maniack writes "I saw a cool link over at HardOCP about supercooling atoms with lasers. It's a little technical and hard to read, but I though the slashdot community might be interested. Who knows, with this technology, maybe I'll be able to overclock my p2-266 to 1 GHz after all."
Here we can kill two very important computer problems with one proverbial stone! And even reap a nifty side effect as well!
Problem one: The heat problem. Computers have it, and this represents an alternative to other methods. It has a few definate advantages over traditional heat sinks.
Problem two: Just think how cool the inside of your computer could look with some of these babies installed! Flashing lights! Cool lasers! You might even be able to get them to do cool scanline effects! You might even end up leaving your case off, to both facilitate air flow, and to enjoy the cool techo-ness of the inside of your computer! Get a fog machine, and your heat sink could probably match anything you see at a concert or other "professional" laser show!
Nifty side effect: Lasers are cool! They are one of those items which for some reason, are simply undeniably cool. (Other examples include lightsabers, NINJAs, and walls covered entirely by TV screens and flashing LEDs.) So if you put something that cool in your computer, then your computer will become slightly cooler by proximity, and you, as the owner of the now coolness-enhanced machine will find yourself reaping the benifits of coolness as well!
I've seen a lot of crap posted here about the potential uses of laser cooling. When i was doing my PhD, there was a group in the next lab doing laser cooling, so i'm almost qualified to offer an informed opinion. So, here's what laser cooling is good for:
It's good for cooling down small numbers of atoms or ions.
It works by giving each atom/ion the right amount of momentum (from a photon) to slow it to a standstill
It's useful for making bose-einstein condensates (something that's notoriously difficult)
It's useful for making very stable frequency standards (low temperature==low doppler shift==very accurate frequency standard)
It's the last of these items that is likely to prove the making of laser cooling. I don't know if it's happened yet, but there was talk of making the fundamental frequency standards (currently caesium atomic clocks) from laser cooled atoms.
I just read an article in Physics Today about new work with Bose-Einstein condensates, and I was surprised at the size (volume?) of the condensates they are making now and the research they are doing with them. It made me think that there may be applications of laser cooling that are yet to be discovered. While I heartily agree with everyone that this is not the new way to chill your Celeron I wouldn't totally rule something like this out -- hahahah okay, here's a thought. One rarely looks foolish making the most outrageous forecasts that don't come true, but your reputation takes a pretty solid hit if you say something will never be true and you are proved wrong...
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be
brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Stop linking cooling with overclocking!
by
Chuan-kai+Lin
·
· Score: 3
Just when I thought that we already have more than enough overclocking news stories (on/. and everywhere else), here comes another one. What makes it worse is that it is not even a true overclocking news story at all: first, it has nothing to do with overclocking, second, this is not news, third, there is barely a story in this one -- at least not in the way it is presented.
Let's tackle the easy one first: the "news" part. As many have already pointed out, this is hardly news for anyone who knows his way around the field of modern physics. Even if you do not major in physics or read journals each month, you are supposed to remember that three researchers, Steve Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, and William D. Phillips received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics specifically for the development in laser cooling. I could understand that the editors at HOCP might not have the time or expertise to realize this fact (besides, they never really mentioned overclocking), and I could understand that some readers of/. might be unaware of such fact. But I really expect a lot more from our/. editors. If we need to post science stories, get somebody who knows the business instead of letting stuff posted just because some layman think it's "cool". It is unlikely that we cannot afford it, right?
Second, laser cooling has absolutely nothing to do with overclocking. This is pretty easy to understand after you see what the technology is all about. (I am not a physics major, but have read quite a lot about it a while ago when conducting some research. Still, please correct me if I am wrong.) There are a lot of ways to cooling, and most of them are based on the idea of using something colder to absorb the heat from the object we intend to cool. This works nice under normal conditions, but fails miserably when you need to cool something from 0.1K to 0.000001K -- because there is nothing cooler out there.
Microscopically, heat is represented by the vibration of molecules. The greater the vibration, the hotter it is. So if we could somehow reduce the vibration of molecules, we can effectively cool it. That is where laser comes in. When you have got hold of the vibration pattern of a molecule (or a small group of them), all you need to do is to fire a small burst of laser and use the momentum of the photons to cancel the momemtum of the atoms. So the atoms will slow down, and its temperature will reduce.
Obviously you do not want to (and cannot) do this with your processor, because it is too large, and freezing it to 0.000001K will do more harm than good. From another point of view, it is time for people to realize that there are much more forms of cooling in the field of science and engineering (cooling atoms to absolutely zero, cooling plasmas from destroying the whole research facility, cooling mirrors in high-energy laser facilities, etc.), most of which really have nothing to do with processors. It is naive to think otherwise.
Get a life, people. I mean a real one. If you do not wish to do that, maybe you should spend some of the time you saved and go study.
Re:Cooling ATOMS not processors
by
pmc
·
· Score: 3
Lasers are useful for cooling atoms, but they have absolutely no use when it comes to cooling processors, or anything else large enough to be visible for that matter.
Not so (I was surprised as well). At Los Alamos they have used optical refigeration to cool a lump of Ytterbium (4mm x 4mm x 7mm - so it is a visible lump) by 0.3K (not to, by). Details here. Only one laser required too. But yes, the story was clueless.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean you don't already know?!?
Think people!!!
Here we can kill two very important computer problems with one proverbial stone! And even reap a nifty side effect as well!
- Problem one: The heat problem. Computers have it, and this represents an alternative to other methods. It has a few definate advantages over traditional heat sinks.
- Problem two: Just think how cool the inside of your computer could look with some of these babies installed! Flashing lights! Cool lasers! You might even be able to get them to do cool scanline effects! You might even end up leaving your case off, to both facilitate air flow, and to enjoy the cool techo-ness of the inside of your computer! Get a fog machine, and your heat sink could probably match anything you see at a concert or other "professional" laser show!
- Nifty side effect: Lasers are cool! They are one of those items which for some reason, are simply undeniably cool. (Other examples include lightsabers, NINJAs, and walls covered entirely by TV screens and flashing LEDs.) So if you put something that cool in your computer, then your computer will become slightly cooler by proximity, and you, as the owner of the now coolness-enhanced machine will find yourself reaping the benifits of coolness as well!
And THAT's what the point is!It's the last of these items that is likely to prove the making of laser cooling. I don't know if it's happened yet, but there was talk of making the fundamental frequency standards (currently caesium atomic clocks) from laser cooled atoms.
Just when I thought that we already have more than enough overclocking news stories (on /. and everywhere else), here comes another one. What makes it worse is that it is not even a true overclocking news story at all: first, it has nothing to do with overclocking, second, this is not news, third, there is barely a story in this one -- at least not in the way it is presented.
Let's tackle the easy one first: the "news" part. As many have already pointed out, this is hardly news for anyone who knows his way around the field of modern physics. Even if you do not major in physics or read journals each month, you are supposed to remember that three researchers, Steve Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, and William D. Phillips received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics specifically for the development in laser cooling. I could understand that the editors at HOCP might not have the time or expertise to realize this fact (besides, they never really mentioned overclocking), and I could understand that some readers of /. might be unaware of such fact. But I really expect a lot more from our /. editors. If we need to post science stories, get somebody who knows the business instead of letting stuff posted just because some layman think it's "cool". It is unlikely that we cannot afford it, right?
Second, laser cooling has absolutely nothing to do with overclocking. This is pretty easy to understand after you see what the technology is all about. (I am not a physics major, but have read quite a lot about it a while ago when conducting some research. Still, please correct me if I am wrong.) There are a lot of ways to cooling, and most of them are based on the idea of using something colder to absorb the heat from the object we intend to cool. This works nice under normal conditions, but fails miserably when you need to cool something from 0.1K to 0.000001K -- because there is nothing cooler out there.
Microscopically, heat is represented by the vibration of molecules. The greater the vibration, the hotter it is. So if we could somehow reduce the vibration of molecules, we can effectively cool it. That is where laser comes in. When you have got hold of the vibration pattern of a molecule (or a small group of them), all you need to do is to fire a small burst of laser and use the momentum of the photons to cancel the momemtum of the atoms. So the atoms will slow down, and its temperature will reduce.
Obviously you do not want to (and cannot) do this with your processor, because it is too large, and freezing it to 0.000001K will do more harm than good. From another point of view, it is time for people to realize that there are much more forms of cooling in the field of science and engineering (cooling atoms to absolutely zero, cooling plasmas from destroying the whole research facility, cooling mirrors in high-energy laser facilities, etc.), most of which really have nothing to do with processors. It is naive to think otherwise.
Get a life, people. I mean a real one. If you do not wish to do that, maybe you should spend some of the time you saved and go study.
Not so (I was surprised as well). At Los Alamos they have used optical refigeration to cool a lump of Ytterbium (4mm x 4mm x 7mm - so it is a visible lump) by 0.3K (not to, by). Details here. Only one laser required too. But yes, the story was clueless.