IBMs World’s Smallest Movie

Researchers from tech-behemoth IBM have unveiled – confirmed by Guinness World Records –  the world’s smallest movie, made with atoms. Named A Boy And His Atom, the movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.

The movie depicts a character named Atom who befriends a single atom and goes on a journey that includes dancing, playing catch and bouncing on a trampoline. Set to a playful musical track, the movie represents a unique way to convey science outside the research community.

It takes around 1 million atoms to store a single bit of data on a computer, a bit being the basic unit of information in computing. Recently, IBM Research announced it can store that same bit of information in just 12 atoms.  In order to make the movie atoms were moved with a scanning tunnelling microscope. The microscope weighs two tonnes, operates at minus 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface more than 100 million times :: Read the full article »»»»

Higgs Boson Discovered??

Scientists have discovered a sub-atomic particle they believe is crucial in the formation of the universe, or at least crucial to the Standard Model in physics and our current understanding of how our universe works.

Scientists in Geneva say the discovery still needs to be verified, but it is the strongest evidence yet that the – Higgs – particle exists.

Scientist have all but said the words “we’ve found it”

Professor Themis Bowcock, head of particle physics at the University of Liverpool said Based on CERN results there appears to be less than one chance in a million that this is a fake,” Professor Bowckock has worked on the Large Hedron Collider and says ” Very few physicists would privately argue that this is not a Higgs Particle”.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research – CERN – said in a statement that the particle is “consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson“.

Dr Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director General of CERN said in an interview that the discovery was ” a historic milestone.”

Dr. Heuer and others have said that it was too soon to know for sure that the new particle – wieghing in ata na acceptable 125 billion electron volts, and one of the heaviest sub-atomic particle yet discovered – is indeed the elusive Higgs boson :: Read the full article »»»»

Loose Cable Behind CERN Faster-than-light Result

The controversial finding that cast a large shadow of doubt over Einstein’s belief that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light might have been caused by a loose cable, the lab behind the result said. Physicists at the CERN laboratory near Geneva appeared to contradict Albert Einstein last year when they reported that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster than light. Einstein had said nothing could travel faster than light.

James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, said the lab’s startling result was now in doubt. Earlier on Wednesday, the website ScienceInsider reported the surprising result was down to a loose fibre optic cable linking a Global Positioning System satellite receiver to a computer. ScienceInsider is run by the respected American Association for the Advancement of Science. Mr Gillies confirmed a flaw in the GPS system was now suspected as a possible cause for the surprising reading. Gillies’ says further testing was needed before any definite conclusions could be reached :: Read the full article »»»»

Australian Nanotechnology: UNSW Single Atom Transistor

An Australian team of physicists have created the world’s first – and smallest – functioning single-atom transistor, which could prove a critical building block toward the development of super-fast computers. In what can only be described as nanotechnology at it’s purest – the ability to control matter at the atomic scale, build devices with atomic precision, is the central definition of nanotechnology. Though several groups have attempted this amazing feat before, never has it been accomplished with such puristic accuracy. As if nonotechnology wasn’t already übercool: The transistor itself is composed of a single phosphorous-31 isotope, which has been precisely placed on a base of silicon using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope in an ultra-high vacuum chamber. What’s particularly amazing about their technique is that they were able to position the individual phosphorous atoms precisely.

The Australian teams tiny electronic device – described in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology - uses as its active component an individual phosphorus atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates. The Nanotechnology paper elegantly describes a brilliant process: Researchers fabricated a single-atom transistor in which a single phosphorus atom is positioned between highly doped source and drain leads with a lateral spatial accuracy of ±1 atomic lattice spacing. researchers demonstrate that they were able to register source, drain and gate contacts to the individual donor atom and observe well-controlled transitions for 0, 1 and 2 electron states, in agreement with atomistic modelling of the device. What was also amazing said Dr Fuechsle was that the electronic characteristics exactly matched theoretical predictions undertaken with Professor Gerhard Klimeck’s group - using NEMO-3D, a Nanoelectronic Modeling tool - at Purdue University in the US and Professor Hollenberg’s group at the University of Melbourne.  Read the full article »»»»

SMRs: Back to the Future of Energy – Small Modular Nuclear Reactors?

2012 is an historic year for nuclear power, with the first new reactors gaining U.S. government approval in almost 35 years. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission - NRC – has approved the first nuclear reactors to be built in the U.S. since 1978.

The NRC voted 4-1 in favour of Southern Company building two new nuclear reactors at an existing Georgia plant. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko voted against, expressing concern that the licence was being approved “as if Fukushima never happened”. The reactors are expected to cost $US14 billion/£8.8 billion and could begin operating as early as 2016. No reactors have been approved for construction since a year before the accident at Three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, in 1979.

Some have seen the approval of the Southern Company’s two Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors – to be built in Georgia – as the start of a revival of nuclear power in the West, but this may be a false dawn because of the problems besetting conventional reactors.

Safety concerns around nuclear power have risen following a meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima power plant in March 2011 after an earthquake and tsunami cut the plant off from the power grid.

In the wake of the Japanese disaster the commission launched a review into whether existing and new US reactors could withstand natural disasters like earthquakes and floods. It may be that when a new boom in nuclear power comes, it won’t be led by giant gigawatt installations, but by batteries of small modular reactors – SMRs – with very different principles from reactors of past generations :: Read the full article »»»»

Invisibility Cloak A Step Closer

Scientists in the United States have reported they are a step closer to creating invisibility-cloak technology, after masking a large, free-standing object in three dimensions. The lab work is the latest advance in a scientific frontier that uses novel materials to manipulate light, a trick that is of huge interest to the US military.

Reporting in the New Journal of Physics, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin cloaked an 18-centimetre cylindrical tube from light in the microwave part of the energy spectrum.  To the human eye however, which can only perceive light in higher frequencies, the object was still visible.

According to scientists the experiment is important proof of a principle that so-called plasmonic meta-materials can achieve a cloaking effect. A warplane cloaked with such materials could achieve “super-stealth” status by becoming invisible in all directions to radar microwaves, according to co-lead investigator Assistant Professor Andrea Alu.

Plasmonic meta-materials are composites of metal and non-conductive synthetics that are made of nanometre-sized structures far smaller than the wavelength of the light that strikes them. As a result, when incoming photons hit the material, they excite currents that make the light waves scatter. Read the full article »»»»

Higgs Boson: ‘The God Particle’ Nearly, But Not Quite!?

Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research - CERN -  say they have found signs of – although not yet conclusively discovered – the Higgs boson, an elementary particle which is the missing link in the Standard Model of physics.

The famed particle is the missing link in current theories of physics, used to explain how everything gains its mass. Rumors have been crashing about the scientific community for weeks on these findings.

Fabiola Gianotti, the scientist in charge of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, said the signal was centred at around 126 – GeV – Giga Electron Volts.

“I think it would be extremely kind of the Higgs boson to be here,” Gianotti told a seminar to discuss the findings :: Read the full article »»»»