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New State of Matter Could Extend Moore's Law
rennerik writes "Scientists at McGill University in Montreal say they've discovered a new state of matter that could help extend Moore's Law and allow for the fabrication of more tightly packed transistors, or a new kind of transistor altogether. The researchers call the new state of matter 'a quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal.' It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
I believe the term you're looking for is Dilithium.
" It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
That's exactly what I want in my office.
The researchers call the new state of matter 'a quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal.' It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth.
I don't know why, but I think this will take a while to get to my local PC store.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Extend it? I trust you mean CONFIRM IT YET AGAIN!
Thought so.
Read carefully; they're cooling temperature itself! Not just cooler matter, but cooler temperature. This is a major breakthrough. Before you know it, they'll be able to achieve faster speeds, longer lengths, smaller sizes, and deeper depths.
How cold is that in libraries of congresses?
None, because as we all know Librarians are HOT!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081021185213.htm
Now gimme mah memristors!
The enemies of Democracy are
Wait, so somebody discovered a whole new state of matter, and all we have to say is it could extend Moore's Law? I would hope the implications would be just a tad bit more grand for such a discovery than possibly validating somebody's metric for a little while.
[Scientist 1] A new state of matter! This is AWESOME!
[Scientist 2] Yeah, but it's bloody expensive making the stuff. How can we bring in more funding?
[Scientist 1] Umm ... Something to do with terrorism? Err ...
[Scientist 2] ...energy crisis? Can we do anything with oil? ...
[Scientist 1] ...what about computers? Could you make smaller transistors with this stuff?
[Scientist 2] Yeah, it might fly. Let's run with that.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
From comments in TFA:
The researcher, Dr. Guillaume Gervais, is director of McGill University's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab. There's nothing in the journal letter about "a new state of matter". The McGill Newsroom article quotes him as saying to the interviewer, "It's actually not quite 3-D, it's an in-between state, a totally new phenomenon" as compared with the 2-D electron crystals that transistors and IC chips are made of. The interviewer, or an editor, thought "Physics -- state -- new state of matter". Engadget's Melanson picked up the error and passed it on uncritically.
Obviously you've never been to Montreal.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum
Intersteller space has a density of a million atoms per cubic meter. Intergalactic space has densities closer to one atom per cubic meter. Perfect vacuum is theoretically impossible due to quantum mechanics (I can not explain why, but that makes sense).
We Bokononists prefer to call it Ice-nine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism
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The laws of Thermodynamics state that we can't really achieve absolute zero As far as the far reaches of space goes they may be referring to the boomerang nebula which is the coldest place we know of so far - outside of the laboratory. I wish the article had been more specific and quantitative. FYI a really good program to watch if you get a chance is Absolute Zero
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
TFA doesn't state any specific temperature, but I find the analogy to how "cold" space is rather troubling. Space is really "warm", as it contains energy left from the Big Bang (although no one with a common sense would describe it that way in daily talk), and saying that something is so many times colder than space really just doesn't make sense. You can always compare sizes, but as heat is a positive size, because you can't have negative energy, you can just say "this is a hundred times hotter than that" or "my freezer is two times as cold as my refrigerator compared to my living room". The one who thought of this analogy could be talking about degrees on Celsius or Fahrenheit, but then those numbers must be way below absolute zero, or 0 Kelvin, as space is just 2.7 Kelvin, or -270.7 C ( http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sp_ht.html ) and taking for granted he is comparing the temperature of space to 0 ÂC, that means that those crystals are actually -27070 C. And _that_ would be some real frontpage material...
You seem confused. He speaks of "a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space". Intergalactic space has a temperature of about 3K. It does not make sense to talk of degrees C, since C is not an absolute scale. 100 times colder than 3K is 0.03K.
Since there are already numerous posts invoking the applicability (or not) of Moore's Law, I thought I would start over. Although Gordon Moore certainly formulated his law based on silicon (original is here: http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/.) it can be applied clear back to 1890 with the Hollerith 'computer' that tabulated the 1890 census. When you graph it out, Moore's Law applies to electro-mechanical switches, then to relays, then to vacuum tubes, then transistors themselves (like in a six transistor radio of the 50's), then on to silicon. It's still the same exponential curve, in five separate states, only the last one of which is silicon. Kurzweil discusses this in depth here: http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1. People who claim Moore's Law doesn't apply because this isn't traditional silicon acreage are missing the point, which is that not only is Moore's Law more encompassing than the originally envisioned, it is not going away any time soon. The imminent death of Moore's Law, as always, has been greatly exaggerated.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
but it still works quite well, since 1C == 1K
and i really cringed when i read the 100 times colder crap. Seriously, if it's at 0.03 K why not just say that?
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
You don't need matter to have a temperature. Even in a "perfect" vacuum (i.e. nothing but quantum fluctuation transient particle-antiparticle pairs) there is still radiant energy in the form of photons - and their wavelength distribution corresponds to a temperature.
It's the temperature at which a black-body test object, bathed continuously in photons of that frequency distribution, would neither warm up nor cool down further.
The radiant temperature of the sky far from the influence of nearby galaxies is known as the "cosmic background temperature". It's about 4 degrees absolute - corresponding to the light from the big bang red-shifted down a LOT by cosmic expansion.
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According to wikipedia, intergalactic space is 2.71 Kelvin. I would assume that they mean "100th the temperature of intergalactic space", not "100 times colder than intergalactic space", as the latter is nonsensical and implies that it exists at 100 times colder than intergalactic space is colder than room temperature, meaning -28834 Kelvin (293 - 100 * (293 - 2.73) where we assume that room temperature is 20 degrees centigrade). This is nonsense.
I don't see a problem with "100 times colder than intergalactic space". Temperature is an absolute scale, like size. It's like saying that item X is "100 times smaller than a coin". You don't then compare the size of the coin (say, 0.01m) to the room (say 3m) and then complain that item X is not of size -296 (3 - 100 * (3 - 0.01)).
but it still works quite well, since 1C == 1K
and i really cringed when i read the 100 times colder crap. Seriously, if it's at 0.03 K why not just say that?
It does not work well. 100x colder than 1 C is not 0.01 C, it is -270.27 C. And the reason people don't say 0.03 K is because the average person does not know what K is, but they know space is very cold.
Sure...13.95 stories.
rj
Lucky, outer space certainly seems like the only place to cheaply get that amount of cooling.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
4.73 Kelvin
Pffft barely jacket weather.
Tell me when it's below 3.8 Kelvin. THEN I might be impressed.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
You know, we *can* understand Kelvin ... or can we expect the next comparison as "1000 times colder than a polar bear's left testicle".
Perfect vacuum is theoretically impossible due to quantum mechanics (I can not explain why, but that makes sense).
For any given particle, you can't know its exact position and velocity. Particles can never reach absolute zero because then you would be able to determine their position since you know their velocity would thus be zero given they have no energy by definition of absolute zero. An extension of that then is if you know a particle's velocity you will never be able to determine its position. If you can't determine its position you can't determine whether it is really outside a vacuum. You may be able to say it isn't in the middle of the volume which represents the vaccum but at the boundary you can't say for sure whether the particle is on the inside of the vacuum or outside. This is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. An absolute zero temperature vacuum is definitely impossible due to the uncertainty principle.
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And the reason people don't say 0.03 K is because the average person does not know what K is [...]
Well then let them become curious and not so average.
So when someone says "X is 100 times larger than Y" you instinctively think "X=100*Y", yet when someone says "X is 100 times smaller than Y" you instinctively think "X=Z-100*(Z-Y)" for some arbitrary Z of same unit as Y. Forgive me for not following your erm... logic.
Let's say I have a temperature which is 100 times larger than 27.1 mK, this would be 2.71 K. Indeed 27.1 mK is smaller than 2.71 K and 2.71 K is larger than 27.1 mK. So saying 100 times smaller than 2.71 K should indicate I mean 27.1 mK. In no way is this nonsensical and I'm pretty sure everyone here understands that "X is N times smaller than Y" means multiply Y by the reciprocal of N, similarly "X is N times larger than Y" means multiply Y by N.
Granted this isn't something you'd see in technical writing, but I'm pretty sure Information Week isn't a technical journal, so why be a pedant about it?
achieve faster speeds, longer lengths, smaller sizes, and deeper depths.
That's what she said.
Intergalactic space is not at 2.7 K. Especially in galaxy clusters, the temperature of the intergalactic medium is often millions of degrees Kelvin. Even in more remote places far from galaxy clusters, it's still much warmer than 2.7 K. The 2.7 K figure is the temperature associated with the cosmic microwave background radiation, not the intergalactic medium.
... a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
Hmmm... this is definitely going to extend Moore's Law in home computing... sure. ;)
Moore's law... hell this is going to extend the calculation of the user's home heating/cooling costs past what will fit on a single page.
On the upside, calculating that kind of cost may lead to the finding of a new prime number or two.
Was this moderated Insightful out of irony (I do that all the time when I have the points) or did I miss the joke?
Please do not mod this ironically, because I'm already confused. Thanks.
That took me by surprise. I was sure it was going to be because of the vast number of virtual particles constantly appearing and disappearing within the vacuum.
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One of the reasons the average person does not know what K is, is because they're never expected to know it.
If everyone stopped using Celsius or Fahrenheit in situations where Kelvin would better suited, people would have to actually remember the Kelvin-scale from school-physics or take a minute out of their lives to find out what the Kelvin-scale is.
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45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No, Moore's law states that the number of transistors you can put on an integrated circuit for a fixed cost doubles every 18 months. This has nothing to do with the speed at which the transistors run or the material they are made from.
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Well, the faster speeds and smaller sizes part anyway.
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