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Yoctonewton Detector Smashes Force Sensing Record
KentuckyFC writes "A team of physicists has measured the smallest force ever recorded, at 174 yoctonewtons (yocto=10^-24), beating the previous best by three orders of magnitude. Their measurement device consists of a few dozen beryllium ions trapped in magnetic and electric fields using a device called a Penning trap. These ions vibrate at between a few mega and kilohertz, frequencies that can be accurately measured by bouncing laser light off the ions and measuring any Doppler shift they cause. Being charged, the ions are highly susceptible to the tiny forces associated with stray magnetic and electric fields, which change the frequency at which the ions vibrate. Hence the super-sensitive measurements. They team says that straightforward modifications should allow them to measure single yoctonewtons in the near future. This sudden leap in sensitivity could cause a problem for the system of SI prefixes, which don't yet come any smaller than yocto."
Who hasn't hearsd of Scientific Notation?
I haven't hearsd of it.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Who hasn't hearsd of Scientific Notation?
I haven't hearsd of it.
Don't worry, you have a large selection of hearsding aids to choose from.
As long as you have good sighst...
They may or may not have. It's impossible to tell.
Simple. Call them deciyoctos, centiyoctos, miliyoctos, microyoctos, etc. The problem will be solved forever. It's not like we will find anything smaller.
On Slashdot you never can be sure if you are reading a joke from a genius or a line from an idiot.
...to detect the attractive force a Linux nerd radiates out to women.
Who hasn't hearsd of Scientific Notation?
I haven't hearsd of it.
Don't worry, you have a large selection of hearsding aids to choose from.
As long as you have good sighst...
And if you don't have good sighst, I hearsd that there's a way to fix that as long as you can tatse well.
Wait 'til the teachers get told to start teaching this gibi crap at school. Suddenly all the recent graduates are talking exbi this and zebi that and you're still talking exa and zetta, and all of a sudden you're looking like a dibinosaur.
If medicine were ever perfected, we'd all be the same.
+1x10^0 insightful :)
As long as they can measure it in Libraries of Congresses, I'm okay with it.
Fig. The prefix should definitely be fig.