Chronos is one of the many Smalltalk-related blogs syndicated on Planet Smalltalk
χρόνος

Discussion of the Essence# programming language, and related issues and technologies.

Blog Timezone: America/Los_Angeles [Winter: -0800 hhmm | Summer: -0700 hhmm] 
Your local time:  

2009-01-31

Even More "Room at the Bottom" Than We Ever Imagined

Scientists at Stanford University have invented a new technology, dubbed "Electronic Quantum Holography," to construct the world's smallest-ever writing. As reported by Science Daily:

"How densely can you encode information on a computer chip? The assumption has been that basically the ultimate limit is when one atom represents one bit, and then there's no more room—in other words, that it's impossible to scale down below the level of atoms.

"But in this experiment we've stored some 35 bits per electron to encode each letter. And we write the letters so small that the bits that comprise them are subatomic in size. So one bit per atom is no longer the limit for information density. There's a grand new horizon below that, in the subatomic regime. Indeed, there's even more room at the bottom than we ever imagined."


No comments: