this is bbc news. the headlines: the british prime minister, theresa may, said that the agreement of eu leaders to begin the second phase of brexit talks was an important step on the road to a smooth and orderly withdrawal from the eu. the next phase of negotiations is about a transition deal and the future relationship. austria's conservative party has agreed to form a coalition with the anti—immigration freedom party, which would make austria the only western european country with the far—right in government. the two party leaders will hold talks with austria's president on saturday about forming a new administration. wildfires in california are continuing to burn out of control, scorching an area larger than new york city and paris combined. one firefighter has been killed battling the blaze. the fire department said more than 8,000 firefighters were tackling the fire, using 1,000 fire engines. now on bbc news,

it is time to click. this week, the wired world of 360 video. the artistic world of marina abramovic. and the strange world of quantum computers. imaginea imagine a computer that could crack the world's most secure codes in minutes. design extraordinary new medicines. even pave the way to

intelligent machines. big tech companies like google, ibm and microsoft are all trying to be the first to achieve a breakthrough in the field of quantum computing. but we are not quite there yet. at the moment, if you want a quantum computer, you need all of this. you need your ionising lasers, your cooling lasers, and your processor. you need all of this, and currently all this can do is add a zero and one. but it does do it in a really cool way. quantum computers harnessed weird and wonderful phenomena seen only at very small scales. the data in an ordinary computer is represented as its, each of which can either be zero or one. —— bits. a quantum computer, instead, users quantum bits or

qubits. now, these qubits can be both zero and one at the same time. this is called superposition, and it isa this is called superposition, and it is a key feature of a quantum computer's unique powers. so when a quantum computer and one, it is also adding one and a zero, and one and one and one, and zero and zero, all at the same time. so numbercrunching could in theory done much faster on a quantum computer. there are a few really important things that we know they will be to do. if we can ever build them. so one thing is searching through a database. so lets you have a list of a million items, say, and you want to find a particular item on that list. well, allan ordinary particular item on that list. well, all an ordinary computer can do is look through that list one at a time, the first item, the second item, and the third item, until eventually you find the item that you are looking for. a quantum computer can in some sense look at

all of those items simultaneously. we know that quantum computers will be able to help artificial intelligence learn better and learn faster. 0ptimising things and designing things, if you're trying to design lets say the shape of a car so to design lets say the shape of a car so that to design lets say the shape of a carso thatair to design lets say the shape of a car so that air will flow over it in exactly the right way, that as an optimisation problem. it looks like quantum computers are going to be extremely good at that. and then there is code breaking. if you give an ordinary computer code to break, it will try every possible combination, one at a time, but give a quantum computer a code to break and it can try all the codes at once. this is a huge area of application of quantum computers, and it is financially the driving force of putting money in the industry and persuading people to build the things. the first government which has a functioning quantum computer which can break secret messages is going to be at a big advantage, and maybe we want to try and hide away the fact that they have got those capabilities. and, if superposition wasn't weird enough, a

quantum computer's qubits can be paired up or entangled, and then can instantaneously affect each other from anywhere else in the universe. well, that's all very well in theory, but it is really hard in practice. at sussex university, researchers are preparing for the challenge of scaling up their prototype quantum computers to take them from handfuls of qubits on the lab bench to an industrial scale. so what you see is an actual working quantum computer. as we are filming this, you can literally see an atom for example be in one state and another state simultaneously. and what you see on this screen is the evidence that that really occurs. that really the atom is very strange and counterintuitive state. so quantum computers have been on the waiver a long time, the holy grail of science. and with that, it actually seemed nearly impossible to build them. so people felt maybe it

is just never possible to build such a machine. the reason why it is so ha rd a machine. the reason why it is so hard is because to control quantum effects in such a way, allowing us to build a large—scale quantum computer, is tremendously hard. quantum effects like if an atom can be an two different places at the same time, or entanglement, which einstein referred to as spooky, is so einstein referred to as spooky, is so hard to control. at the moment these prototypes offer a glimpse of how these computers might work in the future. how will we use them when we have them? what does a quantum computer programme looked like? the basic building blocks of a quantum computer programme are really very alien to us. they are things like superposition and entanglement. those are the right high—level concepts to put into our quantum computer programmes, but it is very hard for the human brain to understand what entanglement is and

what its consequences are. thinking of qubits connected by pieces of string actually works extremely well to help us design and predict quantum programmes and predict what they will do. so perhaps a high level quantum programme manager of the future could look like i'm not, oi’ the future could look like i'm not, or could look like children's game of untangling fishing lines and see who has which fish —— a knot. you imagine going up and down and coiled around, and the pattern of how those strings interact has a bearing on your quantum programme. strings interact has a bearing on your quantum programmelj strings interact has a bearing on your quantum programme. i do feel the programmers have a little bit of time to sort their software out, though, because the hardware is also still a work in progress. i have gone underground to see 0xford university's quantum computer. the lab isa university's quantum computer. the lab is a wizard's paradise of lasers, vacuum chambers, and traps for atom sized particles. it is an ion trap. in the lab, they have

achieved a world record level of control over their quantum bits. they can even show off by making a single qubit low in morse code. click. what will your quantum computer look like? it won't be the size? so ideally it looks incredibly boring and incredibly small. so ta kes boring and incredibly small. so takes an optic cable, two metres by one metre high, we think we can get this down to something the size of a shoeboxin this down to something the size of a shoebox in the next five years. once you have everything in the right place. once we have everything the right place, machine down, optimised, and rather than made by physicists, made by engineers. rather having knobs, when you have enough people twisting them. you are not looking to put more and more qubits into the same box, are you? what we want to do is build some devices which contain five or ten qubits, but build many of these devices. so it's the same as if you

have a supercomputer. nowadays you don't have one big computer, you have lots of small computers, and data centres thrumming with lots of different machines. that is what we envisage these things are. different machines. that is what we envisage these things arem different machines. that is what we envisage these things are. it does seem envisage these things are. it does seem like it is not the most efficient design, if you're plugging lots of these things together with optic fibre rather than making a quantum computer that has 50 qubits in one place. yes, the most efficient device we could ever build would have all the qubits being able to talk to every other qubit. that is ideally the place where you want to be. but you always get to the point where you can't put any more qubits in the device. at that point, we wa nt qubits in the device. at that point, we want to have a network we can build—up. so once you have got as big as you can with these techniques, you can then network and together to build and bigger networks. the huge potential of quantum imputing has attracted big tech players. google told us it will have something big to announce in march 2018. ibm has a 20 qubits

quantum computer that researchers can programme over the internet. both these companies are trying to build reliable quantum computers of around 50 qubits. now, at this point they will achieve something called quantum supremacy, which sounds world changing, but it might not be. why i don't like the phrase is that when you cross that boundary, nothing instantaneously magical happens. it is just the nothing instantaneously magical happens. it isjust the point nothing instantaneously magical happens. it is just the point at which you can't predict what the machine would do. it is the point that the machine might be useful for something, but to be honest, we haven't worked out anything that, say, a 60 qubit wanton computer could usefully do. so it is into the uncharted territory, very exciting, but it is not at the point where the quantum hardware is supreme. you should not throw away your phone or your desktop and have a quantum computer instead. so with more tech companies getting serious about quantum computing, there is now a place for them to show off their

ideas. it is the quantum technologies fair in london, and we have been along to see what is on the quantum horizon. when it comes to quantum computer, a lot of the research seems to be happening in academia but i wanted to find out how much of it is being taken away from the lab bench for applications in the real world. every stall at this fare is using the same tech used in quantum computing. the principles of trapping, manipulating and measuring tiny atom sized particles. but the practical applications here are creative, and potentially life changing, from diamonds used in heart disease sensing to capturing individual virus particles. they are really designed to be able to measure very, very sensitively, at very small lengths, so it is idealfor things like nano particles, like viruses, andindeed like nano particles, like viruses, and indeed for measuring chemical signatures, as well. use the mouse to move that scaled back and forth,

it should be fairly obvious when it flashes really bright. there you go, that's it. when it wiggles around, that's it. when it wiggles around, thatis that's it. when it wiggles around, that is when you have got a particle trapped in your resonator. the ultimate aim is that viruses could be picked up using this diagnostic tool. but the main focus now for most people here is on overcoming the engineering challenge of making large, bulky systems a lot, lot smaller. heavy industry all the way through to defence and security, transport, and air technologies. it is incredible to see how many stalls here our research in so many different areas when it comes to quantum technology. and they are all working together with an open source mentality, along with a lot of investment. the british government spent £270 million over the last five years on quantum technology research. the collaborative element, especially the number of things that npl is involved in, because we have a lot of the core technology and

science, and we are just looking at what are the actual applications in the uk business world. from afar, a lot of the applications here still looked like complex machinery, but anne curtis has been looking at its potentials in an important area, far, far away. so one of the main applications we can use the quantum technologies is quantum sensors and what we are doing in this experiment is we want to sense greenhouse gases and measure how much there is, how thatis and measure how much there is, how that is changing over time. and one good way to monitor large—scale systems is from space. to put something properly on a satellite, it has to go through all the space qualifying test, so every item in they would have to be space qualifying. most of the fibre technology isn't so good in space due to radiation effects. but there is no reason why this couldn't be miniaturised and put up in the space, it isjust miniaturised and put up in the space, it is just the next stage of funding. it is so hard to be here today and not feel excited about wa nton today and not feel excited about wanton technologies. at one thing everybody has said to me is that

their particular real—world applications are a few years in the future still. so, when it comes to quantum computing, it is still very much a case of watch this space. hello, and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that the federal communications commission in america voted to repeal rules on net neutrality, which had stopped internet service providers from offering different speeds and priorities for users online. an elongated asteroid was being checked for signs of alien technology, and here on earth, the faces of 2 billion people can be compared in a matter of seconds with a minority report style system from china. it was also the week that netflix was caught up in a creepy viewing controversy after revealing on twitter that 53 subscribers watched the holiday film a christmas prints every day for ten days. it

represented overall trends are not specific individuals. the city of san francisco has banned the use of delivery robots on most of its sidewalks, stating not all innovation is all that great for society. meanwhile, dutch police say it may not have been such a good idea to use beagles to catch drones after all. who could have guessed as maxine here on click on the birds we re maxine here on click on the birds were trained to catch the drones from the sky but the cost of keeping them was too high, and they didn't a lwa ys them was too high, and they didn't always do what they were told. and finally, if you are missing harry potter, don't despair. artificial intelligence may have a solution for you. a new chapter has been created for a book called harry potter and what looked like a poorjob of a large pile of ash. its plot twists include harry dipping hermione in hot sauce and ron turning into spiders and trying to eat hermione's family. earlier this year we looked at some of the 360 cameras which have taken off in 2017. daniel films with the

new kid on the block, the 360 —— insta1 in berlin. he was impressed, easy—to—use, lots of features, including this bullet time mode, a bit like the film the matrix, where you can get a picture of your sort from all angles. but one of —— but what have the more established names in photography got to offer us? with christmas around the corner we sent daniel to a suitably festive place to put two 360 cameras through their paces. the ancient city of bath hosts a very traditional christmas market, one that i want to catch in the round. i've got to make cameras for thejob. 0ne the round. i've got to make cameras for the job. one is the round. i've got to make cameras for thejob. one is from kodak. the other is nikon's. they look similar, with two ultra— wide—angle lenses capturing everything before the two images are stitched together in camara. look closer, and you will see the kodak sporting two different lenses, one smaller than the other, superwide 235 degrees lens. it also

has the tiniest of it controlled in the world, and a slightly higher price tagged them the nikon. 0ur producer has the kodak, while i am putting the nikon through its paces. now, we don'tjust want to test these cameras out in daylight when all the conditions are absolutely perfect. with these cameras we want to test them out to see what they are like as it starts to get dark. will the bright lights be a problem, and will we see all of the details? time to go for a wander and see who's 360 is best. dive in, ladies. don't let me get in your way. in no time at all i found the vested with the stand. notjust whine, but flavoured vodka here. the nikon is not put off by those flashing lights. but the image is a little dark, so we will brighten it for you in postproduction. there you go. now you can see the other problem. the image stitching means i've almost lost my head before touching the

job. —— touching a drop. the kodak's which is brighter than the nikon, but we found the quality from that wide—angle lens was softer than the smaller lens on the other side of the device of course, you are best off with a stick attached to both of these cameras, otherwise your hands get in the way. to make the test pharaoh we decided to see how these cameras fared back to back. 0rfront in front. all back to front. well, it is difficult to tell, to be honest. we shot them side by side. look at this. we found a 360 globe for a 360 camera. and it is the nikon showing off more natural colours, benefiting from a more accurate wide balance. although some might prefer the warmer kodak results. it is very christmassy. at the chilly side a shop, the kodak

warmed things up, while the nickel and kept things natural and crisp. both cameras struggled to stitched their shots to go perfectly. this is their shots to go perfectly. this is the raw footage was no touching up. the nikon has done a reasonablejob. the nikon has done a reasonablejob. the stitching point is more visible on the kodak, partly because of the different qualities of those two lenses. 0n the upside, it is kodak that offers the ability to play with how the images are stitched together in its free software, something the nikon's more basic offering lacks. for sheerfun, the nikon's more basic offering lacks. for sheer fun, the kodak nikon's more basic offering lacks. for sheerfun, the kodak also offers greater flexibility when playing back what you shot. this is little planet mode. if you want to do it on the nikon you will need some third—party 360 software which may need additional cost. —— mean additional cost. finally, beating everybody forgets when they use a camera, sound. it is very odd being filmed. we are being filmed as well, it is 360. and goodness me. you can

tell she has had too much cider, it is moving around a bit. i'mjust called! we reckon both do a great job, but the nickel is slightly clearer. although the kodak offers the possibility of attaching an external microphone. so which camera will enthusiasts be hoping santa brings them this year? we believe the kodak edges it for easier postproduction, while the nikon has a better shot. but if you are hoping for a trouble—free, cinematic sea mless for a trouble—free, cinematic seamless result for under £1100, you may have to wait until something else takes off. at least for now. this is acute art, a virtual reality a rts this is acute art, a virtual reality arts platform and a gallery without walls. and it is about to launch with the vr works by some of the world's leading contemporary artists. amongst these works is won

by marina abramovitch, these self—confessed grandmother of performance arts who pushes her body to the limits to challenge and move people. well, there is marina. in a tank of water. well, she seems to wa nt to tank of water. well, she seems to want to talk to me, but the water is rising up her body. immersive player, in real life, where someone rescues another person, or offers aid ofany rescues another person, or offers aid of any kind, there is a transfer of energy. approach the water. aid of any kind, there is a transfer of energy. approach the waterlj think she wants me to touch the glass. make contact. oh. oh, ok,

right. now i am somewhere very cold and everything seems to be going wrong. as always, with vr, you really get a sense of scale. but ice sheu really get a sense of scale. but ice shelf looks absolutely enormous. and it is crashing down right in front of me. this work is an expression of marina's fear that humans will not survive the consequences of climate change if we don't change our behaviour. i'm being covered in spray. and now there is a note.|j will walk instead of drive. i will reuse what i can. i will reduce the wayside cause. marina wants to leave the participants with a feeling they should do something good for the planet. we have to save this planet

that we are living on. i want to create a little contract with the planet earth, and give my word honour that i will do something to save it. —— literal contract. screaming. you are pretty well-known for pushing your body further than most people would want to push their bodies. here, you appear virtually ina tank bodies. here, you appear virtually in a tank of water, but i get the sense that you still need some pretty real stuff to make it seem as real as possible? you know, actually, to do this, i have to really be in the water. we did it in a swimming pool, with two divers holding my legs. so i can really go in and see can feel like i would actually die if i didn't have any more airto actually die if i didn't have any more air to breathe. it is funny that you have to do something which is virtual, but you still have to do

it physically. before, you said you don't think your performances can be ca ptu red don't think your performances can be captured adequately with photos or videos because you need to be there, you need the experiences, it is about actually physically being there. i wonder if virtual reality is close enough to being the, and thatis is close enough to being the, and that is why you chose it, because it is almost being there? it is very important, the energy dialogue between the audience and the performer. and the only thing that can catch it, before it was video with sound and movement, but virtual reality is really another step further, because you can go around the objects, you can interact, you can do this. but still, i think it isa can do this. but still, i think it is a question of how much energy and charisma can actually transfer from the real performance into the virtual body. the rather mesmerising marina abramovic. we will hear more

from marina in next week's programme, which is the christmas show, so expect tons of sensible journalism and no fun whatsoever. maybe. in the meantime, you can follow us on facebook and on twitter, where we live at the bbc click. thanks for watching, and we will see you next week for christmas. it is going to be quite chilly first thing on saturday, certainly with a good frost around. but the weather will turn milder over the next couple of days. by the time we get to sunday, i suspect double—figure temperatures across the south of the uk. at the moment there is a dip in the jetstream which brings in cold air from the north. here, we start to see a south—westerly flow of air, which will push the weather front and cloud in our direction and this

area of milder air will be in place across the uk by the time we get to sunday. but saturday is still going to be quite a cold day across most of the uk. the cold snap is still not quite over. look at this. we're still getting weather watcher pictures with nice, snowy scenes across the uk, mostly across the hills now. first thing on saturday morning, a widespread frost across the country. these are the city temperatures. in rural areas it will be much colder. saturday morning start off on a beautiful, crisp note, through plymouth and bournemouth, all the way to brighton and dover. the midlands also nice and crisp temperatures around. —1 in nottingham. freezing across most of the yorkshire. into scotland as well. we start to see slightly milder air at this stage getting into parts of northern ireland. 0n the whole, a nice start to the day, but there will be a change on the way later on on saturday. clouds will be increasing and it might turn cloudy across wales and maybe around merseyside, into the west midlands and the south—west here.

at times it could rain everywhere on saturday. the best of the sunshine in the east and the south—east and the far southern counties. then the change happens to be mild weather through the course of saturday night into sunday. the weather front comes off the atlantic and we develop a south—westerly wind. so that milder air will arrive through the early hours of sunday and for many of us sunday will be at least starting off on a cloudy, damp note. quite breezy too for a time. we could even see gale force winds across the far north. temperatures back up to double figures, even in scotland. that damp weather will last right through the course of sunday but by the time we get to monday it looks like things will be drying out. a little bit of a dip in the temperature. into next week, it looks like the weather will dry out but it's still going to stay relatively on the mild side. welcome to bbc news,

broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe — my name is duncan golestani. our top stories: south africa's governing anc is preparing to vote for a new leader to replace president jacob zuma. the british prime minister theresa may says the agreement of eu leaders to begin the second phase of brexit talks is an "important step" on the road to a smooth withdrawal from the eu. eu leaders warn that the upcoming talks will be even harder. austria's conservative party agrees to form a coalition with the far—right freedom party. wildfires in california are continuing to burn out of control — scorching an area larger than new york city and paris combined. and: a rare skeleton of a woolly mammoth goes up for auction in france.