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Blueprint For a Quantum Electric Motor

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the really-inboard-motor dept.

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.'"

6 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So.. what is the efficiency of this motor? by SilverHatHacker · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
  2. Suck it cops! by Itninja · · Score: 4, Funny

    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....

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    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
    1. Re:Suck it cops! by Red+Flayer · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's all well and good, Mr. Quantum Speeding Ticket Avoider Man, but remeber that the same principle applies to your car keys.

      And what happens when you get into an accident? You'll be both dead and alive until someone opens the car door! (Is this how the zombie apocalypse starts?)

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  3. Re:So.. what is the efficiency of this motor? by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Funny

    only in Boston.

  4. wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Soon we will be ablr to have Quantum Hard drives

  5. Re:So.. what is the efficiency of this motor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    A vibrating dildo for a protozoan?