Comment Well... (Score 1) 328
I can easily get stuff to the nearest angstrom using our nuclear reactor and small-angle scattering instruments. We can get better if we are careful. Neutrons are cool.
Submission + - Researchers Create First All Optical Nanowire NAND Gate (upenn.edu)
mhore writes: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first all optical, nanowire-based NAND gate which paves the way towards photonic devices that manipulate light to perform computations. From the release, " The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length."
The gate works by shining light on the nanowire structure to turn on and off information transported through the wire. The research appeared this month in Nature Nanotechnology.
The gate works by shining light on the nanowire structure to turn on and off information transported through the wire. The research appeared this month in Nature Nanotechnology.
Comment Easy. (Score 1) 481
Polar bear. Rawr!
Milky Way Is Twice the Size We Thought 301
Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.
