UK researchers develop nanoscale robots that can potentially replicate the traditional factory assembly line, except on a nanoscale.
We’re now rapidly approaching a pivotal moment in the history of this planet, when through scientific discovery an intelligent species could become a race of demigods, THE RACE OF THE IMMORTALS.
It’s quite achievable now. In fact, that will probably happen in two stages: First stage — we have to extend our lifespan with ever-improving Biotechnology. Aging is declared a desease, and around 2029, with the advances in Nanotechnology and Artificial Intelligence, we will be able start to reverse aging and add more than one year every year to an average life expectancy.
So if you’re alive in 2030, chances are you’ll live to 100 and beyond. What life would be like on the other side, when you know you can live indefinitely long? Well, we’ll get used to it and adjust accordingly. We’ll merge into the Global Brain, and emerge as the Global Mind.
The super-thin ’wonder material’ graphene has been shaking up science for years with its amazing properties, but things get really interesting when you stack this 2D nanomaterial up against itself.
In new experiments, physicists in the US have found that when graphene is assembled in a double-layer vertical stack – with two adjacent sheets of the material that are almost touching – the proximity produces quantum states that haven’t been observed before.
These newly measured states, resulting from complex interactions of electrons between the two graphene layers, are examples of what’s called the fractional quantum Hall effect – and it’s just the latest example of how physical science gets weird when materials effectively only occupy two dimensions.
Structured light beams can serve as vortex beams carrying optical angular momentum and have been used to enhance optical communications and imaging. Rego et al. generated dynamic vortex pulses by interfering two incident time-delayed vortex beams with different orbital angular momenta through the process of high harmonic generation. A controlled time delay between the pulses allowed the high harmonic extreme-ultraviolet vortex beam to exhibit a time-dependent angular momentum, called self-torque. Such dynamic vortex pulses could potentially be used to manipulate nanostructures and atoms on ultrafast time scales.
Science, this issue p. eaaw9486.
Photography measures how much light of different color hits the photographic film. However, light is also a wave, and is therefore characterized by the phase. Phase specifies the position of a point within the wave cycle and correlates to depth of information, meaning that recording the phase of light scattered by an object can retrieve its full 3D shape, which cannot be obtained with a simple photograph. This is the basis of optical holography, popularized by fancy holograms in sci-fi movies like Star Wars.
But the problem is that the spatial resolution of the photo/hologram is limited by the wavelength of light, around or just-below 1 μm (0.001 mm). That’s fine for macroscopic objects, but it starts to fail when entering the realm of nanotechnology.
Continue reading “New holographic technique opens the way for quantum computation” »
Researchers at Oregon State University have developed an improved technique for using magnetic nanoclusters to kill hard-to-reach tumors.
Genetic Brain-Mapping of Autism.
The Brain Initiative is combining neuroscience with nanotechnology in the world’s biggest project to understand the mind. By Katharine Sanderson.
Researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park and Towson University are reporting that they have created multiple universes inside a laboratory-created multiverse — a world first.
To be exact, the researchers created a metamaterial — like those used to fashion invisibility cloaks — that, when light passes through it, multiple universes are formed within it. These universes, called Minkowski spacetimes, are similar to our own, except they more neatly tie up Einstein’s theory of special relativity by including time as a fourth dimension.
While this is rather extraordinary, the experimental setup is actually quite simple — though definitely rather unconventional. The multiverse is created inside a solution of cobalt in kerosene. This fluid isn’t usually considered a metamaterial, but lead researcher Igor Smolyaninov and co found that by applying a magnetic field, the ferromagnetic nanoparticles of cobalt line up in neat columns. When light passes through these columns, it behaves as if it’s in a Minkowski universe.
