By Evan Ackerman

This cube from high end audio manufacturer LessLoss claims that it will make your audio gear sound better. How? It’s so simple, I’ll just have them explain it:

The Blackbody is a high-tech audio accessory which greatly enhances your audio playback experience by addressing the interaction of your audio gear’s circuitry with ambient electromagnetic phenomena and modifying this interplay. The Blackbody takes advantage of the quantum nature of particle interaction, and is therefore able to permeate metal, plastic, wood, and other barriers to affect the circuitry inside your components. This altered electromagnetic influence results in profoundly improved sound quality.

Got it? No? Well, let’s dumb it down a little bit for ya:

Quantum electrodynamics has established that photons in enormous numbers and at very low energy levels interacting with electrons account for what are called electromagnetic fields. Photons (regardless of wavelength) interacting with electrons likewise affect the electromagnetic fields in our gear, having a direct influence on signal quality. It is in this interaction that the LessLoss Blackbody functions.

Still don’t get it? Geez, what’s wrong with you… We’ll have LessLoss give this one more try, after the jump.

So how does the Blackbody work?

The LessLoss Blackbody acts upon the electromagnetic radiation, specifically the “fingerprint” of the statistical photon emission produced by audio equipment. It converts this photon radiation into a harmless photon gas without spectral content. No spectral content means no fingerprint, no coloration: there is nothing left with which the emission source can intermodulate.

When the local environment contains no original spectral re-emittance, the gear can work without ambient electromagnetic spectral reflection. In other words, the reflection no longer resembles the original, and does not parasitically intermodulate it. By spreading the photonic energy over an infinite bandwidth, converting this spectral-specific photonic energy into blackbody radiation, we thus achieve the conditions in which we stop the reflection of the ambient particles.

The gear is, if you don’t mind the expression, “tricked into believing” that there is nothing there, not even molecules of air.

That’s great for my gear, but just what, exactly, is IN this thousand dollar box? Nobody seems to know. LessLoss does helpfully point out that the Blackbody “is marginally smaller in weight and size than two bars of gold.” It is also marginally less expensive at $959, but if you’re used to having accessories described to you in terms of how many bars of gold they resemble, you won’t care in the least. Oh, and LessLoss says that for best results, you really should buy three.

[ LessLoss Blackbody ] VIA [ Engadget ]

But teleporting? Well the fridge’s designer, a Thai student called Dulyawat Wongnawa reckons ‘In the next 90 years, we will see a lot of technologies that today we think are completely impossible. Even though my teleportation concept might sound far-fetched, scientists have already succeeded in teleporting small particles such as photons. So over the next 90 years, this technology will have time to develop and become part of our everyday lives.’

Are you a privacy-minded person living in the Netherlands with at least $82,000 USD to spare? If so, quantum cryptography can be your’s today, thanks to a new partnership between Siemens and id Quantique! Siemes has a bunch of dark fiber it’s willing to sell to you for use with your shiny new id Quantique Cerberis quantum key distribution system. As you all know, quantum cryptography key distribution uses light over fiber optic cables. In order to ensure that the key exchange occurs securely, you need dedicated fiber. And if, somehow, someone manages to peek in on your key exchange, the quantum properties of photons ensures that you’ll know about, since the very act of observing quantum events changes their outcomes.

Technology Review has more details about the agreement. Initially limited in scope to Dutch companies, this does signal a pretty big advance in quantum cryptography for the layperson.

Quantum mechanics is, in my mind, pretty close to magic. For some mind-bending quantum fun, check out this Dr. Quantum video:

By Evan Ackerman

There are any number of potentially useful and/or incredibly stupid light-up USB accessories that owe their glowyness to various flavorings of LEDs. That’s cool, I’m down with that, I like the futuristic look as much as the next geek. But retro is rapidly becoming the new futuristic, and this USB light fits the bill neatly with a light bulb that is, in fact, a light bulb. You know, the old school vacuum + filament + heat + inefficiency + if it breaks you have to clean up really carefully or you’ll get shards of glass in your feet kind. Numerous disadvantages aside, the one redeeming factor if incandescent bulbs is present in this USB powered version… Namely, the ability to cast a warm and pleasing glow, which (I imagine) provides a nice counterpoint to the inevitably harsh and unyielding photons that are being pumped out by whatever device this little lamp is plugged into.

For about $14, you get the lamp plus two spare bulbs, one of them frosted (if you’re into that kind of thing). Each bulb should last about 300 hours, giving you decades (well, 0.01 decade) of pleasing illumination, and a replacement set of three is only about $6. It all can be yours, from where else but Japan.

[ JTT (Translated) ] VIA [ New Launches ]