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Discovery of a "Flat" Atom Hailed as Quantum Computing Breakthrough
msw writes to tell us that nanoelectronics researchers have discovered a new molecule that could act as a state-manipulable atom due to its unique shape and properties. "Imagine a tiny arsenic atom embedded in a tiny strip of silicon atoms. An electric current is applied. Something strange arises on the surface -- an exotic molecule. On one end is the spherical submerged arsenic atom; on the other end is an 'artificial' flat atom, seemingly 2D, created as an artifact. The pair form an exotic molecule, which has a shared electron, which can be manipulated to be at either end, or in an intermediate quantum state."
and unleash them on the flux capacitor !!! we are getting into quantum artifact business.
Read radical news here
Don't you mean indeterminate quantum state? The electron can't be in an intermediate state since there are only two possible states.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
I suspect that they mean some kind of artifact that behaves like an atom for certain useful purposes, but without explaining what that artifact is and what makes it behave like an atom they're not actually explaining anything.
Next time you think about putting your new quantum motherboard in your mouth think again.
With a 2D atom scientists can now predict (with considerably more accuracy) where that electron is located! This is amazing.
Uh, two points:
1. There already exists an issue with the amount of toxic chemicals in most computers today.
http://maine.gov/dep/rwm/recycle/computerrecy.htm
"A typical processor and monitor contain five to eight pounds of lead and heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and arsenic."
2. When you are dealing with quantum levels a gram of any element has a lot of area to work in and they are suspending the toxic bit with a field of silicon.
"Imagine a tiny arsenic atom embedded in a tiny strip of silicon atoms..."
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Sadly, these flat atoms will never get the attention that more endowed atoms get on a regular basis.
Back in my day, the President of the United States declared that arsenic counted as a vegetable in our school lunches, and although we didn't much like the taste, we all did our part to defeat the commies and make the world free. And this is the thanks the next generation has for us -- gettin' all uppity about using it in computers. Sheesh!
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
It's hard to be a clown on this one, I'm afraid. Maybe jokes about non-flat atoms that just sit around all day collecting welfare checks shooting off neutrons, or how this flat atom doesn't have any boyfriends because she's so flat. Maybe go the route where "flat" rhymes with "fat" and talk about Fat Atombert. Hey hey hey!
More Twoson than Cupertino
Yeah, it's all pretty much crazy moon language to me.
"We've recreated the fufflernuggen hoppleheimer process in lab conditions. Isn't that exciting!"
Now I know how my friends and family feel when I start talking about Unix.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Is there a big variety I'm unaware of?
Can someone on slashdot please make sense of the article. It claims ;-)
1. That quantum computing needs vastly fewer bits to represent data. I thought it dealt with multiple possibilities simultaneously, but that the final reality just needed small number of bits. (Ideal for encryption cracking. Crap for storing a database)
2. That a synthetic atom was created. OK. I used to be a chemist. A new non-peridic table atom is heresy to me. But that extraordinary claim seemed to be nothing more than an odd electrical state, acting as if an unknown atom was present.
3. A molecule was created. Covalent bonds and the like. Except that it seemed to be an arsenic atom buried in a matrix. Not a separate molecule at all.
4. That faster than light communication is possible. I thought that collapsing entanglement does appear to happen faster than light, but that no information transfer happens. Mind you, that's my memory of my take on a New Scientist comment some time back. My brain has its share of garbage. Compost help ideas grow.
I suspect there is great science here being reported as little more than magic.
I'll settle for two of 'em. Because the picture in the article looks like boob.
Wil McCarthy insists that his Wellstone... an artificial state of matter (or something of that nature) involving a grid of pseudo-atoms... isn't entirely science fiction.
The Wellstone
The Collapsium
Lost in Transition
To Crush the Moon
Warning: I haven't been able to bring myself to read the final book in this series, the previous books have set it up as a serious downer and I've already got enough stress in my life as it is.
"typical monitor" when this was written was a CRT. I'd hardly call a CRT a "typical" purchase for anyone anymore. I got rid of my last one four years ago, and I'm not even sure I know anyone who still has one. Hell, most non-gamers I know don't even own a desktop PC. I'm not saying there aren't still hazardous materials in today's PC, I'm just saying its a hell of a lot less than "five to eight pounds."
I use salt made with recycled chlorine rather than the less environmentally friendly brand-new chlorine.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Thank goodness they finally have flat atoms. All of those bumpy atoms were starting to annoy me.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
i wound say wikipedia but it appears not to have an article on flat atoms :-(
null
With RoHS firmly in place, there is no lead in the solder of almost any circuit board built post 2006.
Delft's Rogge, the first of the discoverers stated, "Our experiment made us realize that industrial electronic devices have now reached the level where we can study and manipulate the state of a single atom. This is the ultimate limit, you cannot get smaller than that."
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
In any analog system without hysteresis, and thus many digital systems too, you go through an unknown state as you transition from low to high.
IIRC, which I probably don't, quantum computing's indeterminate state is a bit more than just "unknown". It allows the calculation to be done with essentially "wildcard bits" that, when resolved magically give us the answer. THis essentially allows multiple parallel calculations. Unknown does not give us that.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
There is nothing wrong with using toxic substances. The problem is how you process it, and recycle or dispose of it. I'm sure the car you drive to work has a serious amount of Toxins. We only need to be sure that we allow a proper reclaim process.
A good example is the lead acid battery in your car. You get charged $5 for every new battery that you buy if you don't recycle the old one.
Ever drive through Missouri? If so, ever smell almonds? Well, afaik there are no almond trees in Misouri. That's pesticide you smell - arsenic.
TFA and TFS are referring to incredibly tiny amounts of arsenic, not large quantities, and they would be actually be inside the chips. I can't see how they would pose a danger to anyone.
Um, your comment was pretty ignorant but it was on topic, have the mods been smoking arsenic?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
am tired of these flat molecules. I want the largest, firmest and the most ample molecules that I can get my hands on...
Wait... was thinking of something else. Never mind.
Yes, but does it run Linux?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Imagine a tiny arsenic atom embedded in a tiny strip of silicon atoms.
Me: ??? <blink, blink>
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
and they would be actually be inside the chips. I can't see how they would pose a danger to anyone.
Puts away salsa
What?
A typical processor and monitor contain five to eight pounds of lead and heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and arsenic.
Considering that a typical LCD monitor weights less than ten pounds (no idea actually, but they're light) I find it hard to believe that they'd be made almost fully out of lead.
And a processor? Unless you're speaking of something other than a CPU, mine doesn't get anywhere near those weights.
All those hippy potters, happily throwing salt onto their ceramic bongs and beer mugs, getting that cool sodium glaze, allowing all the freed chlorine up into the sky...
I drank what? -- Socrates
>There is nothing wrong with using toxic substances...
Yep, it's even in the tapwater you drink, use to cook and wash and brush your teeth.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/arsenic.cfm
There appears to be a fair amount of conjecture here. From the article:
"Hollenberg explained, "The team found that the measurements only made sense if the molecule was considered to be made of two parts. One end comprised the arsenic atom embedded in the silicon, while the 'artificial' end of the molecule forms near the silicon surface of the transistor. A single electron was spread across both ends. What is strange about the 'surface' end of the molecule is that it occurs as an artifact when we apply electrical current across the transistor and hence can be considered 'manmade.' We have no equivalent form existing naturally in the world around us."
Klimeck, and graduate student Rajib Rahman used the analysis to develop a three million-atom model in nano-electronics modeling program NEMO 3-D to analyze the behavior. From this, they determined that the exotic flat atom represented a controllable quantum state atom, via its electron. The quantum state was voltage dependent, the necessary characteristic for an electricity-based quantum computer.
Last David Ebert, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue, and graduate student Insoo Woo, helped transform the model into an image to help visualize the discovery."
So, the supposed molecule exists so that the calculations make sense. The rest is modeled in a computer program. I remain unconvinced. Perhaps a year or two down the road quantum theory will reach a point at which the results of some experiment proven by the same mechanisms leads to a contradiction, thus derailing the very foundation on which discoveries like this are theorized?
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
from the breakthroughs-by-mistake dept.
There's a word for that, just on the tip of my mind, meaning happy accident... ah yes: schadenfreude.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
In Soviet Russia, atoms flatten you.
Ever seen that low-sodium alterno-salt? Supposed to be healthier by having less Na in it, but NaCl with the Na removed just makes chlorine... which is toxic... which is bad.
(I assume they actually replace the sodium chloride with some other chloride that tastes the same, or possibly just some inert white crystal that they pretend is salt)
So since I work in the office support industry I can attest to seeing way more CRTs than LCDs in use by the cubicle users. I has been getting much better but they're still out there and in use, and for sale at best buy and pc connection type stores. CDW sells them online and in catalog. They have a 15" viewsonic for 129.00 in stock even.
The point I was making was that the hardware out there has had toxic chemicals inside for quite a while and probably in greater quantities than we can expect from quantum manipulation tech in the future.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
I thought it was cyanide that smells like almonds. Does arsenic even have a smell?
...ah the possibilities.
You are correct. Cyanide smells like Almonds. Arsenic, when heated, smells like Garlic. At least, according to wikipedia...
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Ignorant like he who ignores that cyanide is the poison with the almond flavor and that arsenic is a metalloid element of the Periodic Table? That must be some really ignorant person.
Umm...lots of people still use CRTs. Old ones (because older = cheaper), and students on a budget who can't afford a better monitor. Just because you don't use a CRT doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people who use CRTs.
Cynical Idealist
All I was able to grasp was
Imagine ...
Reading everything after caused my brain to spin into the guard rail.
No sig for you!!
Half NaCl, half KCl, IIRC.
Too much potassium can be bad for you though, so you shouldn't dump a lot of it on your fries either.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Damn, all this talk about poisons is making me hungry.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Three-state outputs are not unique to CMOS. TTLs had them, too. (74245, anyone?) But even then, this is something totally different.
Ezekiel 23:20
and those subjects you mentioned are fictional devices from a bad 1980s movie and therefore, Offtopic.
wow.
you are sure you are in the right website ? you surely dont fit well with the demographic here. i would rather chop my own balls than call Back to the Future a bad movie in slashdot.
Read radical news here
Come on dude, I've already got a "your mom" joke out of this. You're not even trying!
...Keiraknightlium
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
The real question is: Now that we can create flat atoms, can we also create sharp atoms? And can we use them to create chords? This is some serious stuff; maybe this is the first time in history we can create detectable amounts of the theoretical F sharp minor matter.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Let's see... We have one arsenic atom per bit. Let's assume a one (decimal) megabit quantum storage unit. That means one million arsenic atoms.
Arsenic has a nuclear mass of about 74.92159 u with one u being about 1.660538782 * 10^(27) kg.
Google tells us that 74921590 u = 1.24410212 * 10^(-10) micrograms (0.000000000124410212 ug). Note that you already eat several ug of arsenic a day, so eating your megabit quantum storage chip is unlikely to give you arsenic poisoning. That is not what you should worry about at that moment.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
if the Enterprise is fired upon, the corbomite in the starship's hull will self-destruct and destroy both ships.
And- A flat arsenic atom will not help!
Apparently, diplomatic relationship is formed over drinks of Tranya, or perhaps Pinoqachole, and molecular structure is maintained.
So. What's the big deal here?
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- aqk
F U
Helloo.. if you smell "almonds" and there are no almonds (or peach pits) around, leave immediately.
That ain't Arsenic, it's CYANIDE!
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- aqk
F U
IANALSSM, but they use two-thirds potassium chloride to one-third sodium chloride
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
OK, I'll give you the argument with using old monitors, but if you were to buy a new monitor, LCDs are the only real choice. On average CRTs sold today are probably more expensive than the LCDs, as they're mostly used for high-performance tasks.
So yeah, this isn't really a problem for new computers anymore.
The real question is, will it blend?
simon
Rub it in!
From TFA, looks like 5318008 is the universal constant.
If you read the article I linked to, he describes getting a positron emitter and apparently even verifying the characteristic gamma rays from annihilations, exposing a vial of water to it, and reasoning that this produced homeopathically significant quantities of positronium in the process.
Given that "homeopathically significant quantities" includes "none", he's not even wrong about that. Not that it's useful information, mind you.
I'm almost inspired to write up a hoax article about creating homeopathically active dyes by exposing water to laser light, then diluting it 6C or so... and including an image of a blank canvas to demonstrate the quality of the result. :)
Almost.
I use 2 Eizo CRTs, 21" F930. Despite their age, they're great. LCDs only really look nice in one resolution, for everything else it's a blurfest. If one uses a lot of different resolutions and do graphics work, CRT is the way to go. And in general I love the fact that i can run a game at 160Hz refresh rate and 0.1ms response time on ALL colors. LCD still has a lot of catching up to do imo, but for normal one-resolution office work, lcd is the way to go. For my main setup I use 2x1600*1200 @100Hz, and for games demos from 800*600 to 1280*1024, my pc is a few years old :-). Were I to buy new LCDs with comparative resolutions, I'd have to fork out a shitload of cash, and demos and games would in fact look worse. Maybe when OLED goes mainstream or LCD is improved I'll change, but not now, not yet.
Rest in peace Malin "looxn" Kristiansen. We miss you...
The argument he was making was that it was not the TYPICAL monitor anymore, and it is not. Yes, a lot of people do still use them, but they are now a (shrinking) minority of users. All new monitors I see coming in to offices are LCD, virtually all home purchases are now LCD, and even in your "student on a budget" scenario, many colleges are now REQUIRING laptops for all incoming students (so that they can be used to submit assignments in class), and a desktop is not an acceptable substitute.
So yes, there are still people who use them (my sister and parents do, but they're on very old computers), but that doesn't make them the typical modern monitor.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2008a/080626KlimeckArsenic.html
You're nothing; like me.
"Imagine a tiny arsenic atom embedded in a tiny strip of silicon atoms...."
>> Where do we get these "tiny" atoms -- all of mine are the regular size?
I thought this would be easy until they mentioned the size problem.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
arsenic has no taste, smell, color. thats one reason why its so deadly. nobody knows its there. and gangrene smells like almonds. watch an austin powers movie.
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208 'Shor, I'll do it' laymans guide to a useful quantum algorithm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_wire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_well