Microscopes to View Atoms

Ant sent us linkage to a story about new microscopes that can view atoms . This puts us one step closer to both Quantum mechanics.

Comments

Isolated atoms

[Samrobb]

"A quantum computer could use any amount of numbers."

Wow! Really? Any amount at all?

OK, OK, maybe the sarcasm isn't called for... the article was (probably) trying to make the point that data in a quantum computer would not neccesaily be limited by having only two binary states available.

Still, they pass up what I thought was particularly cool: the idea of studying an atom in (relative) isolation... could you use this atom-trap as kind of "clean room" for assembling three-dimensional nano-structures? What about trapping a single anti-particle so it can be studied outside of an environment where it has an effective lifetime of a few billionths of a second? Or just having the chance to see exactly what happens when two atoms interact, instead of having to observe in the aggregate...

Ob. Troll: Man! Can you imagine what a beowulf cluster of these things would be like!