Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Weigh Smallest Mass Ever
PaSTE writes "From the article, 'US scientists have managed to measure the mass of a cluster of xenon atoms at just a few billionths of a trillionth of a gram - or a few zeptograms. The record measurement is in the mass range of individual protein molecules, and the detection was made using sensitive scales developed at Caltech.' Another big leap forward for nanotechnology."
Very funny. At least we have only a few more hours of this. *Sigh*
lolololomgwtfbbq
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I guess her brain is made up of 1 protein molecules
As big as a dimple on a pimple on a fly's left nut.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Nothing to see here, move along!
End this insanity
first dupe!
They weigh less than the Olson Twins!
Let me guess: Taco's cock? LOL ZING
I thought Intel has been makin' them there xenons for years now
Article pointed to is from the 30th, two days ago, so it's not A.F. fodder.
Kate Moss?
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
this got posted like a day ago
"'US scientists have managed to measure the mass of a cluster of xenon atoms at just a few billionths of a trillionth of a gram - or a few zeptograms. The record measurement is in the mass range of individual protein molecules, and the detection was made using sensitive scales developed at Caltech.' Another big leap forward for nanotechnology.""
Just what the world needs. Weight conscious atoms.
The weight of the average slashdotters brain.
Quit April-Fooling around!!!!!
I almost thought this onw was real... Ohh, wait!!
Your AprilFoolishness are belong to us... get it?
Have a good one.
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
A related article from less than 24 hours ago covers another use of the nanomechanical scale developed at Caltech. This article is not exactly a dupe because it talks about a different application of the same scale.
CmdTaco's weewee? They finally measured it? And weighed it? Wow!
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
This was posted on BBC on March 30.
DUPE
Is it still April Fools?
More
What about http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/04/01/03562 31.shtml?tid=126&tid=14?
Slow news day, eh?!
I bet in a few months time they will realise that there was nothing there in the first place.
just in case NASA are reading
Offtopic?!? Hoax or not, parent is right either way, because... story was here yesterday
--- Above clicky thingy provided free of charge as a service to them lazy /. readers.
Does this mean April Fools Day is over?
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!
"PaSTE" shows up in "related links", but there's no link. Slashcode couldn't be broken, could it?
Wow, how many scientists will do that today?
Ya know? What if _every_ day the quality of slashdot was reduced to this April 1 crap (current article excluded)? Maybe we should take a moment to be thankful for the fact that not _every_ story submitted makes it through the editors rather than constantly bashing them for "dupes" and "lame-ass stories" that are neither "news" nor "stuff that matters". Days like this make me realize what drivel I would otherwise be submitted to in the absence of some form of reasonably intelligent screening.
A lot of people here are saying that "omg it's taco's penis". Let me explain something to these people: for something to have a mass (even if it is exceptionally small) it is first required that it exists. Since this has not been proven satisfactorily, I will say that it is probably taco's brain, which is obviously present (because he keeps posting stories), however very very small.
they are kind of like telegrams but use lowercase letters stop
This is nothing, if anything, we need scales that can accurately measure very large masses, wake me up when they develop a scale that can weight Scott and Reza Lockwood
Is it just me, or did slashdot just run an article on this very topic this morning?
Notice who wrote the article (PaSTE).
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!
but they just kept getting the error "Object undefined" returned from their equipment
It weighs more than Bush's brain.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
I don't know why they put the real ones in with the joke ones.
I suspect another order of magnitude advance will be necessary before they can measure GWB's.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Slashdot story. It is not even 24 hours yet.
The smallest mass ever measured would have to go to the electron. However, the measurement does not involve a scale but rather manipulation of electric fields. Moreover, scientists have shown that nuetrinos do in fact have mass (previously thought to be massless) and soon it will be the smallest mass ever measured
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
If they could take the cylinder they have now and weigh with enough precision, Avogadro's number would be known and the kilogram would no longer be tied to a physical object.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
...am I supposed to believe? After today's slew of Slashdot stories, I don't know what's supposed to be an April Fool's Day prank and what isn't.
10100111001
I wish people wouldn't post, you know, real stories on April 1st. Boycott reality for a day. It causes confusion.
The best thing about nanotechnology is that it seems to require exotic industrial gases, cryogenics and stainless piping and pressure vessels and stuff. Woo-hoo, I've got an automatic in!
Since the article itself isn't an april fool's joke, perhaps the repost is?
When they put together a few zeptograms of xenon atoms, did they use a small tube of Zap-A-Gap and zircon-encrusted tweezers?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Honey, does this make me look fat? > It does look like you've gained a few zeptograms.... *SMACK*
I'm sure everyone in the permanently vegetative community will miss her. Even if you were never a fan of 24/7 coverage of feeding tubes, there's no denying her contributions to Fox News' ratings. Truly a Floridian icon.
Does this quark make me look fat?
One thing is for damn sure. IT AIN'T YO MAMA!
Oh snap.
Thank God the article is dated March 30, I was worried for a minute.
This isn't the smallest mass ever measured, if it's anything it might be the smallest mass ever measured with something that's essientially mechanical. . ...
http://www.vetscite.org/publish/items/000305/
And what about physists who come up with masses for the fundamental particles??
Usually people use different tools when it comes to measuring things with masses in this range - a mass spectrometer for example
As for measuring really light things using the change in frequency of something that's vibrating that's not new
Professor Roukes' homepage has a link to his earlier published paper on attogram mass detection (2004). The abstract mentions that mass sensing of individual molecules will be realizable with optimized NEMS devices. Also there is link to paper which discusses the ultimate limit to mass sensing based on NEMS. Needless to say that so far it is not the physics of these nanostructures but the extrinsic amplifier noise which limited the measurement.
Yes, I submitted this story earlier last evening, but it was rejected, in favor of a DUPE ... ahem ...
MY Story has an actual nasa.gov link in it. Does the dupe? Nope.
Water found on Mars!
NASA has released a photo proving there is Water On Mars. This is certainly the most dramatic picture I've seen of such, leading credence to the idea that there was once Life on Mars.
Tag lost or not installed.
April Fools day: an excuse for the dumbest "stories" that don't make it to real posts.
Who cares?
Or at least that's what Timmy Boi says...
... scientists weigh largest mass ever:
Kirstie Alley.
Remember children, all generalizations are wrong.
Actually, I seriously do. I'm unable to see the direct connection between this and Nanotechnology. It seems like our scales are just getting more sensitive... I don't mean this as a diss, just bringing it up in case someone knows how it is an advancement in Nanotechnology... 'cause I'm not seeing it.
-Vendal Thornheart
Photons are massless and last I checked 0 (non-zero mass).
The problem is you can weight a really small mass like this accurately, but you couldn't measure the size of the kilogram with that scale. It's like trying to measure pills with a truck scale, only about a quadrillion times worse.
Holy crap. This was already the first (or second) story posted today. Can you finally start reading your fricken own site?
IT is exactly the same work. RTFA.
Scientists measure the mass of a cluster of xenon atoms. but could it run Linux?
When these scales become common and moderately affordable, drug dealers are going to love this. They will finally be able to measure their drugs right down the the very crystal, ensuring that not a single zeptadollar gets wasted.
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
Weigh as much as a duck?
Task Mangler
1 zeptogram = 1.57473044 × 10-25 stones
Gay Niggers......IN SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of...oh wait, it's already a cluster. Goodbye, free Karma...
...the approximate weight of the average /.er's "little black book."
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
The combined mass of all the brain matter in the heads of everyone who voted for Bush for the first AND second terms!
"I won't let information get in the way of fighting terrorism" - George W. Bush.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
I'm unhappy about the lack of penis jokes in response to this news..
You'd think April 1 people would be thinking about more penises.... cause' they're funny.. penises..
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Why weigh on a sunny day? So much to do, so why, why weigh?
- Save a tree, eat more woodpeckers
Well, they have energy and e=mcc, and they are also subject to gravity and as far as I know solar sails work by taking their impulse, so I guess though photons are massless, they are only so when in transit ..
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
male genitalia-related insults have been created this day.
Thanks for that. Now my girlfriend has a new target weight to reach by next April.
*sigh*
Here are the comments made by Mr. Bush on the experiment: 'There is an old saying in Texas: Measure me once, shame on, shame on you. Can't get measured again!"
You can't handle the truth.
A photon not "in transit" makes no sense. They have zero-rest mass, which doesn't say much, because they are never at rest. However, although they are massless, the do have momentum, determined by this equation.
p=h*f/c
h = is Plank's constant, f= frequency of the photon, and c = speed of light. Since h and c are constants, then the only thing the photon exchanges to transfer momentum is frequency. Weird.
That's right. All your base.
By looking at the change in resonance frequency, they are measuring the mass, not the weight. Therefore the results are the same on any planet, space station, etc. But can you call this procedure weighing?-)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
What? They got ahold of Michael's balls?
> They have zero-rest mass
No they don't. A photon is nothing but electromagnetic radiation packet.
> the only thing the photon exchanges to transfer momentum is frequency. Weird.
Not really. "Momentum" for a photon is not the same thing as one for a particle. When a photon "hits" something, it can convert its electromagnetic energy into the mechanical energy of heat. Although it does not have momentum, it has energy, and can give momentum to absorbing particles.
Could somebody please tell me what a mole of these weighs so that I can compare it to something I can actually wrap my brain around?
ie. H2O = 18amu's
H = 1 (x2)
O = 16
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Let's see, the smallest protein product I can find at the moment is NP_871795, a splice variant of C. elegans gene "thioredoxin H", encoding just seven amino acids: MTIYFTV, it weighs in at about 870 daltons (the full gene is 12.5 kD), which is just around the claimed "a few zeptograms" - 1.45 to be more precise.
Looks like for once the irrelevant biological reference is at least accurate. (for reference, the largest product is NP_787974 in drosophila: 2451.35 kilodaltons).
Maybe I'm not getting it, but I don't quite see the medical application of this. Many of the most common techniques in proteomics and molecular biology are based around measuring the weight of proteins (and other molecules), I don't know what benefits direct measurement would add. Unless it were cheaper or less labor intensive, which this doesn't sound like it is.
I'm guessing they just wanted to get the word "cancer" in there somewhere.
sic transit gloria mundi
Oh, mass. My bad.
classical physics = 3 space dimensions relativistic physics = 4 dimensions (space+time) braneworld physics = 5 dimension (space+time+mass) http://superstringtheory.com/experm/exper51.html The holy grail of modern theoretical physics is the unification of quantum and relativistic theory. A key idea here is the possibility that there might be extra, hard-to-perceive dimensions. The braneworld theory say that the extra dimension is mass, so the mass of elementary particles might actually be fluctuating, if ever so slightly. Mass dynamics! Who knows, these ultra fine mass experiments may give us a way to test some of these crazy theories.
We should consider placing this "feat" into a more abstract perspective; a technique commonly employed by reveared physicists Daniel Shor and Cassidy Laflame in their popular "Measurement of Thought" refereed articles. Shor and Laflamme define two "weight numerators" for quantum error correcting codes, connected by a MacWilliams transform, and use them to give a linear-programming bound for quantum codes. They introduced two new enumerators which, while much less powerful at producing bounds, are useful tools for measuring whether in fact something is not nothingness. The new enumerators are connected by a much simpler duality transform, clarifying the duality between Shor and Laflamme's enumerators. They also use the new enumerators to give a simpler condition for a quantum code to have specified minimum distance, and to extend the enumerator theory to codes with block-size greater than 2. Yes, this means our ideas can be "weighed" for value...
I never thought Jessica Simpson's brain would contribute ANYTHING to science. Guess I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Calista Flockhart, Paula Devicq and Jennifer Aniston en route for monthly weigh-ins.