When Superconductivity Became Clear
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Fifty years ago, a paper appeared in the journal Physical Review with an answer to a physics puzzle: superconductivity.
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Measuring the minute amount of energy needed to flip the magnetic orientation of a single atom brings researchers closer to making devices that represent bits of information with just a few atoms.
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The fundamental memory component of a quantum computer has been built for the first time using a string of atoms. This could offer a more reliable way to build a working quantum computer than other techniques, suggest researchers.
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ATOMIC CITY, Idaho  - In the early days of the  Cold War, a small team of U.S. scientists watched as nuclear  energy powered four light bulbs for the first time.
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Polishing memorandum of understanding
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Superblack material made from microscopic carbon nanotubes is produced in a US laboratory.
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Three Americans shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work in increasing science's understanding of the forces that bind together the smallest pieces of matter, known as quarks.
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One nanotechnology researcher said supercomputers small enough to fit into the palm of your hand are only 10 or 15 years away."If things continue to go the way they have been in the past few decades, then it's 10 years," said Michael Zaiser, a professor and researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering and Electronics. "The human brain is very good at working on microprocessor problems, so I think we are close -- 10 years, maybe 15."Zaiser's research into nanowires should help move that timeline along.For the last five years, he has been studying how tiny wires -- 1,000 times thinner than a human hair -- behave when manipulated. He explained that each such miniscule wire tends to behave differently when put under the same amount of pressure. Therefore, it has been impossible to line them up close to each other in tiny microprocessors in a production atmosphere.Zaiser said he's now figured out how to make the wires behave uniformly. He separates the interior material of the wire into distinct groups so the wire can't react as a whole. That makes it much easier to control. "It's like crowd control," he added. "If they can all go one way, you have a big mess."These nanowires will go inside microprocessors that could, in turn, go inside PCs, laptops, cell phones, or even supercomputers. And the smaller the wires, the smaller the chip can be.Shrinking down the microprocessors is a big step toward shrinking down computers.Zaiser was quick to point out that his nanowire discovery won't immediately lead to the development of supercomputers that can fit in the palm of a hand or even shrink down to the size of a book of matches. In addition to smaller microprocessors, engineers will need to deal with thermal fluctuations that erupt at that size.But he does humbly admit that taming nanowires is a big step toward the goal of small supercomputers."This will enable chips to become much smaller," he said. "Think 10 years back. You could hold [a cell phone] the size of a telephone receiver and it didn't work so well. Today, you can fit what is a powerful computer onto a small device."Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif., said that with advances like nanowire technology continuing to come along, Zaiser's predictions for tiny supercomputers may not be so far off. And that will be a huge step for the industry, considering that not so long ago supercomputers filled up enormous rooms or even entire buildings."Actually, what he's saying is not crazy," said King. "The wire problem was an important one. Solving that particular issue, one so fundamental, needed to be done. If he can solve that, a lot of people, a lot of companies, will appreciate that. The industry is aligning in a direction where we're going to be seeing continuing improvements and developments."Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz., said he definitely can see palm-size supercomputers coming out within 10 to 15 years, but he thinks they'll be based on the basic silicon technology used today. He added that the next generation of tiny supercomputers -- made with carbon nanotubes and nanowires -- may be as far off as another 30 to 40 years, though."You know, everybody says we'll get to a physical limit but every time we think we're going to hit it, we overcome it," said McGregor. "They end up being speed bumps instead of road blocks."King added that over the last 10 or 20 years, technology advancements have put smaller and more powerful computers into the hands of children and researchers alike. That leads him to believe that the shrinking of supercomputers is just ahead of us."We're at the beginning of some very exciting times in supercomputing," he said.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Evidence is found to tie the structure of the Universe to ripples in the density of matter at the dawn of time.
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This is a series of four articles each with a separate explanation of different phenomena. Each of the four articles is a piece of a mosaic and so every one is needed to understand the final explanation of the quantum astronomy experiment we will be proposing to do possibly using the Allen Array Telescope and the narrow-band radio-wave detectors being build by the SETI Institute and the University of California, Berkeley.
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A recent article in New Scientist magazine, entitled â Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away,â implies that the UC Berkeley SETI@home project has uncovered a very convincing candidate
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A beautiful chemical reaction is still a mystery to scientists more than 35 years after its first demonstration.
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New nanotech breakthroughs have enabled IBM to measure magnetic fields at an atomic level and to build transistor-like switches from a single molecule.
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Earth's magnetic field has flipped many times over the last billion years. But only recently have scientists developed computer models to reveal how these reversals occur.
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Frank Wilczek still remembers the physics course he took at the University of Chicago 35 years ago. The course taught by U. of C.&#39;s Peter Freund was so &quot;thrilling,&#39;&#39; he said, that he changed his major from
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U.S. scientists say they have found a way to manipulate carbon nanotubes without destroying their extraordinary electrical properties.
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Plasma physicists have made an unprecedented measurement in their study of the Earth's magnetic field.