Silicon Buckyballs = Quantum Bits?

nachoworld writes: "Scientific American has reported that buckyballs have been made from silicon instead of carbon. Because the Si-Si bond is weaker and longer than a C-C bond, silicon was thought to be unable to form a buckyball-like structure. But Hidefumi Hiura and colleagues at the Joint Center for Atomic Research in Japan have been able to create a buckyball with a stabilizing tungsten core. Granted this core changes the properties of the Si buckyball, but Hiura suggests that they may serve as excellent quibits, which store single bits of information in quantum computers. The spin state of the metal atom could encode the bit, and the silicon cage would protect it from corruption."

Comments

Beverly Hills rejoices!

[drin]

And suddenly the plastic surgeons had a much more powerful tool than previously available... one large buckyball in each breast, and voila! Buckyboobs!

(I know, it's silicon, not silicone, and it's definitely not saline, but I couldn't resist...)

FYI: Physics Review Letters Reference

[nickdog]

The original PRL article is Hiura et. al. Volume 86, No. 9 pp. 1733-1736. Some may have access to PRL online at: http://prl.aps.org/ This is a little more technical, but still worth a look.