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IBM Measures Force Required To Move Atoms
Tjeerd writes "IBM scientists, in collaboration with the University of Regensburg in Germany, are the first ever to measure the force it takes to move individual atoms on a surface. This fundamental measurement provides important information for designing future atomic-scale devices: computer chips, miniaturized storage devices, and more." I've attached a video if you are interested.
They've been the first (only?) company to construct their logo with individual atoms - and that was in 1990. Looks like they don't give up researching the basics, despite turning more and more into a consulting/support company, not the big iron provider they've always been.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
You are kidding, right? That is one of the most ignorant statements I have ever seen. Nothing would ever be "worth it" if it had to show an immediate profit.
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
Dude, what are you doing at slashdot? This is a nerd site, not a greedhead site. This advances human knowlege, who gives a damn if it ever makes a profit?
Does the Hubble bring profit? No. Do earth based telescopes bring anyone profit? No. Should they? Not as a primary function. There are more important things in life than money and profits!
There was a beautiful sunrise this morning. Although nobody made any money off of it, I greatly profited by the experience. Mankind greatly profits by knowing how much force is required to move an atom, whether IBM makes any money from the exersize or not.
Go back to the bank to worship your little green god and stop trolling us nerds.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
As I was reading the article I was trying to visualize what /. and realized there was not only an image -- but a
this looked like. I was pretty frustrated until I came back
to
freakin' video.
So, bravo for including that video. It really added value. Thanks.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Yeah, it's just like all that research into electrons they did some years ago. So f**king small they weight next to nothing, so how are they ever going to be useful?
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it'll never be profitable if you think it isn't worth it to try to make it profitable.
In other news IBM has talked about a new "highly accurate" price system for shipping of their servers.
Well, yes, they did move atoms with precision in 1989 (from TFA), but moving things and measuring the force required are two different things. If you know the exact forces you can automate the process much more effectively as no manual checking is needed.
What isn't worth what? It's a research project. It's not supposed to be profitable.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
F = .5mv^2
--Chemguru
Because when this story was there a week or two ago, 90% of the comments were stupid jokes.
This is a really interesting part of surface science, which in itself is more important than people give it credit for.
The force to move that atom meassured _directly_ is something new, that will also allow more educated guess on the dynamics of self-assembling layers.
To illustrate a point: All those nice pictures like shoing "IBM" in atoms are usually done on a nice surface (Pt-111), and cooled down to helium temperatures. At room temperatures, those atoms just around on a timescale faster than you can meassure a picture.
This is also (or even more) the case when creating thin layers on a substrate, where there are lots of different ways for layers to grow (some substrate material combination first grow "islands", others form a single layer, and islands later, others grow layer by layer). This is hard to detect in situ (a LEED picture only shows that much...). So anything we know about those forces helps understanding this behaviour.
And yeah, about practical applications: Everything from solar cells (organic ones have _very thin_ layers in their CIGGSE sandwitch) to lithography (dielectric mirrors for EUV-lithography is a hot topic)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
He obviously doesn't understand Part 3...
1. Move individual atoms to make company logo
2. Determine the force required to move those atoms
3. ???
4. Profit!
A step forward towards an universal constructor. Did I spend too many hours playing Deus Ex?
Unless you're a Ferengi.
Does the Hubble bring profit?
The Hubble not making profit is like saying that people don't pay taxes. Where do you think your money goes? NASA needs projects like the Hubble to keep getting its government checks. You're sunrise is a bad analogy, since no one created, except maybe a higher power if you believe in one.
Secondly, I assume IBM has a bunch of ideas about how they could make money off of this. IBM is a company, and being a company it must turn a profit, otherwise it wont be a company for very long. They have at least one idea on how to make this a profitable adventure, just because they're not telling you it doesn't mean they don't have one.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
Wouldn't that surface be made of, ummmm, atoms?
Your ASCII testicles are grossly deformed. Painfully so.
The intro to the video has "people patents projects" it is almost scary to see that patents is that entrenched in their business plans. Although at the same time IBM has done a lot to increase the research and knowledge in the whole nano-tech field. When I was a tech in a lab the prof running the lab told me that most of the time when there was some barrier that no one could cross in the nano-tech field IBM would throw a ton of money at it and solve the problem. So it is nice to see they are still working on solving problems and advancing the field.
You know what would drive this idea to profit? Being able to transport boxes "Star Trek style" from one location to another over terabyte transmission lines. Cheaper than diesel, line haul trucks, tolls, and drivers by far! First we have to move the atoms... that will allow us to rearrange the pattern and transmit it via PGTP (pretty good transporter protocol) to destination site.
Whats the big deal? Really small needles, people!
A sunrise tax ... taxing people for watching the sun rise ... Brilliant !!!
(/Hopes no one in congress notices this joke.)
the hubble doesn't bring profit. its not like it's making more money then they are spending on it. we pay taxes, yes. yes, some it goes to nasa. however, nasa is putting that money into a project that isn't making extra money, therefore its not a profit.
You've never dealt with Wall Street, have you? Look into "arbitrage". Hell, look into all of their business practices.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
famous saying
You are the dumbest troll ever. And you have no balls apparently.
To be perfectly fair to other companies, IBM has a very simple logo. It is also black and white. Now that we can finally see atoms in color, other companies can get in on that action.
If you could make circuits like that, it would be really interesting, although useless. For instance, I can imagine an Air where the CPU (at the atomic level) looked like the Apple logo tesselated again and again.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Surely all you need to do is measure the force required to move mountains and then divide by the number of atoms in a mountain?
Saying "The Hubble not making profit is like saying that people don't pay taxes" is like saying "eggs are like rabbits."
Eggs and rabbits are alive unless they're dead, that's where the similarity ends. Taxes are money and so are profits, that's where the similarity ends.
The sunrise isn't an analogy. I did indeed profit from it, and it doesn't matter whether or not the sunrise was created. It was there, it had value, it was priceless and costless. If it wasn't costless, if I had to pay money to construct it, I would have. IBM moving atoms isn't costless, but it is priceless.
How valuable is the air you breathe? How much do you pay for it? I pity you and your pathetically narrow world view.
Money is only a tool. You shouldn't worship your tools. Not because of any religious injunction but because worshiping your tools is retarded.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Force to move atoms?
Surely not - everybody knows that they're all moved by His Noodly Appendage
Spaghetti not Science!!!
Jesus was an invention of the Romans - watch "The Pharmacractic Inquisition" for something more credible...
Fingers crossed that the scientific "open source equivalent" geniuses who care about advance of science than money can work a way around it without the need for greed.
We may get charged for breathing oxygen soon, which we all kind of need so it would stand top reason great scientific breakthroughs would be in it for the money, we presume though, we never know the full facts 100%.
Regardless this is a great breakthrough and a step towards smaller and more effective technology.
In the name of sticking up for someone with autism, f**k you! Prejudiced bastard.... that is unlawful and linuc for dumm
Way to miss the point.
If NASA stopped sending back pretty pictures of twinkling stars, they would have a much harder time generating interest and justifying their share of the taxes they receive.
actually, the most important thing to Ferengi is cotton buds, to only reason they are so obsessed with profit is because they have to spend so much money on earbuds.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Funny that this video has instantly reminded me of UAC promotional videos in Doom3.
I am still waiting for the Elementary Phase Deconstructor!
1. Measure force required to move 1 atom
2. ??? <-- (this probably involves patenting the process)
3. Profit!
Now, if only we could apply that to everything.
It's a shame that the technology to do science costs so much, but since it does it's a good thing that some rich people see their money for the tool it is and act accordingly, instead of worshiping it.
Kudos to Branson, Carmak, IBM's leaders, etc.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Your argument is flawed on the basis that you are reversing cause and effect. You are saying NASA keeps doing scientific research on space primarily to receive money from the government. That's completely reversed. NASA receives money from the government in order to do scientific research. Those pretty pictures are just the byproduct of that.
Some questions are expensive to answer. For example, how much is it worth to teleport materials at the speed of light?
If you want to teleport something, you have to take the source material apart, atom by atom and rebuild it elsewhere, atom by atom. Can we do that? No, because we don't know how to tear something apart atom by atom, identify the atoms we've just torn off the source, transmit the x,y,z coordinates along with the atom type and put the same kind of atom at the translated x,y,z coordinates yet. We're on the way though.
Initially, it'll be inanimate objects. UPS is currently capitalized at $75 Billion so there's a little bit of money to be made moving stuff around. Of course, why move stuff instead of just fab as needed? Once you've torn something apart, you know what you need to make as many copies as you want.
If we ever get to the point where we can disassemble a person and rebuild people quickly enough then you're talking several orders of magnitude of value more. Take snapshots of yourself when you're especially healthy and use those as restore points for yourself. Add some patching software that merges your experiences which are stored as atom arrangements in your brain since your last snapshot and you have immortality. How much is that worth? Don't like your nose? There'll be body shops that use the photoshop equivalent to touch up your features. How much is that worth? Want a bigger cock? Not a problem. Whatever you can imagine, and then some could be possible.
Will any of the above ever happen? Who knows? What we do know is it won't happen if we aren't willing to pay to answer the 'little' questions. Like how much force is needed to move an atom.
Yes, Telescopes make money.
they take pictures.
Go back to your computer and think up something that you dont want to make profit from.......
And then I'll steal it, make millions, and steal your girlfriend
Thank God we have embedded YouTube videos on Slashdot now. Now if only we could get people to post a bunch of asinine and off-topic comments below each video...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
mod parent up. Insightful!
There's plenty of stuff that goes on on Wall Street that's not immediate profit making. Just look at Apple, they announce something that won't make any profit for a long time, and their stock goes up. Microsoft (or was it sony?) announces that their next gen console will start making a profit in 2010, and their stock goes up.
Very few products make a profit the day they come out. For the most part the first month or so (on average) is just spent remaking the production costs, and then everything past that is pure profit.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Yes they thought the same thing when heron invented the Steam engine 2000 years ago. Nice toy for a king but nobody could ever make a profit from it.
Funny thing though if somebody had thought hmm what if I took this and scaled it up and connected it to a wagon or to a mill or......
They just might have sparked off the industrial revolution 1700 years earlier than it was or invented the first car or train who knows?
But hey none of that could ever be worth while right?
From El Wikipedia: "In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the momentum of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the momentum of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain."
IBM is blowing smoke up our five-hole.
In fairness, there is that HD channel that just shows sunrise in various locations every morning. Talk about starved for content...
-l
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I never said they didn't nake money you fucking moron, I said that wasn't their primary purpose. Now get the fuck off my lawn and back to the fifth grade you stupid boy.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
With the sizes of traces on CPU dies these days, I imagine having a technology like this waiting in the wings will pay in a few years.
"Of course, why move stuff instead of just fab as needed? Once you've torn something apart, you know what you need to make as many copies as you want."
;)
Dang you! You just out-moded my transporter invention! Not even invented yet, and I'm already out of business. Maybe I can sue you in some European Anti-Trust court...?
If IBM has announced this now, expect Intel to announce within a week that "We're doing it too." After all, Intel cannot afford to be perceived as being behind anybody in advanced integrated circuit design.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Such a frivolous waste of money! I can't stand it when people do things that will never see a profit! That's what I tell my kids whenever they ask me to take them to the cinema or go to an amusement park or other silly wasteful things like that. They should be setting up lemonade stands on the roadside during their summer vacation.
Why just the other day I told my wife not to have sex with me because it's a complete waste of time and energy, which could be better spent packing coins into little rolls to change at the bank. Speaking of which, semen is quite valuable at sperm banks, so blowing it elsewhere is just shooting money out the window.
Wasteful people >:(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Uncyclopedia bills itself as "the content-free encyclopedia". Excerpt from today's front page...
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Which side of the argument are you on? Hubble doesn't bring profit but a sunrise does?
How about profiting as a secondary function? Afraid to answer? Somewhere down the line you should be attempting to recover the R&D costs, and if you make more money than what you spent, what do you call it? So the answer is YES.
Who the fuck modded you 5;insightful?
Saying eggs are alive is like saying your tupperware container is alive just because you put a mouse and some nuts in it.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Wow! I didn't think you would stoop to words like "Fuck" and "Lawn".
I find that people scream the loudest when they are shown they are wrong.
Pow!
still gonna steal your girlfriend. even if she is fat
At least it's not incredibly precise at the cost of being accurate!! ..Or is it?
you forgot one thing you also need. The power of gravity is different at different altitudes. So they can measure it all they want, it's still going to change. Who thinks they were smart enough to remember that? I sure don't think so.
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Both the sunrise and the Hubble bring profit, but neither brings monetary profit.
How about profiting as a secondary function?
In the case of IBM's atom movement, it may indeed bring profit some day. But as with telescopes, profit is not its primary purpose. Gaining knowledge is its primary purpose.
Who the fuck modded you 5;insightful?
Certainly not bankers and stockbrokers! I'd say most likely some nerds who know the value of knowledge, and know that money is not the answer to everything. It's simply a tool to facilitate barter, nothing more.
We slashdot nerds don't worship our tools, unlike you Wall Street Journal greedheads.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
you forgot one thing you also need. The power of gravity is different at different altitudes. So they can measure it all they want, it's still going to change. Who thinks they were smart enough to remember that? I sure don't think so.
Gravity is by far the weakest of the fundamental forces. At that scale, its effects are negligible.
No, a tupperware container with nutty mice is not alive. The eggs on your mom's ovaries are alive, as is every other cell in her body.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This sounds a whole lot like Technological Determinism, a theory widely acclaimed of being utterly wrong. And this whole "if we don't pay"-attitude is intirely wrong, this reseach was carried out by IBM, because they belive it's profitable.
The industrial revolution started before steam power was effectively harnessed.
Loads of mills next to canals in the town where I live are a testament to this.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
Want a bigger cock? Not a problem.
Nice people tell me by email this is possible even today.
No, I want THE BIGGEST cock.
//Anonymous Coward, hereafter Anonymous "Big Dick Mike" Coward
Important things do not ever turn a profit. Important things are what you spend your profits on.
-me
its cute when idiots like this guy think the profit motive is a virtue. The only reason we have a society that has built this profit motive is because of medeiocre asses, like the aforementioned guy, who need to be motivated to make a contribution to humanity. You generally don't need to hang a carrot in front of a geek or any intellectual really to have them make contributions to humanity and behave w/ civility.
But Joe Schmoe, he needs to believe that if he gets a college education, he can make the big bucks some day, so he drags his ass through "higher education". And the reason he simply doesn't take the wealth he dreams of, well we disincentivised such behavior with prisons and fines and whatnot.
It's not that intellectuals don't have the same pitfalls as everyone else. I'm just saying when real intellectuals have those pitfalls, it more an abberation than the norm.
Res Ipsa Loquitor "The facts speak for themselves"
No, you are not. Damn that's the dumbest thing I've read on Slashdot in a while. You aren't a physicist, okay? Don't pretend like you have any idea what you're talking about. Don't assume that you know more than Ph.D.s who've been studying this shit for decades. Just shut up, you're making Slashdot a stupider place with your very presence.
I would like to say one thing...
kernel
...how much force was it?
You know what cost a ton of money but took 20+ years to develop into something profitable?
The Integrated Circuit.
So I imagine... we should have just gave up when it was in theory labs "too small, not practical, too expensive to produce" and continued with the discreet electronics approach right?
And we'd all be typing on 80 pound computers that wouldn't run DOS6.
Sweet. Good idea!
You're so smart!