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 Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 5:32 pm
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This is from a couple months ago, but I only found it a few days ago. Being a technology geek, I find it pretty cool that tech companies are relying more and more on physics in order to achieve computational power.
Terabyte Hard Drives, Anyone?
There was also an article I ran across in Wired about two months ago talking about a new technique for using nano-wires to control the current in chips or act as 1's and 0's to store data. Basically, it would act like computer ram, being used as a data cache, but since none of the information would be lost when the computer was turned off, you could store things in this cache and not lose them if you happen to lose power in the middle of working on something.
In a way, it would basically be a hard drive without moving parts, rather akin to flash drives, only capable of storing immense amounts of information because the circuitry would be on the scale of <5 microns. In practical terms, once the tech gets off the ground and further refined, it means hard disk drives will become obsolete, both in terms of space available for storage (petabytes of storage are easily conceivable with nano-tube technology like this) and reliability, since there wouldn't be any moving parts that would wear out or shift out of alignment.
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Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 7:00 pm
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Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 4:43 pm
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 2:23 am
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 12:21 pm
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 10:42 pm
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Endrael AstronomyGirl I already posted an article about the new planets. blaugh Different site though. So I see sweatdrop Go my observational skills blaugh
lol that's ok. blaugh |
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Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 10:45 pm
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Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 2:49 am
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Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 7:41 am
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Endrael In a way, though, it isn't entirely unexpected. Various labs around the world have repeated and verified experiments in which a particle is split and the halves sent off in opposite directions (I forget what kind of particles, exactly), and then a state change induced in one particle while the other particle has nothing done to it, but both particles undergo the state change at exactly the same time. So obviously such information can travel faster than the speed of light. It's just a matter of how practical it is to use the phenomenon for something. Teleportation of particles has also been produced and verified under lab conditions, and if I remember right, some scientists in Germany reproduced the feat under non-lab conditions, but this was some years ago, so my memory of the article is rather vague. I expect that once these new discoveries about light and such become feasibly useable in everyday ways, standards and methods of communication are going to undergo a very extreme shift. The paradigm shift may even be bigger than the one sparked by the spread of the internet. Exciting times biggrin
Yea true, I guess it is rather unexpected to see this phenomenon with light, as light, as we know it, is like nothing else in the universe.
Ah, and yea all those other things you talk about, those advances, they sound familiar. I'm sure I heard about them as well. 3nodding
But yea, if we can be able to travel faster then the speed of light, that would greatly effect communications.
But then what about physics? What about all of Einstienian physics that's based on the fact that the speed of light is constant and nothing can go faster? Have we discovered something that will totally change physics? Will Einstien's physics become like Newtonian physics and only really apply in certain cases? (Rhetorical questions galore! blaugh ) |
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Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 9:45 pm
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AstronomyGirl Yea true, I guess it is rather unexpected to see this phenomenon with light, as light, as we know it, is like nothing else in the universe. Ah, and yea all those other things you talk about, those advances, they sound familiar. I'm sure I heard about them as well. 3nodding But yea, if we can be able to travel faster then the speed of light, that would greatly effect communications. But then what about physics? What about all of Einstienian physics that's based on the fact that the speed of light is constant and nothing can go faster? Have we discovered something that will totally change physics? Will Einstien's physics become like Newtonian physics and only really apply in certain cases? (Rhetorical questions galore! blaugh )
But remember that the speed of light is also relative, though yeh, I agree. It should be interesting to see if string theory gains more traction and is able to predict and explain this light-faster-than-light phenomena. I think that would be a big step in both legitimising string theory and opening up a lot of lines for further research. |
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