As Make put it, the atomic clock is old and busted. And the quantum-logic clock from National Institute of Standards and Technology, keeping time 100,000 times more accurately than its predecessor, is definitely the new hotness.
I don’t understand quantum mechanics. Physicists don’t even really understand it. But somehow, information was successfully teleported over a full meter, which means we’re that much closer to making Star Trek a dorktastic reality.
Maarten DeCeulaer’s Nomad Light Molecules lighting project consists of individual light “atoms” that can stand alone, but are recharged by plugging back into a “molecule.”
The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most complicated machine that was felled by a single faulty solder joint last month, won’t be back until summer 2009 now, at the earliest–a few months later than CERN last speculated. And at what cost? $US21 million in repairs. A drop in the bucket when the full $US10 billion budget is considered, yes, but let’s hope some of this dough is spent on a bit more magnet-meltdown-preventing solder redundancy. [AP]
Researches at Osaka University have been doing some really tiny writing lately, using their newly-invented atomic pen, which can draw atom by atom. The resulting letters, the words “Si” for silicon or “Yes” in Spanish, measure only 2 x 2 nanometers, roughly 40,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. According to Masayuki Abe, one of the project scientists, they have reached a limit impossible to surpass:
Graphene is getting a lot of publicity these days. It is being hailed as the future of the electronics industry—the material that will eventually replace silicon. It has also recently been confirmed as the world’s strongest known material. Now, researchers at the Berkeley Lab have thrust graphene into the spotlight once again thanks to the TEAM 0.5: the world’s most powerful transmission electron microscope. It has produced the first “stunning” images of graphene’s individual carbon atoms.
