Physicists Improve Spin Information Storage

schliz writes "Researchers have made headway into developing spintronic RAM by successfully transferring spin information from an electron to a more robust atomic nucleus and accessing the information 2,000 times in 100 seconds before it decayed (abstract). The demonstration was conducted using phosphorus-doped silicon in a highly magnetized, low-temperature environment (8.59 Tesla, -269.5 degrees Celsius). Other researchers have achieved spin lifetimes of 30 hours in a weaker magnetic field (0.3 Tesla)."

Comments

Why not use Kelvin here?

[SgtKeeling]

-269.5 degrees Celsius

This seems to me like a very appropriate time to use Kelvin. For anyone interested, this is 3.65 degrees Kelvin.

Re:Does this mean...

[ShakaUVM]

At long last, the Fox network can successfully document and store (some of) the enormous amounts of spin generated by its commentators. What I want to know is when will the spin^2 ram be ready so we can start working on the O'Reilly spin/spin found in his "spin* free zone"

Well, a spin-free (spin 0) particle would obviously be a Higgs Boson.

Therefore O'Reilly is the source of inertia, and has yet to be found in France or Switzerland.

Re:Requires insanely cold temps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Subatomic things tend to move around when they get warm. Cooling them keeps them where they're put, it's easier to find them that way.

Re:Requires insanely cold temps?

[grimJester]

At least some of those are because quantum decoherence happens faster when temperature rises. The time before quantum behavior turns into normal classical behavior is inversely proportional to temperature in Kelvin. (I tried to find something sane on Wikipedia, but all relevant articles seem to be written for experts...)

A more general explanation could be that new stuff happens at very low energies and very high energies compared to what we're used to. Cold is just low energy.