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SCIENTISTS AT TRINITY College Dublin (TCD) have made a breakthrough that could increase computer disk capacity by 1,000-fold.
The groundbreaking research at TCD’s CRANN Institute could lead to lengthy and complex calculations, such as database searches, being performed at incredibly high speeds.
A team lead by Professor Stefano Sanvito has discovered a new way to make molecular magnets more rigid, allowing them to operate at room temperature – something researchers have been trying to do for over 30 years.
Molecular magnets are tiny molecules, often comprising only a handful of atoms, which display the same properties of conventional magnets.
If molecular magnets were to be used in hard-disk drives, there is the potential to increase the disk’s capacity up to a thousand times, so that a standard 3.5’ hard-disk would store more than 1,000,000 gigabytes of data. This is because molecular magnets can be packed together at ultra-high density.
At present, a hypothetical hard-disk made of magnetic molecules will lose all data unless cooled down to about -200 Celsius.
‘Very exciting’
Sanvito described the breakthrough as “very exciting”. It has been detailed in a paper published in the Nature Communications journal.
“[It] is of huge interest to the scientific community, who have demonstrated very slow progress to date with the development of molecular magnets that can operate at room temperature. When a magnet is small its magnetic properties degrade rapidly with temperature.
“In this paper, we have shown that a drastic improvement in the high-temperature properties of magnetic magnets can be achieved by engineering the molecules to be as rigid as possible,” Sanvito said.
He added that the discovery offers real potential for very powerful quantum computers, which “may one day revolutionise computation as we know it”.
As if things couldn’t get any worse for the Catholic Church.
Whats it got to do with the Catholic Church?
It was a joke regarding the existence of God. If that particle proves how the universe started, then by rights that kinda tells us that God isn’t real… use the auld brain will ya. It wouldn’t take the people in Geneva to figure out the link.
You may want to push up a wee bit on your physics and theology.
The higgs boson doesn’t do anything to prove or disprove whether God exists or not. It’s doesn’t even prove the standard model. Information is your friend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
Also, most theists would accept the standard theory. Maybe don’t base your assertions on Dan Brown books. He’s kinda a hack.
*brush up not *push up
I hate when you spot spelling mistakes and it’s too late to fix them.
You bored me when you started to give a history lesson. But thanks for the follow on twitter! I reciprocated. :D
Cheers.
Please please please stop calling it the god particle. It’s a ludicrous name. Higgs boson is just fine.
We should stop teaching religious nonsense in schools. The real story is more amazing!
Perfect. :-)
a particle physicist walks into a library and asks for a book on faster than light neutrinos. “feck off” said the librarian “you brought it back next week.”
Can’t wait for the God Particle part II. (Second Coming) Clooney to play Higgs.
Be wary of the albino man oh wait that was the de vinci code, it’s opus dei that you have to be careful around god particles
of course the religious will now ask “who created the higgs boson”
I don’t know why areligious people on this website are those most likely to bring up religion in scientific discussion.
because for the last two thousand years the religious have been asking us to prove there is no God!!
You lost me at “SCIENTISTS HUNTING”
My brain hurts !!!!
I’m no physicist, but why do men and women of science persist in assigning the term”god” to something they can’t explain, except through sums?
The scientists HATE the term “god particle”.
It’s the media which is perpetuating the nomenclature.
Higgs Boson doesn’t sell papers or get website hits. GOD PARTICLE does, however.
And the only reason Stephen Hawking keeps harping on about god is that a lot of his science (especially in A Brief History of Time) has been shown to be inaccurate, and in order to sell books these days, he needs to be controversial.
Cant remember the name of the guy, but someone who was working with Higgs was publishing a book on the standard model and wanted to call the Higgs Boson the GodDamn particle but his publisher wouldnt let him.
Its like Schroedingers cat all over again
Thanks for clarifying that, Barra. I wasn’t aware that it didn’t originate within the scientific community.
I think Higgs Bosun (despite sounding slightly nautical), is a better term myself.
I’m currently working on a load of nonsense and Im looking for funding to achieve constants hints until the end of my life. I’m open to any financial sponsorship to help me build the very first Crayton Core Reverboriser ( just made it up but similar to a Hydron Collider and just as successful) that could be seen as a plausible enough machine to the general public. I think if this machine can get inside the physicists mind and split the dark matter in there we could unlock the secrets and power of bamboozlement that the rest of us have fallen for since life began.
Do you accept cash?
Sorry to disappoint but the Higgs boson does not exist its as much a fantasy as the holy grail. Not being a physicist, I still see that all these ‘particles’ are just the same ‘stuff’ at different energy levels. They can’t figure out how energy and mass interrelate without adding things like this to their mathematical models. It’s a modern version of the old testament storyteller. The subatomic answer to existence and the God answer have the same probabilities of being proven. So don’t get all high horse about any side, either way both will still be a question when your long dead and buried.
Is that a joke? That is verbal diarrhoea.
Since one side is predicting discoveries before they happen and the other is coming up with ridiculous stories to brush them off (dinosaurs dying in the flood anyone?), I think the probability is quite heavily weighted on one side.
But I love the introduction: “Sorry to disappoint”. I imagine some physicists are going to read your comment and walk away with slumped shoulders.
So scientists mathematically predicted that the Higgs Boson exists in the Standard Model of physics.
The Standard Model is a beautifully eloquent equation which describes how all the forces interact (except gravity, that’s more string theory).
In the Standard Model equation, the Higgs field was predicted, because without it, all particles would have zero mass and there would be no matter.
So. Scientists thought that this particle must exist. Unfortunately, it’s exquisite my difficult to detect. So difficult, in fact, that they needed to build a €7 Billion machine 27 kilometres long to try and find it.
They said – we predict the particle to be in this region (of gEV). And now it appears that the particle that was mathematically predicted has been observed where it was predicted it would be.
Buy forget that. You’re probably right. Pixies it is. And magic. Magic pixies.
When the US wanted to replace the Fermilab accelerator with a new generation of atom smasher, a member on a federal science budget commitee asked “is it the God particle you’re looking for?” The physicist humbly said no and gave a wishy washy pitch on why a new accelerator costing billions was necessary. They lost their funding. There is now a very large underground ring tunnel built in Texas for the next gen experiment, lying empty (actually for let). Last week the old US ring in Fermilabs, Illinois that confirmed the existance of Quarks and the Standard Model, closed its doors for good. Europe and CERN now takes over the reins. Had the physicist answered “yes”!to the question (and billions of dollars in the balance), the story would have turned out differently. The badge “God Particle” may have arisin from and endures since that fateful encounter.
What a stupid name
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