JON CARTWRIGHT – Page 50 – & THREE QUARKS EDITORIAL

Silk woven into transistors

Chemistry WorldJon Cartwright5 January, 2011

Published in Chemistry World, 5 Jan 2011

Researchers in Sweden and Spain have created transistors woven from modified silk fibres. The breakthrough bodes well for a new generation of electronic circuits that can be incorporated into fabrics or inserted into biological environments.

Conventional electronics are printed onto hard substrates, but many researchers are looking at ways to offer, literally, more flexible applications. Some are developing methods to print directly onto fabrics, while others are examining how to make individual fibres into circuit components. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

Qubit in a nanowire

NatureJon Cartwright23 December, 2010

Published in Nature, 23 Dec 2010

A type of quantum bit that hinges on the innate link between an electron’s spin and its orbit round the nucleus has been developed by physicists in the Netherlands. The system, which should easily integrate with other electronics, is a strong contender for use in future quantum computing or cryptography, according to research published today in Nature.

Quantum computing relies on the inherent uncertainties of quantum mechanics to process information much faster than any conventional machine. Whereas normal bits of information take only the values zero or one, quantum bits, or ‘qubits’, exist in a fuzzy superposition of both. This ambiguity allows several qubits to be processed in parallel, so that many calculations can be performed at once. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

Semiconductor memory stores spins

Physics WorldJon Cartwright19 December, 2010

Published in Physics World, 19 Dec 2010

Physicists in the US and the UK have found a way to store and read data in nuclear spins using electronic pulses. The breakthrough could help in the development of spintronic systems that process information using spins – and could also find applications in quantum computation.

Spintronics is an emerging area of solid-state physics that attempts to use the spin as well as the charge of electrons to process data more efficiently. But a problem with electron spins is that they have a fairly short lifetime, which in practice would lead to corrupt data. For this reason scientists have been looking for new and better ways to store and retrieve information from spin systems. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

Cosmic radiation features could suggest our universe is not alone

ScienceJon Cartwright13 December, 2010

Published in ScienceNOW, 13 Dec 2010

If you thought the cosmos was a lot to take in, think again. Theorists have long suggested that our universe is just one of many that exist in a complex “multiverse.” Now researchers have found hints that this may actually be the case.

The researchers, who claim to be the first to search observational data for the presence of a multiverse, cannot yet prove that our universe is one of many. However, their analysis, published last Friday on the arXiv preprint server, implies that more-precise data could confirm the existence of a multiverse. “It’s incredibly exciting to think there is even a chance that actual observational evidence for a multiverse might be found in our lifetimes,” says Alan Guth, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who was not involved in the study. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

How to walk through walls

Physics WorldJon Cartwright13 December, 2010

Published in Physics World, 13 Dec 2010

Imagine being able to walk through a solid wall. That sort of trick might sound far-fetched, but it’s a little closer to reality now that researchers in China have created what they call an “invisible gateway”.

Huanyang Chen at Soochow University, Jiangsu, says that the effect is a bit like “platform nine and three-quarters” – that is, the fictional area of King’s Cross railway station in the Harry Potter books that is only accessible through a secret, illusionary wall. Although the researchers’ current demonstration is based on an electrical circuit for radio waves, Chen claims that it could also work for visible light. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

Optical wing generates lift from light

NatureJon Cartwright5 December, 2010

Published in Nature, 5 Dec 2010

Physicists in the United States have demonstrated the optical analogue of an aerofoil — a ‘lightfoil’ that generates lift when passing through laser light.

The demonstration, which comes more than a century after the development of the first aeroplanes, suggests that lightfoils could one day be used to manoeuvre objects in the vacuum of outer space using only the Sun’s rays. “It’s almost like the first stages of what the Wright brothers did,” says lead author Grover Swartzlander, a physicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, whose study appears in Nature Photonics today. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

Spin ices slip into ground state

Physics WorldJon Cartwright2 December, 2010

Published in Physics World, 2 Dec 2010

Physicists in the UK and the US are the first to encourage artificial spin ices – magnetic nano-structures analogous to water ice – into a square formation that is very close to the ground state. The discovery could help researchers to develop “bit pattern” data storage, where sheets of magnetic material are replaced by arrays of magnetic islands. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

Neutrinos could detect secret fission reactors

Physics WorldJon Cartwright24 November, 2010

Published in Physics World, 24 Nov 2010

Oil tankers fitted with neutrino detectors, hundreds of thousands of tonnes in mass, could be floated offshore to check for undeclared nuclear fission reactors. That’s the idea of physicists in France, who have proposed the Secret Neutrino Interactions Finder (SNIF) as a way of enforcing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – although some experts doubt its feasibility. […]

The rest of this article is available here.

Rise of the robots and the future of war

The ObserverJon Cartwright21 November, 2010

Published in The Observer, 21 Nov 2010

Big money is pouring into military robotics to design aircraft and vehicles that make their own decision on where to go – and when to fire. Jon Cartwright asks how this could change warfare, and what legal and ethical challenges it brings

Faced with an enemy fighter jet, there’s one sensible thing a military drone should do: split. But in December 2002, caught in the crosshairs of an Iraqi MiG, an unmanned US Predator was instructed to stay put. The MiG fired, the Predator fired back and the result, unhappily for the US, was a heap of drone parts on the southern Iraqi desert.

This incident is often regarded as the first dogfight between a drone, properly known as an unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV, and a conventional, manned fighter. Yet in a way, the Predator hardly stood a chance. American and British UAVs are operated remotely by pilots sitting thousands of miles away on US turf, so manoeuvres are hobbled by signal delays of a quarter-second or more. This means evading missiles will always be nigh-on impossible – unless the UAVs pilot themselves. (more…)

DNA origami meets low-cost lithography

Chemistry WorldJon Cartwright17 November, 2010

Published in Chemistry World, 17 Nov 2010

Chemists in the US have developed an easy way to integrate the ‘bottom up’ assembly of DNA origami with the ‘top down’ patterning of low cost lithography. The method, which involves sticking pieces of DNA to prepositioned gold islands, might help researchers in their bid to use DNA origami for nanoelectronics. […]

The rest of this article is available here.