News on China's scientific and technological development.

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China builds Tianhe-3, the world's first exascale supercomputer, says scientist
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BEIJING (CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - China is developing and building the Tianhe-3, the world's first exascale supercomputer, a leading scientist said.

When completed it will be capable of a quintillion (a billion, billion; or 1 followed by 18 zeros) calculations per second.

It will be 10 times faster the current world leader, China's Sunway TaihuLight, and will "become an important platform for national scientific development and industrial reforms", Mr Meng Xiangfei, head of the applications department of the National Supercomputer Centre, told reporters on the sidelines of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

The new supercomputer will step up development in big data and artificial intelligence, he said. It will also work with traditional industries like steel and mining to build business models, as well as creating smart-healthcare and smart cities.

"It will support the building of a healthier and more digitised China," said Mr Meng, a delegate to the Party Congress.

Right now, Tianhe-1, China's first quadrillion (1 followed by 15 zeros) calculations per second supercomputer, is carrying out more than 1,400 computing tasks simultaneously and it can complete around 10,000 tasks per day, said Mr Meng.

"China's is leading the world in supercomputer application," he said, adding that Tianhe-1 is serving more than 1,600 research institutes and companies from more than 20 provinces.

Users are taking advantage of the massive computing power to scan the Earth for oil, create artificial nuclear fusion, build airplanes and maritime equipment, Mr Meng said.

"Information technology has become the core driver for innovation and industry change," he said. "We should continue to push for deeper integration between the Internet Plus, big data and AI with other industries."

"China aims to become a technological powerhouse by 2035," he said.

Each year, China sees more than 600,000 postgraduates and PhDs qualify, as well as millions of college graduates entering China's innovation workforce, he added.

"China will continue to unleash its innovation power, and I am fully confident that China will become an innovative and technology strong nation," he said.
 

manqiangrexue

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China speeds ahead of U.S. as quantum race escalates, worrying scientists
BY TIM JOHNSON

[email protected]
OCTOBER 23, 2017 5:00 AM

WASHINGTON
U.S. and other Western scientists voice awe, and even alarm, at China’s quickening advances and spending on quantum communications and computing, revolutionary technologies that could give a huge military and commercial advantage to the nation that conquers them.

The concerns echo — although to a lesser degree — the shock in the West six decades ago when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, sparking a space race.

In quick succession, China in recent months has utilized a quantum satellite to transmit ultra-secure data, inaugurated a 1,243-mile quantum link between Shanghai and Beijing, and announced a $10 billion quantum computing center.

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“To me, what is alarming is the level of coordination of what they’ve done,” said Christopher Monroe, a physicist and pioneer in quantum communication at the University of Maryland.

Perhaps more than the accomplishments of the Chinese scientists, it is the resources that China is pouring into the research into how atoms, photons and other basic molecular matter can harness, process and transmit information.

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Translating Microsoft's Quantum Computing Into English
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“It doesn’t necessarily mean that their scientists are better,” said Martin Laforest, a physicist and senior manager at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. “It’s just that when they say, ‘We need a billion dollars to do this,’ bam, the money comes.”

The engineering hurdles that China has cleared for quantum communication means that the United States will lag in that area for years.

“The general feeling is that they’ll get there before us,” said Rene Copeland, a high-performance computer expert who is president of
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., a Vancouver-area company that uses aspects of quantum computing in its systems.

But building a functioning quantum computer sets forth different kinds of challenges than mastering quantum communication, and may involve creating materials and processes that do not yet exist. Once thought to be decades off, scientists now presume a quantum computer may be built in a decade or less. The stakes are so high that advances by the U.S. government remain secret.

“We don’t know exactly where the United States is. I fervently hope that a lot of this work is taking place in a classified setting,” said R. Paul Stimers, a lawyer at K&L Gates, a Washington law firm, who specializes in emerging technologies. “It is a race.”

IT DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN THAT THEIR SCIENTISTS ARE BETTER.

Martin Lafores, Institute for Quantum Computing

Pure quantum computers remain largely theoretical although simple prototypes exist. Many designs call for them to operate in super cold conditions, bordering on absolute zero, or around minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit, colder than outer space, without any noise or micro movements that can cause malfunction.

What has made them the Holy Grail for nations and private industry is that quantum computers, in theory, are magnitudes better at sifting huge amounts of data than the binary processors that power mainframes, desktops and even smart phones today. They also can process algorithms that break all widely used encryption.

Rather than doing a series of millions of computations, based on binary options of ones and zeros, quantum computers employ particles that exist in an infinite number of “superpositions” of the two states simultaneously, a condition that towering physicist Albert Einstein once labeled as “spooky.”

A quantum computer “can feel all the possibilities at once,” said Warner A. Miller, a physicist at Florida Atlantic University, who, like the others, spoke last week at a
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at the
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, a think tank in Washington.

China splashed into the news in June when it announced that a
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. Entangled particles, even if separated by thousands of miles, act in unison. Any change in one particle will induce a change in the other, almost as if a single particle existed in multiple places at once.

Such long-distance quantum communication smashed records, occurring over 745 miles, far beyond the mile or so scientists had tested previously, and signaled Chinese mastery over a form of communication deemed ultra-secure and unhackable.

“I read that on a Sunday and went, ‘oh sh-t,’” said
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, an Australian-born mathematician who is chief executive of Symantec Corp., a global cybersecurity company with headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Neither the U.S. military nor private industry is known to have such a capability.

THE WHOLE WORLD CHANGES.

Gregory Clark, chief executive of Symantec

If the technology is refined, Clark said, it could make land-based communications infrastructure obsolete. “The whole world changes,” he said at a forum Sept. 19.

In early September, China chalked up another milestone, completing a
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, by far the biggest such link in the world, surpassing anything in the United States or Europe.

In such a link, if an encryption key used by either of two parties faces interference by a third party, the two parties know not to use it.

China again demonstrated the prowess of its space-based quantum satellite, dubbed Micius, on Sept. 29 when the head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences held a video conference with an Austrian scientist over a distance of 4,630 miles.

Also last month, China announced that it would build the
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, a $10 billion center in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, with the aim of building a working quantum computer that could break most any encryption within seconds.

China already has the world’s fastest supercomputer, the
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, which captured the title in the 2016 and 2017 at a competition in Frankfurt, Germany.

Monroe, the Maryland physicist, said China had set a goal of fully constructing the quantum research center within two years.

“If it costs $10 billion, China will just do it without asking, and they’ll put an army together to do it,” Monroe said. “I don’t think any other government in the world is able to throw together something (so) fast.”

Google, IBM and Microsoft all see huge opportunity in quantum computing and fund research labs. Commercial applications may include determining how polymers go together, mapping the genome, finding oil in complex geology, detecting cancer and handling air traffic.

Quantum computers can sift through vast amounts of data. One that handles 60 quantum bits, or units of quantum information, could hold 64 exabytes of data – 2,560 times more than all the material managed by the Library of Congress, which has 838 miles of bookshelves.

Military applications are vast and range beyond breaking enemy encryption to include quantum-enabled weaponry, navigation systems that can’t be jammed, and the use of quantum-powered artificial intelligence in war fighting.

In those areas, China is not believed to have an advantage.

“The point is, they are some distance from that quantum supremacy threshold,” said Arthur Herman, who leads the technology and defense program at the Hudson Institute.

Still, Herman called for U.S. policymakers to focus hard on the quantum challenge.

“We need a Manhattan Project style funding focus in order for a national quantum initiative to succeed,” Herman said, referring to the World War II era program to produce the first nuclear weapon.
 
here's
What if the US had China’s bullet trains?
Updated October 25, 2017 at 2:47 PM
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As communities around the world build more high-speed rail lines, the United States continues to lag behind. The largest high-speed rail network in existence today is in China, with
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(13,670 miles) of high-speed rail lines and thousands more in the works.

China’s fastest train, the Fuxing, runs from Beijing to Shanghai and can travel up to 350 kph (217 mph) — a 4.5 hour trip that used to take
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.

In contrast, the fastest train in the United States is Amtrak’s Acela line which runs along the Northeast corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston. That train travels up to
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(150 mph).

Here’s what the United States would look like if it had high-speed rail lines that traveled as fast as China’s current Fuxing train.

The purple circles represent one hour of travel, while the yellow ones are 4.5 hours of travel time. Click on the map to learn more.

In just one hour, commuters could travel from New York City to Washington D.C., from Dallas to Houston, and from Orlando to Miami.

In 4.5 hours, travelers can get from Chicago to Nashville, San Francisco to San Diego, and from Mexico City to Monterrey, Mexico.

Despite the lack of national-level, high-speed rail in the United States, states and local government have been working to create regional lines.

The state of California is currently building a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco with speeds up to 354 kph (220 mph) – but the full line won’t be ready
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.

The private company Brightline will also begin rail service this year from between Miami, Florida and West Palm Beach with the aim of eventually traveling from Miami to Orlando in
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, which is about 78 mph which doesn’t qualify as high-speed rail.

Experts have cited many reasons for the lack of U.S. investment in high-speed rail. For one, the U.S. has
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than other nations that have adopted high-speed rail. The vast territories to be connected would make high-speed rail construction costlier. The distances also make air travel more practical, because people can travel farther in less time.

Another issue is convenience. The population density of the United States is lower than places like China, the EU, and Japan that have high-speed rail. This makes it harder for Americans to access the trains. Many live in suburbs, which means travelers would still require transportation to a city in order to reach a bullet train.

The U.S. also has a strong car culture with a long history of
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, which makes a shift in transportation habits more difficult.
link to the map inside:
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Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
talking about train how about this
Chinese train technology has provided greater comfort and safety to Buenos Aires metro workers, since they finished its installation and related training. The increasingly close relationship between Buenos Aires and Beijing has picked up speed , especially in the last five years, with ties being developed in various fields, from trade and finance to culture and sports. In this context, China's innovative train technology has been installed in the Buenos Aires underground system, the first to do so in Latin America. This has seen trains upgraded with air conditioning, better lighting, more comfortable fittings and security cameras monitoring the inside of passenger wagons.

 
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