An article from http://news.cnet.com - this is something.
On Friday, IBM Research will publish a paper in Science laying out its recent breakthrough allowing its scientists to measure rapid changes in behavior of individual atoms.
(Credit: IBM Research)
SAN JOSE, Calif.--Scientists at IBM Research say they have figured out for the first time how to record rapid changes at the level of individual atoms.
Until now, it has usually taken hours to get a picture of what is happening to a single atom. But according to IBM Research, scientists at Big Blue's $6 billion R&D unit have figured out how to use a scanning tunneling microscope to record and study very fast changes at the atomic level. It is thought that the scientists will now be able to record atoms' behavior at speeds of up to 100,000 times faster than was previously thought possible.
And while it's not known what the practical implications of the innovation could be, it's thought that understanding how long an individual atom can hold on to information could one day take Moore's Law to its extreme and extend data storage much closer to the particle level. It is also thought that the advance could help in the creation of much more efficient photovoltaic cells, and with quantum computing.
The scientists will publish their findings (see video below) Friday in the journal Science.
According to Sebastian Loth, the post-doctoral researcher at IBM's Almaden Research Center here who was the lead writer on the paper, the team's breakthrough is tantamount to advancing the state of imaging of atoms from the status quo being a still camera--where most of the physics was already over by the time any image was captured--to a new era of movie camera-like capabilities where the imagery is captured in near-real time.
One chief advantage of the new technology, Loth said, is that researchers should be able to determine for the first time the effect changes in the environment around an atom affect the particle. For example, he said, when using a needle inside the scanning tunnel microscope to measure atomic behavior, it was previously possible, over the course of several hours, to determine that an iron atom could retain information for a nanosecond. Now, scientists can see that when placing that same iron atom near a copper atom, its data retention time increases to up to 200 nanoseconds.
And while that is still a minuscule amount of time, Loth acknowledged, being able to see that change, and understand how variations in the atomic environment affect individual atoms could one day be a huge advantage in building new products. In other words, he said, scientists can now go looking for ways to affect atoms that will give them results they desire.
"If the environment affects atoms," Loth said, "I can do something with that. I can change the environment. I can move atoms together and try different things."
He added that, "We're not building the next computer, but [we are looking to see] what we can do at the end of data density."
The scanning tunneling microscope IBM used to achieve its breakthrough.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
The truth is, Loth added, that it might take 20 more years to figure out how to build products around this kind of advanced atomic understanding, and it may well never result in anything new coming to market. But by the same token, understanding the far reaches of the data density spectrum, or how photovoltaic cells can be built to be far more efficient than ever before with such technology in mind could alter the face of electronics forever. As well, the breakthrough could open up entirely new research areas, Loth suggested.
Spinning atoms
The new technology works, Loth explained, by placing the tip of the scanning tunneling microscope on top of an atom and blasting that atom with a burst of voltage. When hit with this rush of electrons, the atom starts to spin. And by probing the atom to see what orientation it is in when it stops spinning, scientists can measure the effect of the voltage blast on the atom.
Until now, however, that process only allowed scientists to come up with an aggregate measurement for a single atom by looking at groups of them and extrapolating. But with this new process, they will be able to measure effects on any individual atom at any time--and that's crucial, Loth said, because atoms are heavily affected by what's going on in their environment. "So that's why it's so important to [measure] at the individual atom level," Loth said, "instead of groups."
One thing that's notable about the IBM Research team's breakthrough, Loth said, is that the new understanding of how to use a scanning tunneling microscope will mean that labs all over the world--or at least anyone who has such a microscope--will be able to apply the new knowledge to their research.
"Every university can do this research and develop with all the other tools for scanning tunneling microscopes," he said. "They can build things one atom at a time."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, February 23, 2009
New telescope on its way - 2013 James Webb
This is an article from NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10116416
The Hubble Space Telescope has given scientists unprecedented images of the universe. But Hubble is growing older; it's been orbiting Earth for 17 years.
And astronomers are never satisfied. They're working on an even bigger space telescope. Unlike Hubble, which sits right next to Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope is going to be sent to a spot nearly a million miles away.
Scientists started planning this ambitious telescope about 20 years ago. Peter Stockman, head of the James Webb Space Telescope Mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, says that, a decade ago, when he would show people sketches of the idea, they were mostly not impressed.
"They would giggle. I think it made them nervous," Stockman recalls. "Nervous like, 'This will never work.' They had no faith that such a thing could be done, and they had some reasons."
After all, this conceptual telescope depended on about 10 technologies that hadn't even been invented. But over time, the project moved forward. And this month, NASA announced that all the prototype technologies had been reviewed and approved by an independent panel. That means the James Webb Space Telescope, named after the second administrator of NASA, should soon become a reality.
To show what the telescope will look like, project managers have built a full-scale model that they've been taking around the country. Stockman says it's an impressive sight.
"It takes your breath away. It's pretty outlandish," he says. "It's so big, and it's unlike any other telescope I've ever seen."
This week, aerospace contractor Northrop Grumman set up the cloth and steel model on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It looks a lot like a giant ray gun that's about to zap the dome off the Capitol building. But actually, "it collects rays, it doesn't send rays," says Martin Mohan, program manager for the telescope at Northrop Grumman.
He says the light the James Webb telescope will collect is very faint, from stars that are more than 13 billion light years away.
"And a light year is about six trillion miles, so if you do the math it's a long, long way away," he says.
James Webb will see about a half a billion light years farther than Hubble. That means the telescope has to be bigger.
The main part of the telescope is something that looks like a golden satellite dish. This is the light-collecting mirror. It will be made of 18 hexagonal pieces that fit together like a honeycomb.
"The mirror itself is 21 feet in diameter, and it has an area about seven times that of the Hubble Space Telescope," Mohan says.
The mirror sits on top of a sun shield that's as big as a tennis court. It has five layers, and looks like a fancy, silver trampoline.
"It's basically like a huge beach umbrella, if you want to think of it like that," Mohan says. "It's there to put the telescope in the shadow of the sun and the reason is, this telescope has to be very, very cold."
The telescope will be kept at around 370 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. It needs to be that cold because it's designed to sense infrared radiation, which comes from anything warm. The telescope could be blinded by warmth from the sun or anything else. So it's going to be sent out into the cold of space, nearly a million miles away from Earth, about four times farther away than the moon.
To get there, the whole telescope is going to be folded up like origami and stuffed into a rocket. Once it's in space, it's supposed to deploy itself. If it doesn't, it's going to be too far away to fix, unlike Hubble, which famously had some corrective optics installed by astronauts.
Peter Stockman, at the Space Telescope Science Institute, says that some people find this a little worrisome.
"We have to constantly reassure astronomers, and people who fund us, that these things are being tested sufficiently on the ground, that they won't go wrong," he says.
NASA, along with other space agencies, plans to invest more than $4 billion in building and operating this telescope over its five- to 10-year lifetime. In 2013, if all goes well, the James Webb Space Telescope will head out to its lonely outpost in the blackness of space.
The telescope will capture images of what the universe looked like just 400 million years after the Big Bang.
"We're trying to see, what were the conditions like back then," Stockman says. "How was it that it chose to form into the stars and galaxies and planets that we have today? It's a curiosity and a fascination, and our lives, in a large sense, were affected by what went on then."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10116416
The Hubble Space Telescope has given scientists unprecedented images of the universe. But Hubble is growing older; it's been orbiting Earth for 17 years.
And astronomers are never satisfied. They're working on an even bigger space telescope. Unlike Hubble, which sits right next to Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope is going to be sent to a spot nearly a million miles away.
Scientists started planning this ambitious telescope about 20 years ago. Peter Stockman, head of the James Webb Space Telescope Mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, says that, a decade ago, when he would show people sketches of the idea, they were mostly not impressed.
"They would giggle. I think it made them nervous," Stockman recalls. "Nervous like, 'This will never work.' They had no faith that such a thing could be done, and they had some reasons."
After all, this conceptual telescope depended on about 10 technologies that hadn't even been invented. But over time, the project moved forward. And this month, NASA announced that all the prototype technologies had been reviewed and approved by an independent panel. That means the James Webb Space Telescope, named after the second administrator of NASA, should soon become a reality.
To show what the telescope will look like, project managers have built a full-scale model that they've been taking around the country. Stockman says it's an impressive sight.
"It takes your breath away. It's pretty outlandish," he says. "It's so big, and it's unlike any other telescope I've ever seen."
This week, aerospace contractor Northrop Grumman set up the cloth and steel model on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It looks a lot like a giant ray gun that's about to zap the dome off the Capitol building. But actually, "it collects rays, it doesn't send rays," says Martin Mohan, program manager for the telescope at Northrop Grumman.
He says the light the James Webb telescope will collect is very faint, from stars that are more than 13 billion light years away.
"And a light year is about six trillion miles, so if you do the math it's a long, long way away," he says.
James Webb will see about a half a billion light years farther than Hubble. That means the telescope has to be bigger.
The main part of the telescope is something that looks like a golden satellite dish. This is the light-collecting mirror. It will be made of 18 hexagonal pieces that fit together like a honeycomb.
"The mirror itself is 21 feet in diameter, and it has an area about seven times that of the Hubble Space Telescope," Mohan says.
The mirror sits on top of a sun shield that's as big as a tennis court. It has five layers, and looks like a fancy, silver trampoline.
"It's basically like a huge beach umbrella, if you want to think of it like that," Mohan says. "It's there to put the telescope in the shadow of the sun and the reason is, this telescope has to be very, very cold."
The telescope will be kept at around 370 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. It needs to be that cold because it's designed to sense infrared radiation, which comes from anything warm. The telescope could be blinded by warmth from the sun or anything else. So it's going to be sent out into the cold of space, nearly a million miles away from Earth, about four times farther away than the moon.
To get there, the whole telescope is going to be folded up like origami and stuffed into a rocket. Once it's in space, it's supposed to deploy itself. If it doesn't, it's going to be too far away to fix, unlike Hubble, which famously had some corrective optics installed by astronauts.
Peter Stockman, at the Space Telescope Science Institute, says that some people find this a little worrisome.
"We have to constantly reassure astronomers, and people who fund us, that these things are being tested sufficiently on the ground, that they won't go wrong," he says.
NASA, along with other space agencies, plans to invest more than $4 billion in building and operating this telescope over its five- to 10-year lifetime. In 2013, if all goes well, the James Webb Space Telescope will head out to its lonely outpost in the blackness of space.
The telescope will capture images of what the universe looked like just 400 million years after the Big Bang.
"We're trying to see, what were the conditions like back then," Stockman says. "How was it that it chose to form into the stars and galaxies and planets that we have today? It's a curiosity and a fascination, and our lives, in a large sense, were affected by what went on then."
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