Major science events that define 2017 (part 2)

BRIGHT FUTURE FOR QUANTUM COMMUNICATIONS & QUANTUM SUPREMACY

The past year has also seen a series of major advancements in quantum communications, which are currently described as "unhackable."

In June, Chinese researchers announced that they had transmitted pairs of "entangled" photons from the Micius satellite to two ground stations located more than 1,200 kilometers apart. Previous efforts to entangle quantum particles, such as photons, have been limited to about 100 kilometers.

"The experiment shows that long-range quantum communication is indeed technologically feasible and holds out the promise of the construction of long-range quantum communication networks in the near future," Seth Lloyd, director of the Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Xinhua at that time.

In August, China inaugurated the world's first line of quantum communications between the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, which covers a total length of over 2,000 kilometers. "We hope to form a ground and space integrated quantum communications network in about 10 years, and apply it widely in fields such as national defense, government affairs, finance and energy," Pan Jianwei, lead scientist of the Micius project, said earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Google, IBM and several other tech giants are now in a seemingly tight race for quantum supremacy, a state which allows quantum computers to beat even the strongest supercomputers.

In November, IBM announced that it has successfully developed and tested an operational prototype processor that handles 50 qubits, which are believed able to exhibit what's known as "quantum supremacy."

Google was reportedly to unveil a 49-qubit device soon. Intel is also betting on a quantum-enabled future, with the revelation of a 17-qubit processor in October. There are also many other groups around the world pursuing different approaches to achieve the "supremacy."

"It's obvious that there's now a worldwide race to build quantum computers able to do things that are classically hard," Professor Scott Aaronson, director of the Quantum Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin, explained to Xinhua. "I'm just excited that it looks like someone will win this race within the next year or so."

ASTRONAUTS SET TO GO BACK TO MOON

In July of 1969, the U.S. space agency NASA succeeded in sending astronauts to the moon. About half a century later, U.S. President Donald Trump instructed NASA to do so again, with an alleged goal of laying a foundation there for an eventual mission to Mars.

The Trump administration has not yet laid out a detailed plan for returning Americans to the lunar surface, but NASA is exploring a concept of building a small space station around the moon known as Deep Space Gateway that would serve as a waypoint to the lunar surface and deep space.

China, the third country which has independently sent humans into space, is also working on an idea for manned lunar landing.

According to Wu Yansheng, general manager of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the mission will consist of a manned spaceship, a propulsion vehicle and a lunar lander. The manned spaceship and the lunar lander will be sent into circumlunar orbit separately.

Yang Liwei, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, said that China is in the preliminary stage of its manned lunar program and estimated that Chinese astronauts will be able to walk on the moon around 2030.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMES OUT OF LAB

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not only challenging and defeating human players in the ancient Chinese board game Go, it's also predicted to penetrate and even transform industries from manufacturing and transportation to finance and healthcare.

And scientists scouring data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope even used AI to discover an eighth planet around a star 2,545 light years away this year, making the distant solar system the only one besides our own that has eight planets orbiting a single star.

By 2025, annual worldwide AI revenue will grow to 89.8 billion dollars, according to Tractica, a U.S. market-intelligence firm, an increase from only 3.2 billion dollars in 2016.

"I think AI industry is now in its infancy and what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg," Zhang Yaqin, president of China's tech giant Baidu, told Xinhua earlier this year. "The impact of AI on human beings would surpass that of the steam engine, electricity and the Internet. It will open up a new era and transform business, lifestyle and society." (to be continued)