Blingtronics

Published in New Scientist, 27 Apr 2010

It’s like walking into a bank vault. Pass codes secure the doors. The walls and floor are made of reinforced concrete up to 2 metres thick – all built on solid sandstone. The ventilation ducts have automatic shut-offs. Not even cellphone signals can sneak in.

All this might seem fitting given that the place houses diamonds by the hundred. Yet this is no vault. It’s a lab in the Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information at the University of Bristol, UK, and the diamonds stored here are each no bigger than a speck of dust. Diamonds this size might not interest a bank robber, but they are turning out to be a physicist’s best friend. […]

The rest of this article is available here.