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First Hot-Ice Computer Created
KentuckyFC writes "Sodium acetate is the stuff inside chemical handwarmers that emits heat when it crystalizes after you press that little metal widget. That's why it is known as hot ice. Now a computer scientist in the UK has created a computer made entirely out of hot ice. The device processes information by exploiting the movement and interaction of wavefronts of crystallisation as they move through the material. The data input is in the form of metal wires that trigger crystal nucleation. The output works by reading off the direction of the moving wavefronts and the edges of the resulting crystals. The researcher has created AND and OR gates and solved a few problems such as finding the shortest path through mazes. There are even a few videos of the computer in action. The resulting computer is far from perfect, however. The data readout sometimes gives no solution and at other times gives circular results, the hot ice equivalent of a BSOD."
Will it help my aching hands from using the keyboard all day?
Vaporware?
Full of hot air?
Heating things up?
Hot stuff?
(I'm just throwing all the obvious puns, I'm done.
...does it run Linux?
So THAT's the problem with global warming...
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these things!
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
By "no solution", you mean that the readout is completely crystallized? Ba-dump-bump!
It stands for Burning Snow Of Death. An unfortunate consequence of using a hot-ice computer.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
It's ice, Jim, but not as we know it.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
to host 25 and 50mb movies on an "ac.uk" server that's about to get turned into paste...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Uhh... having a head, and being able to shake it?
a beowulf cluster of these would be. I bet you could cook hot grits on it.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
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