The US Army Research Office and the National Security Agency (NSA) are together looking for some answers to their quantum physics questions on quantum computing and cryptography.

An international team from Germany and the U.S. has just shown that it's possible to read data stored as nuclear "spins." This new way of reading the spin of thousands of electrons is not the ultimate goal: a real quantum computer would need to read the spins of single particles.

A scanning method that could prove crucial to the development of a practical quantum computer has been developed by US researchers.

Nearly all of the information that falls into a black hole escapes back out, a controversial new study argues. The work suggests that black holes could one day be used as incredibly accurate quantum computers -- if enormous theoretical and practical hurdles can first be overcome.

Thanks to lab experiments, there is growth in the number of teleportation believers, but there is an equal amount of disbelief, too. In his new book, David Darling argues "one way or another, teleportation is going to play a major role in all our futures. It will be a fundamental process at the heart of quantum computers, which will themselves radically change the world."

Stephen Page argues that given the capability of quantum computers to invalidate cryptography techniques, society should "create safeguards, standards and laws to prevent people from using quantum computers to wreak destruction."

Physicists in Austria and the US have independently demonstrated quantum teleportation with atoms for the first time. Until now, teleportation had only ever been observed with photons. The results could represent a major step towards building a large-scale quantum computer.

Scientists have witnessed an atom and a photon - a small packet of light - share the same information. This is an important milestone in the quest to create a 'quantum computer', which could operate much faster than conventional computers.

Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way. Controlling the movement of light particles - so-called photons - to store and process data could lead to the development of quantum computers.

Quantum computers, which rely on the arcana of quantum mechanics to do many computations in parallel, are a long way from actually being useful. But researchers are already trying to work out how to write programs for these almost non-existent devices, in the belief that learning how to do so might help engineers to design the computers in useful ways.

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