to become the
stars and planets and the rest of the cosmos.
Consequently, physicists have been looking for a
kind of matter that behaves so differently from its
antimatter version that it would have had time to
generate this excess in the early universe.
The newly discovered mismatch in decay rates
between charm quarks and antiquarks turns out to
be too small to account for the universe’s excess of
matter. The result, however, “does bring us closer to
finding the answer because it shows one of the
possible answers may not be the right one,” says
theoretical physicist Yuval Grossman of Cornell
University, who was not involved in the new work. “I
am also excited because it’s the first time we’ve
ever seen this [phenomenon in charm quarks].”
Physicists previously found similar variations in
two other quark flavors, but those were also too
tiny to account for our matter-dominated universe.
Scientists are holding out hope of finding much
larger matter-antimatter differences elsewhere,
such as in ghostly particles called neutrinos or
reactions involving the Higgs boson—the particle
that gives others mass—says LHCb team member
Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University: “There are
lots of different searches going on.”
—Clara Moskowitz

11
New Space
Telescope
Will Map
the Universe
in High-
Energy

© ROSCOSMOS / DLR / LAVOCHKIN ASSOCIATION / MPE / IKI

X-rays
A German-Russian mission called SRG will
detect millions of supermassive black holes,
many new to science, and hundreds
of thousands of stars
By Davide Castelvecchi
12
 Davide Castelvecchi is a senior reporter at
Nature in London covering physics, astronomy,
mathematics and computer science.

“Have you seen your body in X-rays? It looks com- one called eROSITA (Extended Roentgen Survey with an
Imaging Telescope Array) and a Russian-built one called
pletely different,” says Rashid Sunyaev. “We will do the ART-XC (Astronomical Roentgen Telescope—X-ray Con-

same with the universe.” Sunyaev, an eminent Sovi- centrator), which is the first instrument of its kind in the
history of Russian and Soviet space research, says
et-born cosmologist at the Max Planck Institute for Mikhail Pavlinsky, a high-energy astrophysicist at the
Russian Academy of Sciences Space Research Institute
Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, could be about to in Moscow and principal investigator on ART-XC. “Now
we have a new chance to return to world-class science,”
get his long-held wish. he says.
The spacecraft lifted off on a Russian-built Proton-M
On July 13, a joint German–Russian mission called ture and history of the universe. SRG will map a cosmic rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) launched into space web of about 100,000 galactic clusters by detecting the X-ray sky surveys have been conducted by previous mis-
to chart an unprecedented map. It won’t be the first x-ray glow from their intergalactic plasma and from the sions, including one from Germany in the 1990s, called
space telescope sensitive to high-energy “hard” x-rays, plasma filaments that join them. The mission will also ROSAT. But that mission was sensitive only to “soft”
which offer astrophysicists a window into otherwise detect up to three million supermassive black holes— x-rays, with energies of about two kiloelectronvolts
faint objects in the universe. But it will be the first able many of which will be new to science—and x-rays from (keV). Existing missions, such as NASA’s Chandra X-ray
to create a full map of the sky in this part of the spec- as many as 700,000 stars in the Milky Way. Observatory and NuSTAR, can see higher-energy radia-
trum—one that will give researchers a new way to track “It’s going to be a great survey,” says x-ray astronomer tion and resolve tiny details of cosmic structures, but
the universe’s expansion and acceleration over the eons. Giuseppina Fabbiano of the Harvard–Smithsonian Cen- they see only small parts of the sky.
“Within a half year, we will cover the whole sky,” says ter for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. Its data will SRG’s two instruments each cover x-ray bands that
Peter Predehl, an x-ray astronomer at the Max Planck have a unique role in the field for a long time, she adds. stretch to much higher energies: 0.2 to 10 keV for eROS-
Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, also in Garching, ITA, and five to 30 keV for ART-XC. (Despite its name—
and a principal investigator for the mission. RUSSIAN RESURRECTION which was kept for historical reasons—SRG will not
SRG’s main scientific goal is cosmological: to create a For Russia, SRG represents one of the most significant detect gamma radiation.) Each instrument is a bundle of
3-D map of the cosmos that will reveal how the universe space science missions for decades, and it aims to bolster seven x-ray telescopes that will frame the same swath of
accelerates under the mysterious repulsive force called the country’s astrophysics community, which has suf- sky simultaneously; their combined power means that
dark energy. Cosmologists can probe this force through fered decades of cuts and brain drain. The mission car- they will collect more photons than a single telescope.
galactic clusters, whose distribution encodes the struc- ries two independent x-ray telescopes: a German-built X-ray photons from the sky are few and far between, so

13
An image of the x-ray sky, as
recorded by NASA's Neutron
star Interior Composition
Explorer (NICER) payload
aboard the International
Space Station (ISS). The arcs
are an artifact of NICER’s
observations, produced when
the instrument slews to track
bright x-ray sources as the
ISS moves into Earth’s shad-
ow. New observations from
the upcoming German-Rus-
sian SRG mission will create
a more detailed and robust
all-sky x-ray map.

NASA AND NICER

14
the telescopes’ semiconductor-based sensors—high-
er-energy versions of the sensors in ordinary digital
“So far, the
cameras—will also be able to estimate the amount of dark matter
energy contained in individual photons. explanation is still on
During its planned four-year mission, SRG will map
the entire sky eight times, and researchers will compare the table” as a
the maps and look for changes. For instance, some of the potential cause of the
supermassive black holes at galactic centers become
extremely bright when they devour matter at a high rate
x-ray signal.
and then go back to relative quiescence. Although most —Esra Bulbul
soft x-rays from these black holes are likely to be
absorbed by surrounding dust, harder x-rays should get
through, says Pavlinsky. ART-XC might see the objects including Sunyaev—with his mentors Yakov Zeldovich
appearing and then disappearing again from one year to and Andrei Sacharov—proposed a major mission using
the next, providing information about how black holes hard x-rays, but plans were canceled after the Soviet
consume matter. “We wish to observe several thousand Union fell in 1991.
of these events during these four years,” Sunyaev says. The European and Russian space agencies revived the
SRG will also investigate the universe’s distrubtion of idea in 2004, but a proposal to send an x-ray telescope to
ordinary matter and dark matter—the main engine of the International Space Station was scrapped when
galaxy formation—and look for direct hints as to the NASA whittled down its space shuttle program, ultimate-
nature of dark matter particles. It will do this by trying ly ending it in 2011. The German space agency and Ros-
to confirm previous signals that showed peaks in x-ray cosmos later approved a joint mission, and more ambi-
emissions from some galactic centers, which some tious design, in 2009.
researchers have suggested come from the decay of an “There have been many, many ups and down until the
unknown, heavier relative of the known subatomic par- whole thing really came out of the woods,” says Predehl.
ticles called neutrinos. These neutrinos could be a major Unusually, the mission has a special data arrangement
component of dark matter, they suggest—although this that aims to support Russia’s small astrophysics commu-
interpretation is controversial. “So far, the dark matter nity. Instead of putting the data in one repository, as is
explanation is still on the table” as a potential cause of typical for such missions, German researchers will store
the x-ray signal, says Esra Bulbul, an astrophysicist at and analyze data on one half of the sky (the part west of
the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the galactic center) and Russian scientists will do the
a lead scientist on the mission. same with the other half, giving them dedicated time to
work on the data, says Sunyaev. The mission will later
A LONG TIME COMING open the data to other researchers.
A hard x-ray space mission has long been on the cards for This article is reproduced with permission and was
Russian and German astrophysicists: SRG’s roots stretch first published in Nature on June 11, 2019.
back to the Soviet Union. In 1987, leading astrophysicists,

15
The Quantum
Internet Is
Emerging, One
Experiment
at a Time
Breakthrough
demonstrations
using defective
diamonds,
high-flying
drones, laser-
bathed crystals
and other exotica
suggest practical,
unhackable
quantum
networks are
within reach
By Anil Ananthaswamy

OLENA OSTAPENKO GETTY IMAGES

16
T
Anil Ananthaswamy is the author of The Edge of
Physics, The Man Who Wasn't There and, most
recently, Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant
Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our
Quantum Reality.

TODAY’S INTERNET IS A PLAYGROUND FOR HACKERS. Optics and Quantum Information in Innsbruck, Austria. Bob, who measures the qubits (Alice and Bob first
From insecure communication links to inadequately Lanyon’s team is part of Europe’s Quantum Internet appeared in a 1978 paper on public key cryptography and
guarded data in the cloud, vulnerabilities are every- Alliance, coordinated by Stephanie Wehner at the Delft have now become placeholders for nodes in a quantum
where. But if quantum physicists have their way, such University of Technology in the Netherlands, which is network). Only for certain types of measurements will
weaknesses will soon go the way of the dodo. tasked with creating a quantum network. Europe is Bob get the same value that Alice encoded in the qubits.
They want to build quantum networks sporting full- competing with similar national efforts in China—which Alice and Bob can compare notes over a public channel
blown quantumness, where information is created, in 2016 launched Micius, a quantum communications to figure out what those measurements are, without actu-
stored and moved around in ways that mirror the bizarre satellite—as well as in the United States. Last December, ally sharing the qubit values. They can then use those pri-
behavior of the quantum world—think of the metaphor- the U.S. government enacted the National Quantum Ini- vate values to create a secret shared key to encrypt clas-
ical cats that can be both dead and alive or particles that tiative Act, which will lavishly fund a number of research sical messages. Crucially, if an intruder were to intercept
can exert “spooky action at a distance.” Freed from many hubs dedicated to quantum technologies, including the qubits, Alice and Bob could detect the intrusion, dis-
limitations of “classical” networks, these systems could quantum computers and networks. “The main feature card the qubits and start over—theoretically continuing
provide a level of privacy, security and computational of a quantum network is that you are sending quantum until no one is eavesdropping on the quantum channel.
clout that is impossible to achieve with today’s information instead of classical information,” says Delft In July last year, Alberto Boaron of the University of
Internet. University’s Ronald Hanson. Classical information deals Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues reported distribut-
Although a fully realized quantum network is still a in bits that have values of either 0 or 1. Quantum infor- ing secret keys using QKD over a record distance of more
far-off vision, recent breakthroughs in transmitting, mation, however, uses quantum bits, or qubits, which than 400 kilometers of optical fiber, at 6.5 kilobits per
storing and manipulating quantum information have can be in a superposition of both 0 and 1 at the same second. In contrast, commercially available systems,
convinced some physicists that a simple proof-of-princi- time. Qubits can be encoded, for example, in the polar- such as the one sold by the Geneva-based company ID
ple is imminent. ization states of a photon or in the spin states of elec- Quantique, provide QKD over 50 kilometers of fiber.
From defects in diamonds and crystals that help pho- trons and atomic nuclei.
tons change color to drones that serve as spooky net- ALICE AND BOB GET SPOOKY
work nodes, researchers are using a smorgasbord of QUANTUM NETWORKING Ideally, quantum networks will do more than QKD. The
exotic materials and techniques in this quantum quest. In what Hanson calls the “low hanging fruit of quantum next step would be to transfer quantum states directly
The first stage, many say, would be a quantum network networks,” qubits are already being used for creating between nodes. Whereas qubits encoded using a photon’s
using standard optical fiber to connect at least three secret keys—random strings of 0s and 1s—that can then polarization can be sent over optical fibers (as is done
small quantum devices about 50 to 100 kilometers apart. be used to encode classical information, an application with QKD), using such qubits to transfer large amounts
Such a network may be built in the next five years, called quantum key distribution (QKD). of quantum information is problematic. Photons can get
according to Ben Lanyon of the Institute for Quantum QKD involves one party, say Alice, sending qubits to scattered or absorbed along the way or may simply fail to

17
register in a detector, making for an unreliable transmis-
sion channel. Fortunately, there is a more robust way to
“We are now building two of these nodes. We’ll use glass
exchange quantum information—via the use of another fiber that’s already in the ground to entangle these two
property of quantum systems, called entanglement.
When two particles or quantum systems interact, they
nitrogen-vacancy centers.”
can get entangled. Once entangled, both systems are —Ronald Hanson
described by a single quantum state, so measuring the
state of one system instantly influences the state of the
other, even if they are kilometers apart. Einstein called
entanglement “spooky action at a distance,” and it is an ing the entanglement. how to entangle a different type of matter node with a
invaluable resource for quantum networks. Imagine two Unfortunately, the trapped ion emits a photon at a telecom-wavelength photon. They used a defect in dia-
network nodes, Alice and Bob, each made of some isolat- wavelength of 854 nanometers (nm), which does not last mond called a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center. The defect
ed bit of matter (the most obvious and reliable substrate long inside an optical fiber. So, Lanyon’s team sent the arises when a nitrogen atom replaces a carbon atom in
for encoding and storing quantum states). Such “matter emitted photon into something called a nonlinear crys- the gem’s crystalline structure, leaving a vacancy in the
nodes” can become entangled with each other via a pro- tal being pumped with a powerful laser. The entire inter- crystal lattice adjacent to the nitrogen atom. The team
cess that involves the exchange of entangled photons. action converts the incoming photon into another of used lasers to manipulate the spin of one “free” electron
Using entangled matter nodes, Alice can exploit her “telecom” wavelength, one well suited for optical fibers. in the diamond NV center, placing the electron in a
share of the entanglement to send an entire qubit to The Innsbruck team then injected this photon into a superposition of spin states, thus encoding one qubit.
Bob, without actually transmitting a physical qubit, 50-kilometer-long section of optical fiber. Once it reached The process also results in the emission of a photon. The
making the transfer foolproof and secure. The key here the other end, they tested the ion and the photon to see photon is in a superposition of being emitted in one of
is that once entanglement is established between the if they were still entangled. They were. two consecutive time slots. “The photon is always there,
nodes, the protocol to transfer qubits from Alice to Bob but in a superposition of being emitted early or late,”
is robust and deterministic. SWAPPING ENTANGLEMENTS says Hanson. The qubit stored in the electron’s spin and
But to do this across long distances, one first needs to Lanyon’s team now wants to entangle two trapped ion the qubit stored in the photon’s presence or absence in
distribute the entanglement—usually via standard fiber- nodes that are 100 kilometers apart. Each node would the time slots are now entangled.
optic networks. In January, Lanyon’s team in Innsbruck transmit an entangled photon through 50 kilometers of In 2015, the Delft team placed two spatially separated
reported setting the record for creating entanglement optical fiber to a station in the middle. There, the pho- matter nodes made of diamond NV centers about 1.3
between matter and light over 50 kilometers of optical tons would be measured in such a way that they lose kilometers apart, linked by optical fiber. The team then
fiber. entanglement with their respective ions, causing the ions transmitted an entangled photon from each node to a
For matter, Lanyon’s team used a so-called trapped themselves to get entangled with each other. As a conse- point roughly midway on the path between these two
ion—a single calcium ion confined to an optical cavity quence, the two nodes, 100 kilometers apart, will each nodes. There, the team swapped the entanglement, caus-
using electromagnetic fields. When manipulated with form a quantum link via a pair of entangled qubits. The ing the two NV centers to become entangled. But, just as
lasers, the ion ends up encoding a qubit as a superposi- entire process is called entanglement swapping. with Lanyon’s experiment, the photons emitted by the
tion of two energy states, while also emitting a photon, Although relatively inefficient for now, Lanyon calls the Delft team’s apparatus have a wavelength of 637 nm.
with a qubit encoded in its polarization states. The qubits setup “a good start” for developing better, faster swap- Such photons are terrible travelers when injected into
in the ion and the photon are entangled. The task: to ping systems. optical fibers, diminishing in intensity by an order of
send this photon through an optical fiber while preserv- Meanwhile, Hanson’s team at Delft has demonstrated magnitude for every kilometer they travel. “It makes it

18
impossible to go beyond a few kilometers,” says Hanson.
So, in May, the Delft team reported a remedy similar to
“It’s always good to be able to
that developed by the Innsbruck team, also using nonlin- connect different hybrid systems.”
ear crystals and lasers to convert the photon to telecom
—Marcelli Grimau Puigbert
wavelengths. In this approach, the qubits encoded by the
NV center and telecom-wavelength photon remained
entangled, setting the stage for entanglement swapping
between two diamond NV center nodes. rials. They started with a source that emits a pair of 200 meters apart on the ground. The experiment used a
Although they have not yet transmitted a diamond-en- entangled photons, one at a wavelength of 794 nm and classical communication link between the nodes to con-
tangled telecom-wavelength photon through any signif- the other at 1,535 nm. The 794-nm photon interacts with firm that the photons they received were indeed entan-
icant length of optical fiber, Hanson is confident that a lithium-niobate crystal doped with thulium, so that the gled. The experiment succeeded in significantly varying
they can do so and then entangle diamond NV centers photon’s state becomes stored in the crystal. The 1,535- conditions, working in sunlight and in darkness and
30 kilometers apart using entanglement swapping. “We nm photon goes into an erbium-doped fiber, which also even on rainy nights. If such drones can be scaled up and
are now building two of these nodes,” he says. “We’ll use stores the quantum state. installed on high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles, the
glass fiber that’s already in the ground to entangle these Both memories were designed to reemit photons at a distance between the nodes on the ground can extend to
two NV centers.” Their next goal is to entangle nodes particular time. The team analyzed those reemitted pho- about 300 kilometers, the authors write.
using the preexisting fiber infrastructure among three tons and showed that they remained entangled. This, in Challenges remain in the march toward a fully func-
cities in the Netherlands, where distances are amenable turn, implies that the quantum memories were also tioning quantum network. Reliable quantum memories
to such state-of-the-art experiments. entangled just prior to emitting those photons, thus pre- are one. Another important missing piece is the ability
serving entanglement over time. to extend the reach of a quantum link to arbitrarily long
MIX AND MATCH: The photon wavelengths were also designed to distances, using so-called quantum repeaters. Quantum
THE CHALLENGE AHEAD cross-connect different transmission systems: optical states cannot be simply copied and regurgitated, as is
The Innsbruck and Delft teams each worked with only fibers on one end (1,535 nm) and satellite communica- done with classical information. Quantum nodes will
one type of matter for storing and entangling qubits. But tions on the other (794 nm). The latter is important need sophisticated quantum logic gates to ensure that
real-life quantum networks may use different types of because if quantum networks are to go intercontinental, entanglement is preserved in the face of losses due to
materials in each node, depending on the exact task at entanglement will need to be distributed via satellites. In interaction with the environment. “It’s definitely one of
hand—for example, quantum computation or quantum 2017, a team led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Sci- the next big challenges,” says Lanyon.
sensing. And quantum nodes, besides manipulating ence and Technology of China in Hefei used Micius, Chi- Nonetheless, the basic elements are falling into place
qubits, may also have to store them for brief periods, in na’s quantum satellite, to distribute entanglement for building a quantum network that connects at least
so-called quantum memories. between ground stations on the Tibetan Plateau and three cities—and, perhaps, eventually the world. “We
“It’s still not clear what’s going to be the right platform southwest China. now have platforms with which we can start to explore
and the right protocol,” says Marcelli Grimau Puigibert Satellites, however, seem destined to remain an expen- true quantum networks for the first time,” says Hanson.
of the University of Basel in Switzerland. “It’s always sive, niche option of last resort for quantum networks. More sophisticated networks beckon. “There’s no guar-
good to be able to connect different hybrid systems.” The next best choice may be relatively inexpensive antee. There’s only promise there [of ] the cool stuff we’ll
To this end, Puigibert, working with Wolfgang Tittel’s drones. In May, Shi-Ning Zhu of Nanjing University and be able to do if we succeed.”
team at the University of Calgary, recently showed how colleagues reported that they had used a 35-kilogram
to entangle qubits stored in two different types of mate- drone to send entangled photons to two quantum nodes

19
 Venus,
Earth’s
Evil Twin,
Beckons
Space
Agencies
Once a water-rich Eden,
the hellish planet could
reveal how to find
habitable worlds
around distant stars
By Shannon Hall

Venus silhouetted against

the sun, as seen by Japan’s
Hinode spacecraft in 2012.
The planet’s atmosphere
appears as a thin,
glowing crescent on the
disk’s upper left.

JAXA, NASA AND HINODE

20
 Shannon Hall is an award-winning freelance
science journalist based in the Rocky Mountains.
She specializes in writing about astronomy, geology
and the environment.

T
he helicopter fell like a stone. It sian space agency Roscosmos is working in collaboration
with the United States to send a daring mission to the
dropped by more than 1,500 meters over planet any time from 2026 to 2033, which would include

Md, twisting slightly as the ground grew an orbiter, a lander that would send back short-term
readings and a research station that would survive for
rapidly closer. Although this was all much longer.
The newfound interest stands in stark contrast to the
according to plan, that didn’t settle James fact that nations have long overlooked Venus in favor of
chasing Mars, asteroids and other planets. Over the past
Garvin’s nerves. Nor did the realization 65 years, for example, NASA has sent 11 orbiters and eight

that his seat belt wasn’t fully fastened—a moment that sent landers to Mars, but just two orbiters to Venus—and
none since 1994. This has not been for lack of scientific
his heart rate skyrocketing. interest. Since the mid-1990s, U.S. scientists alone have
submitted nearly 30 Venus proposals to NASA. None has
Then, a mere six meters above the ground, the ride got researchers would love to get their hands on pictures of been approved.
even wilder when the pilots pulled the aircraft out of the Venus with so much detail that the scenery would become But momentum is building to explore Venus, in part
fall and climbed skywards, only to fall again. The helicop- familiar. “These images would be like you landing in your because scientists say it could hold the secret to under-
ter dropped 10 times that day. And each time, Garvin backyard,” he says. standing what makes a planet habitable. Once Earth’s
pointed a camera toward the ground through the open Garvin is not the only scientist preparing such a dar- twin, today Venus is a hellish abode where surface tem-
door in an attempt to measure the topography of a rock ing mission. Nearly every space agency around the globe peratures reach more than 400 degrees Celsius, atmo-
quarry below—from massive boulders to smooth sheets is currently sketching a proposal to explore our long-ne- spheric pressures slam down with enough force to crush
of sand. Although his interests were hardly terrestrial. glected neighbor. The Indian Space Research Organiza- heavy machinery and clouds of sulfuric acid blow
Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space tion (ISRO) will be the first to lift off when it launches an through the sky. If researchers could decipher why con-
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is the principal investi- orbiter to Venus in 2023. The United States could follow ditions on Venus turned so deadly, that would help them
gator on a proposed mission to Venus that would drop a close behind. Garvin and his colleagues are one of a to assess whether life might exist on some of the thou-
probe through its atmosphere. That’s why he hired two handful of groups that will soon propose missions to sand-plus rocky worlds that astronomers are discovering
pilots in August 2016 to plunge a helicopter toward the NASA that, if selected, would take off in 2025. The Euro- throughout the galaxy.
ground while he tested what a Venus probe might be able pean Space Agency (ESA) is currently considering a pro- As the scientific justification has grown for exploring
to photograph. The harrowing ride was worth it: posal to send an orbiter to Venus in 2032. And the Rus- Venus, planetary scientists are dreaming up new ways to

21
study the planet and are building technology in the lab- three billion years of water and no one loves her.” ISRO announced the mission late last year, it published
oratory that can survive the horrendous conditions on its Yet there’s no question that something went terribly a list of a dozen instruments proposed by Indian scien-
surface. And with India leading the way, there might wrong. Although Earth and Venus began in a similar tists that have already been chosen—providing a sneak
soon be a parade of probes heading toward the second fashion, the two have wandered down drastically differ- peek of the mission. Of those sensors, two will map the
rock from the sun. ent evolutionary paths—diverging perhaps as recently as planet using radar, which is arguably the best method to
“It might be the start of a new decade of Venus,” says 715 million years ago. That might seem like a reason not peer through Venus’s dense clouds and trace its surface
Thomas Widemann, a planetary scientist at the Paris to visit, but scientists now argue that it makes the planet from orbit.
Observatory. even more intriguing. If researchers could only under- That said, ISRO is a relatively young space agency with
stand what caused Venus to undergo such a deadly meta- a limited number of successful landings on the moon and
DOUBLE TROUBLE morphosis, they might gain a better understanding of Mars. And, similar to programs from other fledgling
When humanity initially reached toward the stars, it ven- what caused Earth to become such a haven for life. agencies, India’s first Venus mission might be a proof of
tured to Venus. Our neighbor was the target of the first “Venus plays a key role in understanding ourselves concept that is less focused on science than on engineer-
successful interplanetary probe (United States, 1962); here—how life evolved on our own planet,” says Adriana ing. But given that even basic information on Venus is
the first planet on which a mission crashed (Soviet Union, Ocampo, science program manager at NASA headquar- lacking, any small step will contribute to science.
1965); and the first alien world to host a successful land- ters in Washington, D.C. One such contribution might be new maps of Venus’s
ing (Soviet Union, 1970). It was during this space race to It is a crucial question now that astronomers have surface features—a major step up, scientifically. The last
Venus that scientists discovered a torrid and toxic world. uncovered thousands of planets outside our solar sys- mission to map the planet’s topography was NASA’s
That could explain why interest in Venus dwindled. Sci- tem—many of which are rocky worlds that orbit their stars Magellan orbiter, which launched 30 years ago. Although
entists quickly realized that this planet would not be a at distances similar to those of Venus and Earth from the those radar maps remain the foundation of Venusian
home for future human exploration nor an outlet on sun. That means that many of these worlds could be geoscience today, they show topographic details at a hor-
which to search for life. It would be downright difficult Venus-like. “There is growing realization within the exo- izontal resolution of just 10 to 20 kilometers per pixel, on
to study at all, even for short amounts of time. planet community that Venus is the best analogue in the average (the image resolution can be two orders of mag-
And yet, in so many ways—size, density, chemical make- solar system for many of the rocky exoplanets we have nitude higher). With such limited topographic data,
up—Venus is Earth’s double. Recent research has even found,” says Laura Schaefer, an astronomer at Stanford researchers have a blurry view of Venus’s geology—but
suggested that it might have looked like Earth for three University, who studies exoplanets. the available maps do hint that plate tectonics might be
billion years, with vast oceans that could have been friend- kicking into action today.
ly to life. “That’s what sets my imagination on fire,” says OFF THE RADAR That is particularly tantalizing, because many scien-
Darby Dyar, a planetary scientist at Mount Holyoke Col- With such a tantalizing question left unanswered, it’s easy tists think that tectonic activity is a crucial ingredient for
lege. “If that’s the case, there was plenty of time for evolu- to see why ISRO’s return to Venus has created so much life. Tectonic plates—those interlocking slabs of Earth’s
tion to kick into action.” excitement. “I’m thrilled that ISRO is doing this,” Dyar crust that fit together like puzzle pieces—constantly
That could mean that Venus was (somewhat surpris- says. “I’m thrilled that the international community is tak- move about, with some slipping below others and diving
ingly) the first habitable planet in the solar system—a ing note of Venus and proposing missions. That’s into the planet’s interior in a process called subduction.
place where life was just as likely to arise as it was on fantastic.” Over millions of years, that process has kept Earth from
Earth. That alone is a reason to return to the former Although the ISRO mission is enveloped in a cloud of growing too hot or cold by cycling heat-trapping carbon
ocean world. “Why are we investing so much time look- secrecy (Nature e-mailed and called project scientists dioxide between the atmosphere and the deep Earth. It
ing for life on Mars when it only had liquid water for 400 dozens of times, to no avail), it’s clear that the agency acts as a natural thermostat, which might mean that fid-
million years?” Dyar asks. “And then there’s Venus with plans to send an orbiter smothered in instruments. When gety planets are more likely to host life.

22
 As such, scientists are eager to decipher the conditions because they proposed similar missions in the last Discov-
that allow plate tectonics to arise. That is why Suzanne
“Why are we investing ery competition, and both were chosen for further study,
Smrekar, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion so much time looking along with three others. If one of the Venus missions is
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has her eye on Venus—
especially some spots that look eerily similar to locations
for life on Mars when it successful, it will launch in the mid-2020s.
Even after that time frame, Venus might remain a hub
on Earth where subduction is happening now. Scientists only had liquid water for interplanetary activity. ESA recently picked a Venus
agree that subduction is the first step in the path toward
plate tectonics, and yet there are no clear signs of large
for 400 million years?” probe called EnVision, along with two other finalists, as a
mission that could fly as soon as 2032. Like VERITAS,
moving plates on Venus—at least not in the decades-old —Darby Dyar EnVision is an orbiter. But unlike VERITAS, which would
maps produced by Magellan. The San Andreas fault, map the entire planet to a resolution of 15 to 30 meters,
which forms the tectonic boundary between Earth’s EnVision will analyze small portions of the planet with a
Pacific Plate and North American Plate, for example, var- resolution as high as one meter. At that level of accuracy,
ies in width from meters to a kilometer—too narrow to scientists might be able to see the landers that the Soviet
show up in Magellan topographic data. ularly xenon, could give scientists a window into the Union left behind.
But future maps might uncloak such tectonic features. planet’s volcanic history and reveal whether Venus start- They could even pick out the type of rock that the land-
Smrekar is the principal investigator on a potential mis- ed with as much water as Earth did. “Venus’s atmosphere ers are resting on. This is possible because astronomers in
sion, known as VERITAS, that she and her team will soon is this lurking laboratory for telling us about its history,” the early 1990s found that certain wavelengths of light can
propose to NASA. The geophysical mission would use Garvin says. “And really, most of the measurements in pass through the CO2 haze that hides the Venusian sur-
radar to map Venus’s topography in higher resolution the atmosphere are woefully incomplete.” In addition, face. An orbiter carrying a spectrometer tuned to these
than before—increasing the accuracy from roughly 15 kilo- the probe would take images of the surface—thanks to transparent “windows” in the light spectrum could ana-
meters to 250 meters—and allowing scientists to uncover Garvin’s terrifying helicopter flights—until the last few lyze the composition of the planet’s surface from above the
features as small as the San Andreas fault for the first time. seconds before it hits. clouds. That’s an exciting prospect, especially if scientists
Although scientists don’t know what they will find, it Both VERITAS and DAVINCI entered NASA’s competi- could spot granite.
is possible that they will uncover evidence for past plate tion in July for future Discovery missions—a line of low- Like basalt, granite forms when molten magma cools
tectonics. Such a discovery would explain why Venus pre- cost planetary probes that each cost just U.S.$500 million. and hardens. But unlike basalt, the recipe for granite typ-
served an Earth-like environment for billions of years, And rumor has it they’re not alone. There could be as ically requires copious amounts of water—which happens
Smrekar says—that natural thermostat would have kept many as five Venus missions (including a balloon) among on Earth when water-rich oceanic crust subducts below
CO2 in check. And it would explain how Venus turned the dozens of proposals to study various objects in space. another plate. So if Venus is found to be rich in granite, it
hellish. When plate tectonics ceased, CO2 levels would NASA’s last Discovery competition, in 2015, for example, probably once overflowed with liquid water.
have increased in the atmosphere and trapped so much considered 27 proposals—from probes that would explore And that might be the best hint yet that the planet was
heat that the oceans vaporized. asteroids, moons and planets across the solar system to formerly a pale blue dot vastly similar to Earth today—
But that is only one possible finding. Some scientists telescopes that would image its outer reaches—before another clue in their diverging stories.
are keen to study the planet’s atmosphere, which holds choosing two missions that would fly. The problem is that there are only five narrow spectral
another, equally tantalizing set of secrets. At the end of this year, the administration will select a windows in Venus’s atmosphere that are actually trans-
The probe that Garvin is proposing, called DAVINCI, few missions for further study, and it will pick the final parent. With such little information, scientists weren’t
would drop through the atmosphere to measure the brew project in two years’ time. Both Smrekar and Garvin are sure whether they would be able to differentiate between
of toxic compounds. The isotopes of noble gases, partic- hopeful that each of their missions will be selected, in part granite and basalt. So Jörn Helbert, a planetary scientist

23
at the Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, subjected other countries. “Any mission to Venus is welcome to use where there are conditions—like Goldilocks’—that are just
both types of rock to Venus-like conditions and imaged LLISSE,” says electronics engineer Gary Hunter, also at the right for life,” Dyar says. Not only would that layer have a
them through those narrow frequency bands. His experi- Glenn Research Center. He and the team were careful to pleasant temperature, but it could also have nutrients, liq-
ment suggested that the two rock spectra look radically design a lander that would be only as large as a toaster— uid water and energy from the sun. If life ever existed on
different from each other, and that future missions could making it both small and light enough that it can hitch a the planet, it might have been carried up to the clouds and
make use of the windows. He and his colleagues built an ride on a number of future missions. survived there after the surface turned toxic.
instrument to use this trick to map any granite on the Despite its small size, LLISSE would be able to record But even without a balloon, the three main compo-
Venusian surface. It would fly on both VERITAS and temperature, pressure, wind speed, wind direction, the nents of the Venera-D mission would provide excellent
EnVision. amount of solar energy at the surface and a few specific science, argues Ocampo. “It would be a breakthrough
chemicals in the low atmosphere. And it would do so for mission in the understanding of Venusian science,” she
WITHIN REACH months, providing crucial input for models of the Venu- says. “We haven’t had a mission similar to this before.”
To truly understand the surface, a number of scientists sian atmosphere. “Imagine if one tried to say one knew Unfortunately, Venera-D has not yet been selected, and
want to actually land a craft on our toxic twin—a feat that the weather on Earth by going outside for 127 minutes,” many scientists have expressed some concern over the fact
has not been achieved for 35 years. Although the Soviet Hunter says. That is the current record for any weather that it has long been discussed and yet still does not have
Union sent several landers to Venus, the ones that sur- data on Venus. the appropriate funding. But Ludmila Zasova, the lead sci-
vived quickly succumbed to the planet’s harsh environ- Already, scientists at Roscosmos are eager to use this entist on the Venera-D mission at the Space Research
ment: the longest-lasting one persevered for a mere 127 new technology. In a joint proposal with NASA, they are Institute in Moscow, hopes that might change this year.
minutes. working on a mission known as Venera-Dolgozhivuscha- It’s not the only big ambitious mission in the works.
But scientists hope to break that record and have ya (where the latter means long-lasting), or Venera-D for Some U.S. teams plan to submit Venus projects to NASA’s
already designed technology that can last not just min- short. Such a mission would comprise a menagerie of New Frontiers program, which is capped at $1 billion,
utes but months. A team at NASA’s Glenn Research Cen- components—an orbiter, a lander and a long-lived station. and to the Flagship mission program, which costs even
ter in Cleveland, Ohio, is building a station that should The lander would include a number of advanced instru- more. Because Venus proposals have done well in past
survive for at least 60 days. Instead of using its bulk to ments but would last for only a few hours; the long-lived competitions (often falling just behind the selected pro-
absorb heat or countering the conditions with refrigera- station would be simpler in design but continue taking posals), scientists think there is a good chance that they
tion, the lander would use simple electronics made of sil- measurements for months. The station is likely to be will now rise to the top.
icon carbide (a hybrid of silicon and carbon commonly NASA’s LLISSE. With every space agency eyeing our neighbor, Venus is
used in sandpaper and fake diamonds) that can with- At least, that’s the baseline architecture—but the mis- likely to receive a fleet of visitors over the next few
stand the Venusian environment. “That’s the real game sion could include even more. This year, the Venera-D decades. And although they all plan to address the ques-
changer for Venus exploration” says Philip Neudeck, an team released a report that covered a number of potential tion of habitability in one way or another, Garvin is con-
electronics engineer at the Glenn Research Center. additions, including a balloon that could explore the vinced that whatever they find, it will be “beyond our
The team has already tested the circuits in a Venus sim- cloudy atmosphere. And that opens up the possibility of wildest dreams.” Perhaps they will prove that Venus was
ulation chamber—a 14-ton stainless-steel tank that can searching for life on Venus. All the other missions pro- formerly an ocean world. Or maybe they’ll discover that
imitate the temperature, pressure and specific chemistry posed so far aim to assess whether Venus was habitable in it’s tectonically active today. “We need to find out,” he
of the Venusian surface. The researchers have used those the past. But a balloon might be able to look for life in the says. “Because she’s waiting to tell us something, and I
results to design a stationary surface probe called LLISSE only environment where it might survive today: the skies. would hate to miss the boat.”
(Long-Lived In-Situ Solar System Explorer), which should “You can imagine that there’s somewhere in between This article is reproduced with permission and was
be ready for flight by the mid-2020s and will be offered to the hot hostile surface and the cold vacuum of outer space first published in Nature on June 5, 2019.

24
 Q & A

The
Once
and
Future
Moon
Oliver Morton discusses
his new book about how
art, science and politics
have shaped past,
present and planned
voyages to Earth’s
nearest celestial

ECONOMIST BOOKS
neighbor
By Lee Billings

25
 Lee Billings is a senior editor at Scientific American.
He covers space and physics.

ON JULY 20, 2019, A HALF-CENTURY

will have passed since Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Arm-
Why write this book right now? Is it just the
50th anniversary of the first human lunar
the moon means to people and what it could come to
mean to people as we return.
strong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first landing, or is it more than that?
humans to walk on the moon. More than just an It’s two things. The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 is Well, what does the moon mean to you? You
excuse to celebrate an epochal achievement, the 50th important, particularly for people like me in their discuss the spectrum of attitudes toward the
anniversary is also an opportunity to reflect on the mid-50s, because it’s quite remarkable to realize that moon a great deal in the book: Some people want
Apollo program’s complex origins and legacy—and on of all the things we thought back then about the the “sky moon”—just something to see in the sky.
how lunar exploration in general has changed our extraordinary future, one thing we didn’t think about Others want the “rock moon,” an object to be
understanding not only of the moon but also of Earth was that by 1972 human journeys to the moon would scientifically studied or mined for resources.
and ourselves. be over and that no one would go back. But the other Or “a moon that is at one with their Earth,” a
To that end, a huge number of commemorative thing, of course, is that it’s quite clear now that peo- place one might routinely visit that, although
media and memorabilia are already appearing on ple are going to go back. I believe there are more peo- exotic, is really not so out of this world. Which
screens and shelves around the world, with even more ple on Earth today who will walk on the moon than moon do you want?
to follow in coming months. Of the books in this over- who have walked on the moon. I am somewhat confused about the moon. But I think
whelming flood, one stands out for the understated There are many proffered reasons for going back: what most fascinates me about the moon is its sheer
elegance of its prose and the profoundly wide-angle doing interesting science or the possibility of using unworldliness, the way it makes you think about
view it offers of its subject: Oliver Morton’s The Moon: resources there. And of course, there’s the matter of [what] it is to be a world like Earth, and [what] the
A History for the Future. Only one of the book’s eight “great power” geopolitics and the symbolism moon is deprived [of ]. Thinking about the moon
chapters is explicitly devoted to the Apollo missions, involved in being there, overhead in the skies of hard made me realize how extraordinary it is that on
but the tome, in its entirety, places humanity’s lunar everyone on Earth. I don’t exactly applaud that, but I Earth, if you put something down, Earth will move it
forays into new, thought-provoking contexts guaran- can see the reality of it. But when it comes down to it, away from you—wind will blow it away, rain will
teed to surprise and delight even the most knowledge- the real reason for going back is that people in gener- wash it away. Eventually, a mountain range will rise
able space buff. al have more power now, and getting to the moon is up, or a sea will open, and that something will tum-
Scientific American spoke with Morton, a writer less difficult than it used to be. In the 1960s it took ble down. On the moon—unless it’s unhappy enough
and editor at the Economist, about the motivations the supreme efforts of the world’s preeminent super- to be at ground zero for another asteroid strike—you
for future lunar voyages, how to responsibly conduct power to put people on the moon. And that’s just not put something down, and it stays down. Nothing
them and why the moon should make us all reconsid- the case anymore. The attitude is shifting from being much happens. The lack of anything on the moon
er what it means to live on Earth. “Why go to the moon?” to “Hey, why not?” really puts one’s sense of what it is to be a “world”
[An edited transcript of the conversation follows.] So it’s worth thinking again about what it is that into question. A question that simply speculating

26
 In the 1960s it took the supreme efforts of the world’s preeminent
superpower to put people on the moon. And that’s just not the
case anymore. The attitude is shifting from being
“Why go to the moon?” to “Hey, why not?”
about one’s feet on the moon, or about the moon effort, and I think China sees human lunar landings moon is the opportunity it presents for more of
becoming something other than a rock in the sky, as something that would just be “nice to have.” But “humanity”—women, people of color, people of devel-
doesn’t quite reach. China’s interest kind of forces America’s hand, in oping nations, people of a wider range of ages, and so
that there is a symbolism to being the first on the on—to actually go there.
Earlier this year, Vice President Mike Pence moon that is lost if someone else goes up there, and And the idea that Apollo was a distraction from
announced NASA is going to somehow get U.S. you’re not there, too. There’s a real aspect of “great Earth is quite a strong one, particularly in the context
astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2024. power” rivalry here. of global ecological change, climate change especially.
What do you think about that? Who do you But being able to go into space helped alert people to
think will be there next, and when and why? One thing I enjoyed about the book was your those problems. At the same time, if all you can do
What I think is that things are moving considerably unflinching discussion of the profound social with the moon is watch Earth heat up from a dis-
faster than I would have expected when I began writ- inequalities often associated with space tance, that’s not so great. One could argue, and I
ing this book! I believe the next people to land on the exploration. You grapple with a perennial might, that sending humans to the moon is still too
moon will probably be American. Quite how they’ll criticism of the Apollo program—that it was expensive—but it’s a tiny fraction of what we spend
do so, I’m not sure. It’s fairly unlikely that NASA will an overly expensive distraction from more on many other things, and what we should be spend-
do it by 2024, as Pence suggested, partly because pressing problems on Earth. And you write ing on problems such as climate change. If I had to
NASA has various handicaps in the “resource” sense about how those missions and the prosperity choose between spending really effectively on climate
of the word—it is carrying unnecessary weight in that made them possible in the first place are change or spending profligately on missions to the
terms of being required to use a very large, very inseparable products of historical injustices, moon, well, I’d be hard-pressed to choose the moon.
expensive, as yet unfinished NASA-developed booster, from the obliteration of Native American But I don’t think that’s really the choice the world is
the Space Launch System, rather than alternatives populations to the slave trade. facing at the moment. I don’t think the costs of
such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy or perhaps the new Yes, it’s important to remember that Apollo was not human missions to the moon and of dealing with cli-
rocket being developed by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, universally popular, even among Americans, even at mate change are remotely of the same scale.
the New Glenn. And I think that's a genuine problem the time. I suppose the most famous example is Gil
for NASA, as well as this idea of building a little space Scott-Heron’s song “Whitey on the Moon.” You know, Somewhat relatedly, then, do we need to be
station—the lunar Gateway—around the moon before “A rat done bit my sister Nell, with Whitey on the concerned about protecting the environment
going back down to the surface, which is not some- moon.” Hugely though I respect NASA’s astronauts of of the moon? If so, how?
thing that has a great deal of support outside of NASA the 1960s and 1970s, they were all middle-aged white I’d like people to plan and perform their lunar mis-
and the contractors who are building this thing. men, mostly from the officer class—that’s not sions in ways that don’t leave behind a terrible
Meanwhile the Chinese seem to be planning to go, “humanity” as the term is usually construed! One amount of mess. At the same time, the amount of
too, but they are in no rush. It would be a significant uncontestably interesting thing about a return to the mess that humans could make on the moon, com-

27
 Some scientists have called the moon “Earth’s
attic,” because for billions of years, it has been
collecting material ejected from our planet
by impacts and other processes.
pared with the messes we can and do make on Earth, finding samples from the very early Earth on the
is always going to be absolutely trifling. For the time moon. Some scientists have called the moon “Earth’s
being, I’d certainly suggest that people avoid visiting attic,” because for billions of years, it has been collect-
the obvious heritage sites, such as the Apollo 11 and ing material ejected from our planet by impacts and
Apollo 17 landing locations. other processes. The arguments for all this remain
The situation has become more complex since the somewhat theoretical, but there really should be quite
days of Apollo, though, because there’s now a strong a significant number of extremely old Earth rocks up
consensus that interesting volatiles—water ice, in par- there, on the lunar surface, from parts of our planet’s
ticular—are stored in shadowed craters at the moon’s history we can’t otherwise directly study. Similarly,
poles. That water ice could be used for, among other there might be a much smaller amount of rocks from
things, producing rocket fuel, which has many people early Venus there, from back when that world may
excited. I’d like to see some discussion of an interna- have been much more Earth-like, which would be
tional agreement to cover the use of those potential really fascinating to study. And frankly, it’s much easi-
resources, because right now, I don’t believe there are er to gather up and sort through moon rocks by the
any meaningful constraints on what anyone can do ton than to retrieve any rocks at all from present-day
with them. I wouldn’t want anything needlessly puni- Venus, the surface of which is very hard to get to and
tive, and we don’t need every molecule of ice that’s even harder to return from.
ever settled in a crater to be preserved as is. But the I also find something poetic and scientific about the
discussion is important, because we don’t really know notion of doing radio astronomy from the moon’s far
yet the extent of the water-ice deposits there, and we side, which, because it always faces away from Earth,
also don’t know the trade-off between using them as a is the only place within light-years where such obser-
physical resource versus using them as a scientific va tions could be unaffected by our planet’s electro-
resource. We have no real sense yet of what informa- magnetic babble. There are radio-based studies of the
tion from lunar and even earthly history is stored in early universe that, at the moment, scientists can only
those ices. imagine performing from that vantage point. Most of
my thinking about the moon involves using it to gaze
Speaking of science, what do you think would back at, and better understand, Earth, so the idea that
be the most compelling scientific reason to go to it could be a platform for looking farther out to the
the moon now? universe’s beginnings is one that similarly pleases me.
To me, the most compelling thing is the possibility of

28
Caleb A. Scharf is director of astrobiology at Columbia University.
He is author and co-author of more than 100 scientific research
articles in astronomy and astrophysics. His work has been featured
The
Unseen
in publications such as New Scientist, Scientific American, Science
News, Cosmos Magazine, Physics Today and National Geographic.

Apollo 11
Much of the treasure trove
of Apollo 11 images
is rarely shown
By Caleb A. Scharf

IN THE 50 YEARS SINCE JULY 20, 1969,

and the first humans landing on the moon,
we’ve grown accustomed to seeing the
same pictures of the Apollo 11 mission
again and again. But there is a wealth of
material beautifully archived at NASA. In
honor of Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz”
Aldrin and Michael Collins, as well as the
thousands of people who contributed to
this extraordinary—and provocative, mov-
ing, controversial, epoch-making,
tear-jerking and outrageous—undertak-
ing, here are a few selected images that
don’t often see the light of day—or space.

NASA
Lunar module after separation.

29
On July 12, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin,
Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins take their final
press conference from inside their semi-isolated NASA

ALAMY
quarters (done to minimize the odds of getting sick and
to allow for a period of intense last-minute training).
Deke Slayton is seen on the stool at the far left.

30
On the day of the launch, on July 16,
1969, Armstrong and Collins cross the
walkway to the command module atop
the Saturn V rocket. It will be an early-
morning launch.

Saturn V launches,

NASA (2)
as seen from the
Kennedy Space
Center control room.

31
Leaving Earth behind.

NASA
32
Moon and Earthrise, with the lunar module in foreground.

NASA
33
 Plaque left on the moon.

NASA (2)
First image taken by Armstrong
after setting foot on the moon.

34
Aldrin moving to place some of the mission’s experiments and devices.

NASA
35
Lunar module returning to rendezvous with Collins.

NASA
36
View of the moon after trans-Earth injection and
the start of the astronauts’ return to Earth.

NASA
37
 Anil Ananthaswamy is the author of The Edge of Physics,
The Man Who Wasn't There and, most recently, Through
Opinion
Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures
the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality.

PHYSICS

Spin-Swapping
Particles Could
Be “Quantum
Cheshire Cats”
A proposed experiment to swap
fundamental properties between photons
carries profound implications for our
understanding of reality itself

O
ne of the most mind-bending revelations of
quantum physics over the past century has
been that properties of particles are possi-
bly not real until they are measured. Now a new
thought experiment suggests that conclusion may
be too tame: it seems that particles’ properties—
their spin, for instance—may not even belong to
them. This possibility is akin to saying that your
personality does not belong to you.
The new study claims to demonstrate this Adventures in Wonderland and involves the versa. In quantum terminology, it shows how two
paradoxical disconnect between particles and their ostensible separation of a cat (actually, a particle) particles could end up exchanging their properties,
properties via a new version of the so-called from its grin (some property of the particle). or physical attributes.

GETTY IMAGES
quantum Cheshire cat experiment. First performed The new version of the experiment starts with “Niels Bohr’s view [was] that until you do a
in 2013, the experiment draws its name from the two grinning Cheshire cats and ends with the grin measurement on a quantum system, you cannot
disappearing feline in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s of one cat gracing the other cat’s face, and vice say that the physical attribute actually exists. That

38
 Opinion

questions the reality of physical attributes,” says

Arun Kumar Pati of the Harish-Chandra Research
Creating a Quantum Cheshire Cat

MELISSA THOMAS BAUM, BUCKYBALL DESIGN; SOURCE: “OBSERVATION OF A QUANTUM CHESHIRE CAT IN A MATTER-WAVE INTERFEROMETER EXPERIMENT,”
Institute (HRI) in India, who co-authored the new
work. “Our thought experiment takes that view a Drawing its name from the disappearing feline in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in
step ahead. Not only are the attributes not real, but
Wonderland, the quantum Cheshire cat experiment involves the separation of a “cat”
they could not be yours. It questions the reality at a
much deeper level.” (a particle) from its “grin” (some property of the particle). The canonical version of the
experiment, first performed in 2013 and simplistically represented here, fired neutrons
THE WEAK VERSUS THE STRONG (a black cat) possessing a particular spin (a pink grin) through a system of optical
To arrive at their conclusion, Pati and his HRI
elements including an interferometer, beam splitters, mirrors and detectors. A carefully
colleague Debmalya Das resorted to a technique
known as weak measurement. choreographed sequence of strong and weak measurements upon the neutrons as they
In standard quantum mechanics, examining the traversed the system yielded a paradoxical result, in which the neutrons passed through
state of a quantum system—such as a particle or one of two paths while their spins were only observable in the other. In other words,
an atom—involves a so-called strong measurement,
the “cat” had been separated from its “grin.”

BY TOBIAS DENKMAYR, ET AL, IN NATURE COMMUNICATIONS , VOL. 5, NO. 4492; JULY 29, 2014
which can be something as simple as a detector
registering the arrival of a photon. A particle is first
prepared in some initial state, a process called Weak measurement
preselection. Then the quantum state of the Mirror of position
particle evolves over time, under the influence of
external forces, and it can end up in a superposi- Detector
tion of many states. The strong measurement
randomly “collapses” the superposition into one of
those many possible states—a process that is
unavoidably destructive. For example, if you were
measuring the position of a photon, a strong
measurement would locate the photon but also
Beam Beam
destroy the superposition. splitter splitter
Weak measurements, on the other hand, are not
so heavy-handed. They represent an idea that goes Selector
back to 1988, to a theory devised by Yakir Aharon- Weak
Mirror
ov, David Z. Albert and Lev Vaidman, all then at the measurement
University of South Carolina and Tel Aviv University. of grin Detector
The trio asked, What if the measuring device

39
 Opinion
Two Quantum Cats Swap Grins

MELISSA THOMAS BAUM BUCKYBALL DESIGN ; SOURCE: “CAN TWO QUANTUM CHESHIRE CATS EXCHANGE GRINS? ” BY DEBMALYA DAS ET AL., IN ARXIV:1904.07707; APRIL 14, 2019
interacted extremely weakly with the particle? A newly proposed elaboration of the quantum Cheshire cat experiment calls for not only
While such a measurement would not destroy the separating particles from their properties but also exchanging those properties between the
quantum state (and thus the state would continue particles. In other words, this version of the experiment would first strip away and then swap
evolving), it would result in a value for the state
the grins of two quantum Cheshire cats. In this experiment, which crucially relies on intermixing
with a very large uncertainty. If you performed the
the outputs of not one but two interferometers before performing multiple strong and weak
measurements over and over again, with an
measurements, two photons (the white and the black cats) are decoupled from their polarizations
ensemble of identically prepared, or preselected,
(the blue and the pink grins). This illustration depicts the paths of the photons and their weakly
particles, then you would get a distribution of weak
measurement values. measured polarizations through a schematic representation of the proposed optical system.
On its own, this distribution is not informative. But The experiment’s final result, its creators say, would be the exchange of polarization states and
add one more stage to the process, and things get formation of a single entangled state between the two spatially separated photons.
very interesting. After each weak measurement,
you let the particle evolve and then perform a Weak measurement
Mirror of position
strong, destructive measurement on it. Repeat this
action for every identically preselected, weakly
measured particle. Each strong measurement will Beam
give a different value because of the random splitter
collapse of the superposition. Now select only
those particles whose final positions have a certain Weak
measurement
value—doing so is called postselection. Then of grin
discard information about all of the particles that
do not end up in this postselected stage. What
Aharonov and his colleagues argued is that you Beam
splitters
can now take the weakly measured values for the
subset of postselected particles and turn it into a
“weak value” that tells you something about a Postselection
Weak
property of the particles, such as their spin in a measurement
given direction. of grin
An intriguing outcome of this approach to
quantum systems has to do with the nature of time. Beam
splitter
According to the mathematics developed by
Aharonov and his colleagues, weak values are Weak measurement
influenced by both the initial preselected quantum of position
Mirror
state (the past) and the final postselected quantum

40
 Opinion

state (the future). Time, in this way of thinking, and then doing a strong measurement, it is tion of each pair of photons in the postselected
flows both ways: the future influences the present. impossible to separate a particle from its proper- ensemble, then the weak values would show that
ties,” says Tollaksen, who wrote about the Cheshire photon 1 went through the left arm of interferome-
WHOSE PROPERTY IS IT, ANYWAY? cat paradox in his 2001 Ph.D. thesis. ter 1, whereas its polarization appeared in the left
In a first-of-its-kind experiment conducted in 2013 Now Pati and Das have extended the Cheshire arm of interferometer 2. Similarly, photon 2 would
and published in 2014, Tobias Denkmayr of the cat experiment to their thought experiment, which appear in the right arm of interferometer 2, where-
Technical University of Vienna, Jeff Tollaksen of not only separates a particle from its properties but as its polarization would show up in the right arm
Chapman University and their colleagues used also causes one particle to take on a property of interferometer 1. At least, that is how the
weak measurements to separate the quantum previously associated with another, and vice versa. researchers interpret the weak values.
Cheshire cat from its grin. The thought experiment involves putting two This interpretation of the thought experiment
In their experiment, preselected neutrons with a interferometers side by side, such that each suggests that after the particles and their proper-
particular spin were sent, one by one, into a beam particle first encounters a beam splitter. After going ties are decoupled, and their paths are recombined
splitter, which is a device that splits a beam of through the beam splitter, the particle enters into a and finally subjected to strong measurements,
particles into two. Each incoming neutron ended up superposition of two states: taking the left and photon 1 ends up with the polarization of photon 2,
in a superposition of two states: taking paths A right paths. and vice versa. The cats and their grins are first
and B. These two paths were recombined in a Then comes a twist: The alignment of the setup separated, and then the cats exchange grins. Also,
so-called interferometer, which caused the quan- is such that interferometer 1’s right path, which the photons, despite being separated from their
tum states to interfere. The neutrons then headed would normally be recombined with its correspond- initial properties, all end up in one massive entan-
toward output detectors. In one of the output paths ing left path, is instead recombined with interfer- gled state—meaning that they can only be de-
of the interferometer, the experiment involved a ometer 2’s right path. And the interferometers’ left scribed by a single global quantum state.
strong measurement of a particular spin state of paths are recombined as well. When recombined, “It doesn’t surprise me,” says Tollaksen, who is
the neutrons. Neutrons that satisfied this criterion the various quantum states interfere with one used to the seeming paradoxes thrown up by weak
were considered to be postselected. The experi- another. Then the two outputs from each interfer- measurements. But “it’s very good work.”
menters discarded all of the other neutrons for ometer encounter a series of beam splitters and
their analysis. detectors. These beam splitters are designed to A DISAGREEMENT OVER DETAILS
For these postselected particles, the team also make photons with one type of polarization go one Experimentalist Aephraim Steinberg of the Univer-
performed two sets of weak measurements: one way and the rest go the other way. (Polarization sity of Toronto is also not surprised but for different
for the position of the particles, and the other for describes the orientation of a photon’s vibrating reasons. He points out that an interaction between
their spin. These dual measurements suggested electric and magnetic fields.) The postselection particles results in those particles getting entan-
that the particles were going through path B, involves choosing only those photons that cause a gled (as happens in Pati and Das’s thought
while the weak value of their spin could only be particular set of six detectors to click simultane- experiment), and this entanglement can lead to the
measured in path A. The cat had been separated ously. All other photons are discarded. particles swapping properties. Such swapping is
from its grin. According to Pati and Das, if one were to the basis of a so-called SWAP gate, a well-studied
“From the old perspective of preparing a particle calculate weak values for the position and polariza- operation used in quantum computing, Steinberg

41
 Opinion

says. “It would indeed be interesting if they could I think too much is made of the quantum Cheshire
swap their polarizations without ever interacting,” cat being a paradox,” says theorist Michael Hall of
he adds. the Australian National University. “Weak values
But Steinberg is more surprised, even concerned, are not the outcomes of individual measurements
by the new experiment’s design. “It relies on two in general. They are only average values of many
photons traversing a set of interferometers and repeated measurements.” Hall argues that such
then causing six different detectors to fire simulta- average values cannot be accorded the same
neously. This is, of course, impossible,” he says. status as the outcome of individual strong
“The authors seem to be imagining one detector measurements.
sensitive to where a photon is, while another Nevertheless, weak measurements are already
detector (at another location) could simultaneously being used for seemingly impossible applications.
measure the photon’s polarization. In this sense, For example, if one selects the initial state and
they seem to be trying to “build in” the separation the postselected state of particles such that
of the photon’s different properties from the start there is very little overlap between the two, then
rather than devising an experiment to reveal it.” the percentage of particles that have to be
Tollaksen also says that having six detectors thrown away because they are not postselected
firing simultaneously with only two photons is becomes very large. But for the very few that
simply not possible. But he thinks Pati and Das’s remain, the weak values can be extremely useful.
conceptual idea is sound. “As far as I can tell, it John C. Howell of the University of Rochester
seems to me that even the requirement of all six and his colleagues have already used such weak
[detectors] could be boiled back down to two values to measure displacements of about 14
with the right optics and still produce the right femtometers, which is roughly the size of a
post-selection,” he says. “If so, the fundamental uranium nucleus.
swapping idea they are playing with might be Concerns about Pati and Das’s thought experi-
salvageable.” ment notwithstanding, the debate over the
But Pati says that his and Das’s experiment meaning of weak values is also one over the
should work as designed—and with existing correct theory for describing the quantum world,
technology, too. “The detector clicks are for various particularly the role of time. “You need to start
degrees of freedom or attributes of the two thinking about the relevance of the future on the
photons,” he says, thus allowing for six simultane- present. The property [of a particle] at any given
ous detections. moment of time is influenced by the future,”
There is also a bigger issue of whether the weak Tollaksen says. “When you shift your thinking to
values obtained via weak measurements are that, then all of these things, like the Cheshire
telling us something about what is real. “In general, cat, are not at all surprising.”

42
 Bjørn Ekeberg is a philosopher of science Opinion
and author of Metaphysical Experiments,
published by University of Minnesota Press.

OBSERVATIONS

Cosmology
Has Some
Big Problems
The field relies on a conceptual framework that
has trouble accounting for new observations

W
hat do we really know about our universe?
Born out of a cosmic explosion 13.8
billion years ago, the universe rapidly
inflated and then cooled. It is still expanding at an
increasing rate and is mostly made up of unknown
dark matter and dark energy ... right?
This well-known story is usually taken as a
self-evident scientific fact, despite the relative lack scales of the cosmos. dark matter, dark energy and inflation—each in its
of empirical evidence—and despite a steady crop Another recent probe found galaxies inconsis- own way tied to the big bang paradigm—is not to
of discrepancies arising with observations of the tent with the theory of dark matter, which posits describe known empirical phenomena but rather to
distant universe. this hypothetical substance to be everywhere. But maintain the mathematical coherence of the

THANAPOL SISRANG GETTY IMAGES

In recent months, new measurements of the according to the latest measurements, it is not, framework itself while accounting for discrepant
Hubble constant—the rate of universal expansion— suggesting the theory needs to be reexamined. observations. Fundamentally, they are names for
suggested major differences between two inde- It’s perhaps worth stopping to ask why astro- something that must exist insofar as the frame-
pendent methods of calculation. Discrepancies on physicists hypothesize dark matter to be every- work is assumed to be universally valid.
the expansion rate have huge implications not where in the universe. The answer lies in a peculiar Each new discrepancy between observation and
simply for calculation but for the validity of cosmol- feature of cosmological physics that is not often theory can, of course, in and of itself be considered
ogy’s current Standard Model at the extreme remarked on. A crucial function of theories such as an exciting promise of more research, a progres-

43
 Opinion

sive refinement toward the truth. But when they expanding (in 1929) and the detection of micro- key piece of the big bang paradigm was criticized
add up, they could also suggest a more confound- wave background radiation (in 1964). But consid- by one of the theory’s original proponents for
ing problem that is not resolved by tweaking ering the scale involved, these limited observations having become indefensible as a scientific theory.
parameters or adding new variables. have had an outsized influence on cosmological Why? Because inflation theory relies on ad hoc
Consider the context of the problem and its theory. contrivances to accommodate almost any data, and
history. As a mathematically driven science, It is, of course, entirely plausible that the validity because its proposed physical field is not based on
cosmological physics is usually thought to be of general relativity breaks down much closer to anything with empirical justification. This is proba-
extremely precise. But the cosmos is unlike any our own home than at the edge of the hypothetical bly because a crucial function of inflation is to
scientific subject matter on earth. A theory of the end of the universe. And if that were the case, bridge the transition from an unknowable big bang
entire universe, based on our own tiny neighbor- today’s multilayered theoretical edifice of the big to a physics we can recognize today. So, is it
hood as the only known sample of it, requires a lot bang paradigm would turn out to be a confusing science or a convenient invention?
of simplifying assumptions. When these assump- mix of fictional beasts invented to uphold the A few astrophysicists, such as Michael J. Disney,
tions are multiplied and stretched across vast model, along with empirically valid variables have criticized the big bang paradigm for its lack of
distances, the potential for error increases, and this mutually reliant on each other to the point of demonstrated certainties. In his analysis, the
is further compounded by our very limited means making it impossible to sort science from fiction. theoretical framework has far fewer certain
of testing. Compounding this problem, most observations observations than free parameters to tweak
Historically, Newton’s physical laws made up a of the universe occur experimentally and indirect- them—a so-called negative significance that would
theoretical framework that worked for our own ly. Today’s space telescopes provide no direct be an alarming sign for any science. As Disney
solar system with remarkable precision. Both view of anything—they produce measurements writes in American Scientist: “A skeptic is entitled
Uranus and Neptune, for example, were discovered through an interplay of theoretical predictions to feel that a negative significance, after so much
through predictions based on Newton’s model. But and pliable parameters, in which the model is time, effort and trimming, is nothing more than one
as the scales grew larger, its validity proved limited. involved every step of the way. The framework would expect of a folktale constantly re-edited to
Einstein’s general relativity framework provided an literally frames the problem; it determines where fit inconvenient new observations.”
extended and more precise reach beyond the and how to observe. And so, despite the ad- As I discuss in my new book, Metaphysical
farthest reaches of our own galaxy. But just how vanced technologies and methods involved, the Experiments, there is a deeper history behind the
far could it go? profound limitations to the endeavor also in- current problems. The big bang hypothesis itself
The big bang paradigm that emerged in the crease the risk of being led astray by the kind of originally emerged as an indirect consequence of
mid-20th century effectively stretches the model’s assumptions that cannot be calculated. general relativity undergoing remodeling. Einstein
validity to a kind of infinity, defined either as the After spending many years researching the had made a fundamental assumption about the
boundary of the radius of the universe (calculated foundations of cosmological physics from a universe, that it was static in both space and time,
at 46 billion light-years) or in terms of the begin- philosophy of science perspective, I have not been and to make his equations add up, he added a
ning of time. This giant stretch is based on a few surprised to hear some scientists openly talking “cosmological constant,” for which he freely
concrete discoveries, such as Edwin Hubble’s about a crisis in cosmology. In the big “inflation admitted there was no physical justification.
observation that the universe appears to be debate” in Scientific American a few years ago, a But when Hubble observed that the universe

44
 Opinion

was expanding and Einstein’s solution no longer accept that 95 percent of our cosmos is fur-
seemed to make sense, some mathematical nished by completely unknown elements and
physicists tried to change a fundamental assump- forces for which we have no empirical evidence
tion of the model: that the universe was the same whatsoever. For a scientist to be confident of this
in all spatial directions but variant in time. Not picture requires an exceptional faith in the power
insignificantly, this theory came with a very of mathematical unification.
promising upside: a possible merger between In the end, the conundrum for cosmology is
cosmology and nuclear physics. Could the brave its reliance on the framework as a necessary
new model of the atom also explain our universe? presupposition for conducting research. For
From the outset, the theory only spoke to the lack of a clear alternative, as astrophysicist
immediate aftermath of an explicitly hypothetical Disney also notes, it is in a sense stuck with
event, whose principal function was as a limit the paradigm. It seems more pragmatic to add
condition, the point at which the theory breaks new theoretical floors than to rethink the
down. Big bang theory says nothing about the big fundamentals.
bang; it is rather a possible hypothetical premise Contrary to the scientific ideal of getting
for resolving general relativity. progressively closer to the truth, it looks rather
On top of this undemonstrable but very produc- like cosmology, to borrow a term from technology
tive hypothesis, floor on floor has been added studies, has become path-dependent: overdeter-
intact, with vastly extended scales and new mined by the implications of its past inventions.
discrepancies. To explain observations of galaxies This article is based on edited excerpts from
inconsistent with general relativity, the existence the book Metaphysical Experiments: Physics and
of dark matter was posited as an unknown and the Invention of the Universe, published by
invisible form of matter calculated to make up University of Minnesota Press.
more than a quarter of all mass-energy content in
the universe—assuming, of course, the framework
is universally valid. In 1998, when a set of
supernova measurements of accelerating
galaxies seemed at odds with the framework, a
new theory emerged of a mysterious force called
dark energy, calculated to fill circa 70 percent of
the mass-energy of the universe.
The crux of today’s cosmological paradigm is
that in order to maintain a mathematically unified
theory valid for the entire universe, we must

45
 Grigoris Panoutsopoulos is a physicist and a historian of science. He is a Ph.D. Opinion
candidate at the University of Athens; his research has focused on the history of CERN.
Frank Zimmermann is a senior accelerator scientist at CERN and the deputy leader of
the Future Circular Collider Study. He is also a fellow of the American Physical Society
and serves as the editor of the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.

OBSERVATIONS

Which Should
Come First in
Physics: Theory
or Experiment?
Plans for giant particle accelerators of the
future focus attention on how scientific
discoveries are really made

T
he discovery of the Higgs particle at the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) over half a
decade ago marked a milestone in the long
journey toward understanding the deeper struc-
ture of matter. Today, particle physics strives to
push a diverse range of experimental approaches
from which we may glean new answers to funda- stand the validity of this proposal, we should, for quantum mechanics, but seldom do we pause
mental questions regarding the creation of the however, start at the beginning and once more ask and consider whether these awe-inspiring theories
universe and the nature of the mysterious and ourselves: How does physics progress? could have been attained without the contributions
elusive dark matter. Many believe that grand revolutions are driven of the Michelson-Morley, Stern-Gerlach or black-
Such an endeavor requires a post-LHC particle exclusively by new theories, whereas experiments body radiation experiments.
collider with an energy capability significantly play the parts of movie extras. The played-out story This simplistic picture, despite being far removed
greater than that of previous colliders. This is how goes a little something like this: theorists form from the creative, and often surprising, ways in

GETTY IMAGES
the idea for the Future Circular Collider (FCC) at conjectures, and experiments are used solely for which physics has developed over time, remains
CERN came to be—a machine that could put the the purposes of testing them. After all, most of us quite widespread even among scientists. Its
exploration of new physics in high gear. To under- proclaim our admiration for Einstein’s relativity or pernicious influence can be seen in the discussion

46
 Opinion

of future facilities like the proposed FCC at CERN. Japan, while China also has similar plans for a tion of an enormous experimental structure, at a
In the wake of the discovery of the Higgs boson large-scale circular collider. hitherto unprecedented scale, transformed our
in 2012, we finally have all of the puzzle pieces of Future colliders could offer a deep understand- view of the world. Tycho Brahe’s precise astronomi-
the Standard Model (SM) of physics in place. ing of the Higgs properties, but even more import- cal measurements enabled Johannes Kepler to
Nevertheless, the unknowns regarding dark ant, they represent an opportunity for exploring develop his laws of planetary motion and to make
matter, neutrino masses, and the observed imbal- uncharted territory in an unprecedented energy a significant contribution to the scientific revolution.
ance between matter and antimatter are among scale. As Gian Giudice, head of CERN’s theoretical The development of electromagnetism serves as
numerous indications that the SM is not the physics department, argues: “High-energy colliders another apt example: many electrical phenomena
ultimate theory of elementary particles and their remain an indispensable and irreplaceable tool to were discovered by physicists such as Charles
interactions. continue our exploration of the inner workings of Dufay, André-Marie Ampère and Michael Faraday
Quite a number of theories have been devel- the universe.” in the 18th and 19th centuries through experi-
oped to overcome the problems surrounding the Nevertheless, the FCC is seen by some as a ments that had not been guided by any developed
SM, but so far none has been experimentally questionable scientific investment in the absence theory of electricity.
verified. This fact has left the world of physics of clear theoretical guidance about where the Moving closer to the present day, we see that the
brimming with anticipation. In the end, science has elusive new physics may lie. The history of physics, entire history of particle physics is indeed full of
shown time and again that it can find new, creative however, offers evidence in support of a different similar cases. In the aftermath of World War II, a
ways to surmount any obstacles placed along its view: that experiments often play a leading and constant and laborious experimental effort charac-
path. And one such way is for experimentation to exploratory role in the progress of science. terized the field of particle physics, and it was what
assume the leading role, so that it can help get the As the eminent historian of physics Peter Galison allowed the Standard Model to emerge through a
stuck wagon of particle physics moving and out of puts it, we have to “step down from the aristocratic “zoo” of newly discovered particles. As a prominent
the mire. view of physics that treats the discipline as if all example, quarks, the fundamental constituents of
In this regard, the FCC study was launched by interesting questions are structured by high theory.” the proton and neutron, were discovered through a
CERN in 2013 as a global effort for explaining Besides, quite a few experiments have been number of exploratory experiments during the late
different scenarios for particle colliders that could realized without being guided by a well-established 1960s at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.
inaugurate the post-LHC era and for advancing theory but were instead undertaken for the purpos- The majority of practicing physicists recognize
key technologies. A staged approach, it entails es of exploring new domains. Let us examine some the exceptional importance of experiment as an
the construction of an electron-positron collider illuminating examples. exploratory process. For instance, Victor “Viki”
followed by a proton collider, which would In the 16th century, King Frederick II of Denmark Weisskopf, the former director-general of CERN
present an eightfold energy leap compared to the financed Uraniborg, an early research center, and an icon of modern physics, grasped clearly the
LHC and thus grant us direct access to a previ- where Tycho Brahe constructed large astronomical dynamics of the experimental process in the
ously unexplored regime. Both colliders will be instruments, like a huge mural quadrant (unfortu- context of particle physics:
housed in a new 100-kilometer circumference nately, the telescope was invented a few years “There are three kinds of physicists, namely the
tunnel. The FCC study complements previous later) and carried out many detailed observations machine builders, the experimental physicists, and
design studies for linear colliders in Europe and that had not previously been possible. The realiza- the theoretical physicists. If we compare those

47
 Opinion

three classes, we find that the machine builders

are the most important ones, because if they were
not there, we would not get into this small-scale
region of space. If we compare this with the
discovery of America, the machine builders corre-
spond to captains and ship builders who truly
developed the techniques at that time. The experi-
mentalists were those fellows on the ships who
sailed to the other side of the world and then
jumped on the new islands and wrote down what
they saw. The theoretical physicists are those
fellows who stayed behind in Madrid and told
Columbus that he was going to land in India.”
(Weisskopf 1977)
Despite being a theoretical physicist himself, he
was able to recognize the exploratory character of
experimentation in particle physics. Thus, his words
eerily foreshadow the present era. As one of the
most respected theoretical physicists of our time,
Nima Arkani-Hamed, claimed in a recent interview,
“when theorists are more confused, it’s the time for
more, not fewer experiments.”
The FCC, at present, strives to keep alive the
exploratory spirit of the previous fabled colliders. It
is not intended to be used as a verification tool for
a specific theory but as a means of paving multiple
experimental paths for the future. The experimental
process should be allowed to develop its own
momentum. This does not mean that experimenta-
tion and instrumentation should not maintain a
close relationship with the theoretical community;
at the end of the day, there is but one physics, and
it must ensure its unity.

48
 Scott Pakin is a computer scientist in the Applied Computer Science group at Los Opinion
Alamos National Laboratory. With co-principal investigator Wojciech Zurek, he leads
the Taming Defects in Quantum Computers project at Los Alamos.
Patrick Coles is a quantum physicist in the Physics of Condensed Matter and Complex
Systems group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and is a co-investigator on the
Taming Defects in Quantum Computers project at Los Alamos.

OBSERVATIONS

The Problem
with Quantum
Computers
It’s called decoherence—but while a
breakthrough solution seems years away,
there are ways of getting around it

B
y now, most people have heard that quantum
computing is a revolutionary technology that
leverages the bizarre characteristics of quan-
tum mechanics to solve certain problems faster
than regular computers can. Those problems range
from the worlds of mathematics to retail business
and from physics to finance. If we get quantum
technology right, the benefits should lift the entire
economy and enhance U.S. competitiveness. This loss of coherence (called decoherence), While competing technologies and competing
The promise of quantum computing was first caused by vibrations, temperature fluctuations, architectures are attacking these problems, no
recognized in the 1980s yet remains unfulfilled. electromagnetic waves and other interactions with existing hardware platform can maintain coherence
Quantum computers are exceedingly difficult to the outside environment, ultimately destroys the and provide the robust error correction required for

RICHARD KAIL GETTY IMAGES

engineer, build and program. As a result, they are exotic quantum properties of the computer. Given large-scale computation. A breakthrough is
crippled by errors in the form of noise, faults and the current pervasiveness of decoherence and probably several years away.
loss of quantum coherence, which is crucial to their other errors, contemporary quantum computers are The billion-dollar question in the meantime is,
operation and yet falls apart before any nontrivial unlikely to return correct answers for programs of how do we get useful results out of a computer
program has a chance to run to completion. even modest execution time. that becomes unusably unreliable before complet-

49
 Opinion

ing a typical computation? TAMING DEFECTS TO GET SOMETHING DONE approach that uses currently available quantum
Answers are coming from intense investigation The trouble is, quantum mechanics challenges our computers to compile their own quantum algo-
across a number of fronts, with researchers in intuition. So we struggle to figure out the best rithms. That will avoid the massive computational
industry, academia and the national laboratories algorithms for performing meaningful tasks. To overhead required to simulate quantum dynamics
pursuing a variety of methods for reducing errors. help overcome these problems, our team at Los on classical computers.
One approach is to guess what an error-free Alamos National Laboratory is developing a Because this approach yields shorter algorithms
computation would look like based on the results method to invent and optimize algorithms that than the state of the art, they consequently reduce
of computations with various noise levels. A perform useful tasks on noisy quantum computers. the effects of noise. This machine-learning ap-
completely different approach, hybrid quan- Algorithms are the lists of operations that tell a proach can also compensate for errors in a manner
tum-classical algorithms, runs only the most computer to do something, analogous to a cooking specific to the algorithm and hardware platform. It
performance-critical sections of a program on a recipe. Compared to classical algorithms, the might find, for instance, that one qubit is less noisy
quantum computer, with the bulk of the program quantum kind are best kept as short as possible than another, so the algorithm preferentially uses
running on a more robust classical computer. and, we have found, best tailored to the particular better qubits. In that situation, the machine learning
These strategies and others are proving to be defects and noise regime of a given hardware creates a general algorithm to compute the
useful for dealing with the noisy environment of device. That enables the algorithm to execute more assigned task on that computer using the fewest
today’s quantum computers. processing steps within the constrained time frame computational resources and the fewest logic
While classical computers are also affected by before decoherence reduces the likelihood of a gates. Thus optimized, the algorithm can run longer.
various sources of errors, these errors can be correct result to nearly zero. This method, which has worked in a limited
corrected with a modest amount of extra storage In our interdisciplinary work on quantum setting on quantum computers now available to the
and logic. Quantum error­-correction schemes do computing at Los Alamos, funded by the Labora- public on the cloud, also takes advantage of
exist but consume such a large number of qubits tory Directed Research and Development pro- quantum computers’ superior ability to scaleup
(quantum bits) that relatively few qubits remain gram, we are pursuing a key step in getting algorithms for large problems on the larger quan-
for actual computation. That reduces the size of algorithms to run effectively. The main idea is to tum computers envisioned for the future.
the computing task to a tiny fraction of what reduce the number of gates in an attempt to New work with quantum algorithms will give both
could run on defect-­free hardware. finish execution before decoherence and other experts and nonexperts the tools to perform
To put in perspective the importance of being sources of errors have a chance to unacceptably calculations on a quantum computer. Application
stingy with qubit consumption, today’s state-of- reduce the likelihood of success. developers can begin to take advantage of quan-
the-art, gate-based quantum computers, which We use machine learning to translate, or compile, tum computing’s potential for accelerating execu-
use logic gates analogous to those forming the a quantum circuit into an optimally short equivalent tion speed beyond the limits of conventional
digital circuits found in the computer, smartphone that is specific to a particular quantum computer. computing. These advances may bring us all
or tablet you’re reading this article on, boast a Until recently, we have employed machine-learning several steps closer to having robust, reliable
mere 50 qubits. That is just a mere fraction of methods on classical computers to search for large-scale quantum computers to solve complex
the number of classical bits your device has shortened versions of quantum programs. Now, in real-world problems that bring even the fastest
available to it, typically hundreds of billions. a recent breakthrough, we have devised an classical computers to their knees.

50
SKY
REPORT

Celestial
Movement
The sky is always changing. The planets move overhead as they

BRAD GOLDPAINT GETTY IMAGES

trace their paths around the sun, and the moon rotates through the
heavens as it circles our own world. Though the stars that provide
their backdrop stay fixed in relation to one another, they too spin
above as Earth makes its daily revolution and its yearly passage
around the sun. To appreciate this ever-changing view, grab these
sky maps, go outside at night and look up!

51
 SKY
REPORT August/September 2019: Visibility of planets

The two largest planets in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, dominate the night sky
throughout August and September. They flank the Milky Way on both sides: Jupiter on the
right, Saturn on the left.
Astronomical Events
August—September 2019

August Event

1 New moon Mercury, the innermost

2 Moon at perigee (359,398 km), apparent diameter 33´ 14˝ planet of our solar system, was in inferior
conjunction (i.e., between sun and Earth) on July
5 Evening sky: moon 7° north of Spica in constellation Virgo 21 and is now quickly moving westwards away from
the sun. Favored by the fact that the ecliptic, the sun’s
7 Moon: first quarter
apparent path in the sky, rises steeply in the eastern morning
9 Mercury greatest elongation west (19°) sky, Mercury becomes visible at dawn as early as August 4. On
this morning, Mercury can be spotted with the help of binoculars low
Evening sky: moon is upper left of Jupiter in constellation Ophiuchus in the east about 40 minutes before sunrise. The visibility increases
11 Jupiter stationary significantly in the following days. Mercury reaches its greatest elonga-
tion 19° west of the sun on August 9, when it rises about 90 minutes
Evening sky: moon to the right of Saturn in constellation Sagittarius before the sun. The planet will remain visible until around August 23.
Throughout its morning visibility period the planet is brighter after its
12 Uranus stationary
greatest elongation than in the days before. If you are unsure where to
Moon reaches southernmost declination (–23.2°) look, you can locate the planet in the dawn of August 11 by using the
famous twin stars, Castor and Pollux, as pointers: Just follow the
13 Morning sky: maximum of Perseid meteor shower line formed by Castor, the upper star, and Pollux, the lower one,
extend it further down to the horizon and your eye should
14 Venus in superior conjunction
spot Mercury. From the end of August through the end
15 Full moon of September, Mercury is too close to the sun for
observation. On September 4, the planet is in
17 Moon at apogee (406,244 km), apparent diameter 29´ 25˝ superior conjunction.
23 Moon: last quarter

24 Morning sky: moon 2° north of Aldebaran in constellation Taurus

Mars is
26 Moon reaches northernmost declination (+22.2°) also lost in the
30 New moon sun’s bright light. The
Red Planet reaches con-
Moon at perigee (357,176 km), apparent diameter 33´ 23˝ junction on September 2,

BRAD GOLDPAINT GETTY IMAGES

when it is 1.6 astronomical
units behind the sun. Mars
reappears in the morning

ARTIST NAME ETC HEREÅ

sky at the end of
October.

52
 SKY
REPORT August/September 2019: Visibility of planets

The two largest planets in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, dominate the night sky
throughout August and September. They flank the Milky Way on both sides: Jupiter on the
right, Saturn on the left.
Astronomical Events
August—September 2019

September Event Venus hides

in the sun’s glare during
2 Mars in conjunction with sun August and September. The
planet passes behind the sun on
4 Mercury in superior conjunction
August 14, when it is in superior conjunc-
5 Evening sky: moon is upper right of Jupiter in constellation Ophiuchus tion. Until the end of September its eastward
elongation increases to more than 12°. But this
6 Moon: first quarter is not sufficient to shine brightly as an evening
7 Evening sky: moon is 6° right of Saturn in constellation Sagittarius star, because the ecliptic is only slightly inclined to
the western horizon. As a result, Venus sinks
8 Evening sky: moon is 6.5° left of Saturn in constellation Sagittarius below the horizon only about 30 minutes after Saturn is
sunset, about the time when civil twilight ends. about 30° farther to
Moon reaches southernmost declination (–23.3°) the east in the constellation
Venus forms a close pair in the sky with
10 Neptune at opposition Mercury in the evenings of September Sagittarius and passes the meridian
12 and 13, but this conjunction two hours later than Jupiter. Between the
13 Moon at apogee (406,377 km), apparent diameter 29´ 24˝ will also be hidden in the two planets, one can see the central part of
sun’s glare. the Milky Way, which extends vertically upwards
14 Full moon
from the horizon. Both planets seem to stand
18 Saturn stationary guard – one on the right, the other on the left.
Indeed, both planets hardly move at all: Jupiter’s
20 Morning sky: moon near Aldebaran in constellation Taurus retrograde motion comes to a standstill on August
Jupiter is 11, then resuming its normal motion west to
22 Moon: last quarter about to cross the east among the stars; Saturn does likewise
23 Equinox meridian in the south when its on September 18. The moon accompa-
light becomes visible at dusk at the nies Saturn on the evening of
Moon reaches northernmost declination (+22.3°) beginning of August. It is the brightest star- August 11 and again on Sep-
like object in the night sky and shines in the tember 7 and 8.
28 Moon at perigee (357,802 km), apparent diameter 33´ 23˝
southern part of the constellation Ophiuchus (the
New moon serpent-bearer). The waxing gibbous moon is
upper left of Jupiter on the evening of August 9, and
to the right of Saturn two days later. One month lat-
er, on the evening of September 5, the first-quarter
moon is again close to Jupiter, this time to the

BRAD GOLDPAINT GETTY IMAGES

upper right. On other nights, when the moon’s
light does not interfere with observation,

ARTIST NAME ETC HEREÅ

those who have good binoculars or a
small telescope can enjoy the four
Galilean moons orbiting
Jupiter.

53
 N
SKY
REPORT Perseus
5h 6h
7h
x

August
Pe h
4
8h Lyn
β eu
rs
s 60

3h

h
9
Hold this sky map so that

NE
NW
the direction you are facing
1

h+c
Camelopardalis
is located at the bottom of

10h
2h

Leo Minor
the page. For example, if you

2
1/8
α

M 33
1

Cassiopeia
80
γ

M8
are looking north, rotate the

Ursa Major
Polari
map 180 degrees so that

α
M 31
s
α
Le o

α
the “N” on the edge of the

Androm

11 h
1h
Ursa Minor
circle is down. White dots

eda
80 b

denote stars, purple lines mark

ar
α

Miz

Leo
constellations, and yellow

i
Ve nes
tic
Ce

na
α
ph

Ca
eu
symbols mark bright objects s

51
Draco

M
La
60

b
ce
such as star clusters. The red

ulus
rt
a
Cetus

Reg
Pe α
line running from one side of ga De γ

s
0h su

ce
Be oma
ne h
s 12

ni
b

re
C
the sky to the other represents M 92 3
Pis

M
es
öt
α
ce

Bo
s

Cyg Vega Hercules

the ecliptic—the plane of our 40 M 13

W
E

nus s
α ru
ctu
Ar
Lyra
solar system and the path the α
realis
na Bo

g4
planets take around the sun. Coro Virg o

Au
Vulp
ecula
Ne

The moon also orbits closely in Delp 20

pt

hinu Sagitta
s
un

Eq
line with the ecliptic, so it can uu
leu Atair α
s
α M5 Corvus
be found here. 23 h Aq 13
h
ua s
riu Serpen
Au

s s
α
hu
g

c
hiu
16

a
Aquila Spic
0 Op
Se
rp g6
en
s Au

Cap Libra
The reference point is 100° W and rico Scutum
rnu
40° N, and the exact time is 10 p.m. Au s
g1 M 24
EST or 9 p.m. CST. 4
r
22 h Pluto Satu
rn –20
Jupite Aug
8 14
h
s
auru
α M 20 Cent
Aug 12 M8
Aug 10 Antares
α
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 M 55

Apparent magnitudes Scorpius

Sagittarius
21h 15h
Open cluster
SW
θ
SE

Grus
Globular cluster

ERNST VON VOIGT

Lupus
–40
Galaxy 20h Corona
Australi 16h
s η

Nebula 19h 17h Centauru s

18h

α α

S
54
 N
SKY
REPORT Perseus β
7h 8h
9h

September
6
h h
10

α
60

Ca
Au

h
5h

11
pe
rig
lla
NE
Hold this sky map so that NW

r
b

ajo
the direction you are facing 2
/8 β

M
81

sa
M

12h
4h

Ur
is located at the bottom of

α
Ca
m
the page. For example, if you
el
op

Perseus
ar 80
da

α
are looking north, rotate the
lis

tici
s
Cane
Vena
b
map 180 degrees so that α

Mizar
Polari
s

h+c
the “N” on the edge of the Ursa Minor

M 51

13 h
3h

es
Ari

enic
Ca
circle is down. White dots

Ber a
es

Com
ssi
80

Tria

aco
op
ngu
denote stars, purple lines mark

eia

Dr

M3
lum

α
constellations, and yellow Ceph
eus

es
M3

öt
M

Bo
3

b
symbols mark bright objects

31
α

An
Ura

dro
60 us

nus
ur
such as star clusters. The red

me

α
ct
Cetus Ar

da
g 2
M9 na
line running from one side of 2h M
13 ro lis
Co rea h
14
α
Lac
Bo
Den α
ert eb
a
the sky to the other represents α Cygnus les
rcu
40 Veg
a He

W
the ecliptic—the plane of our b
E

α o
Lyra rg
Vi
solar system and the path the Peg
asu
s
planets take around the sun. Pi
sc
α M5
Se

Vulpecula
es
p1

The moon also orbits closely in 20

s
pen
5

Sagitta α
Ser
Ce

line with the ecliptic, so it can

tu

Delphinus
s

Atair
be found here. 1h chus
h
α
Ophiu 15
Equule 3
Aqu
us
Sep
Ne ariu
Se pt s 0 Serpens
un Aquila
p1
3 ra
b Lib

m
The reference point is 100° W and Scutu η

40° N, and the exact time is 10 p.m. M 24

Sep er
EST or 9 p.m. CST. 11 Capricornus Jupit 5
0h –20 Sep h
16
M 20
s
Pluto Saturn M8 piu α
Sep 9 or Antares
Piscis Austrinus Sep 7 Sc
α
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 Fomalhaut
M 55
Microscopium Sagittarius
Apparent magnitudes
23h 17h
Open cluster
SW
SE

Grus
Globular cluster Grus

ERNST VON VOIGT

Corona
–40 Australis
Galaxy 22h 18h
α η
Nebula 21h 19h Centauru
20h
β α

S
55
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