light beam striking a metal surface can generate plasmons, electron density waves that can carry huge amounts of data. If focused on a surface etched with a circular groove, as in this artist’s rendering, the beam produces concentric waves, organizing the electrons into high- and low-density rings. Over the past decade investigators have found that …
In conventional solar cells (a), light (dashed line) enters an antireflective layer (yellow) and then a layer of silicon (green) in which much of the light is converted into electricity. But some of the light (solid arrows) reflects off an aluminum backing, returns through the silicon, and exits without generating electricity. A new material (represented …
I have written about using space rocks as weapons. Robert A. Metzger had performed a calculation that a civilization with access to 100 to 1000 times the energy that we have now (possible with advanced nanotechnology) could make 1000 big particle accelerators and over a year slow planet earth down enough to dodge teh incoming …
Today Dwave demoed their 16 qubit quantum computer in public I went to the event at the Mountain View Computer museum of history. There were a few hundred people in attendance. There were some slides that discussed markets that Dwave systems had identified. Operations Research $0.5 billionBioscience $1.2 billionSearchChemistryCAD/CAE (place and route) $1.3 billionFinance & …
The Berkeley team improved their silver-film superlens by adding 35-nanometre-wide corrugations to its surface. These diffract light waves from an object’s near-field, turning them into normal light waves. The superlens was able to distinguish two wires positioned just 70 nm apart – a resolution nearly three times better than that of conventional optics. Conventional lenses …
Software controlled assembly of DNA oligomers one of the likely ideas factory projects. (In biochemistry, the term oligomer is used for short, single stranded DNA fragments, generally used in hybridization experiments. It can also refer to a protein complex made of two or more subunits. In this case, a complex made of several different protein …
New lighter ceramic armor with some nanotechnology material aspects may appear in Iraq in 2007 They intend to mimic sea snail shells. By alternating very thin layers of a hard chalk-like material with layers of its own sticky proteins (snail spittle, if you will), sea snails create shells that are tough, light and durable. “We’re …