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Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms.

The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. The ASACUSA collaboration reports the unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140121/ncomms4089/full/ncomms4089.html

Hall's team adopted an innovative approach to investigating Dirac's theory, creating and identifying synthetic magnetic monopoles in an artificial magnetic field generated by a Bose-Einstein condensate, an extremely cold atomic gas tens of billionths of a degree warmer than absolute zero.

Recharge in seconds and efficiently store power for weeks between charges. Added bonus is the cheap and abundant components needed. One of the applications they foresee is to attach such a super-capacitor to the back of solar panels to store the power and discharge this during the night

very nice indeed - is this already at a stage where we should have a closer look at it? what you think? With experience in growing carbon nanostructures, Pint's group decided to try to coat the porous silicon surface with carbon. "We had no idea what would happen," said Pint. "Typically, researchers grow graphene from silicon-carbide materials at temperatures in excess of 1400 degrees Celsius. But at lower temperatures - 600 to 700 degrees Celsius - we certainly didn't expect graphene-like material growth." When the researchers pulled the porous silicon out of the furnace, they found that it had turned from orange to purple or black. When they inspected it under a powerful scanning electron microscope they found that it looked nearly identical to the original material but it was coated by a layer of graphene a few nanometers thick. When the researchers tested the coated material they found that it had chemically stabilized the silicon surface. When they used it to make supercapacitors, they found that the graphene coating improved energy densities by over two orders of magnitude compared to those made from uncoated porous silicon and significantly better than commercial supercapacitors. Transmission electron microscope image of the surface of porous silicon coated with graphene. The coating consists of a thin layer of 5-10 layers of graphene which filled pores with diameters less than 2-3 nanometers and so did not alter the nanoscale architecture of the underlying silicon. (Cary Pint / Vanderbilt) The graphene layer acts as an atomically thin protective coating. Pint and his group argue that this approach isn't limited to graphene. "The ability to engineer surfaces with atomically thin layers of materials combined with the control achieved in designing porous materials opens opportunities for a number of different applications beyond energy storage," he said.

The principle behind that is Nantenna.

this is fantastic!!!! waiting of somebody to make this happen since years The size of the gap is critical because it creates an ultra-fast tunnel junction between the rectenna's two electrodes, allowing a maximum transfer of electricity. The nanosized gap gives energized electrons on the rectenna just enough time to tunnel to the opposite electrode before their electrical current reverses and they try to go back. The triangular tip of the rectenna makes it hard for the electrons to reverse direction, thus capturing the energy and rectifying it to a unidirectional current. Impressively, the rectennas, because of their extremely small and fast tunnel diodes, are capable of converting solar radiation in the infrared region through the extremely fast and short wavelengths of visible light - something that has never been accomplished before. Silicon solar panels, by comparison, have a single band gap which, loosely speaking, allows the panel to convert electromagnetic radiation efficiently at only one small portion of the solar spectrum. The rectenna devices don't rely on a band gap and may be tuned to harvest light over the whole solar spectrum, creating maximum efficiency. Through atomic layer deposition, Willis has shown he is able to precisely coat the tip of the rectenna with layers of individual copper atoms until a gap of about 1.5 nanometers is achieved. The process is self-limiting and stops at 1.5 nanometer separation The size of the gap is critical because it creates an ultra-fast tunnel junction between the rectenna's two electrodes, allowing a maximum transfer of electricity. The nanosized gap gives energized electrons on the rectenna just enough time to tunnel to the opposite electrode before their electrical current reverses and they try to go back. The triangular tip of the rectenna makes it hard for the electrons to reverse direction, thus capturing the energy and rectifying it to a unidirectional current. Impressively, the rectennas, because of th

wonder if we can use that to power a moon base .... or on-board a SBSP satellite

I am not the physicist but I thought it might be interesting, from a space security point-of-view

Yes it seems really interesting and opens new possibilities. However this technology review article is not very good and the guy uses terms which have a precise meaning (like teleportation), which is different from the word we know... Quantum teleportation is what we use for designing quantum computers, but we are quite far from any practical applications. This energy teleportation will allow new scheme involving energy (if it is experimentally confirmed) which is very nice. However it seems this occurs in an entangled many-body system, which the only macroscopic one I know is a bose-eintein condensate (BEC). So it would mean infuse energy in the BEC by doing a measurement on one of the atom and extract it few millimeters away by doing a measurement on another atom. very far from any long distance power transmission...

nice!!!

nice book extract on the influence of cold war strategy on the development of the internet, RAND corporation etc.

Yet it does all this with a thermal design power of around 2W - incredibly, less than three per cent that of an everyday Core 2 Duo. Average power consumption is promised to be in the milliwatt range, with idle draw as low as 30mW.

First demostration of coherent and reversible mapping of a light field with less than one photon per pulse onto an ensemble of approx10^7 atoms naturally trapped in a solid.

nice ...Sante?

Greenwich could lose its place at the centre of global time if a move to "atomic time" is voted in by the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva in January 2012.

Haha this is really a British article... Already since 1972 we don't use GMT but UTC, which is based on atomic clocks. However British continue to call it GMT... The question is to drop the leap second in UTC, and France is definitely for this change (for scientific motives of course...;) I don't see how this is connected to winter time however... And they shouldn't worry Greenwich is still the beginning of the world with 0 degree longitude !

"the end of GMT as an international standard could accelerate the move to keep British Summer Time into the winter, letting us have lighter evenings." As I understand it, if GMT looses its "prestigious" status, then it would be easier to push through all-year BST in UK.

By attaching a diamond crystal to an AFM tip, researcher at New York City University managed to measure the heat flows at atomic levels in resistors. The method works due to a vacancy in the carbon lattice, two spots are empty of which one is filled with a nitrogen atom. The energy state of the vacancy is temperature dependent and can actually be read out spectroscopically.

Cameras sure have evolved these days...