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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
In other news IBM has talked about a new "highly accurate" price system for shipping of their servers.
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!
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.
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?
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.