Poincaré, Radiodurans and Teletransportation
As science journalist and supporter, surely I will be optimistic for 2007: among others, there are three main reasons which happened during 2006 which strengthen my convictions.
First, the quantum teletransportation between light and matter, experienced in Copenhagen last October. This is not the first time so particular a phenomenon is proved to be real but the experiment, held at the Niels Bohr Institutet, opens new and fascinating perspectives in the field of quantum computation: through the entanglement’s process is now possible to stock quantum data; with this discovery, the short future might be even more intriguing.
Second, a bacterium called “Deinococcus Radiodurans” could lengthen our own lives. This tiny form of life is able to survive unthinkable conditions, like a strong desiccation or a nuclear explosion: the reasons why all that could be possible were a real scientific puzzle, until Miroslav Radman and his French team have found a convincing explanation. Studies have to continue but adding other years to the human race’s average is no longer a dream.
At last, a Fields medal has been assigned for the solution of the so-called Poincaré conjecture: an unsolved enigma for more than a century has been revealed and that makes me think the next years will be a good period for mathematics.
Hence, if you need some optimism, you should just take a look at science: I am certain that this new century will overtake the former one.