Tasty.
Given the work that's been going into both increased transistor switching
rates and light-based computing, this could prove to be *very* useful
exploratory research.
Alas, probably 2 decades away if it even pans out...
James....
>Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 20:23:19 +1100
>From: Damien Broderick <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au>
>Subject: Attotechnology
>Ye gods, things shrink...
>[I hope this brief quote falls within the `fair use' bounds.]
>============
>The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
>Number 567 November 29, 2001 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben
>Stein, and James Riordon
>ATTOSECOND PHYSICS HAS ARRIVED. An Austria-
>Canada-Germany collaboration (Ferenc Krausz, Vienna Institute
>of Technology, 011-43-1-58801-38711,
>ferenc.krausz@tuwien.ac.at) reports that it has produced and
>detected, for the first time, isolated x-ray pulses lasting on the
>scale of attoseconds, where one attosecond is a billionth of a
>billionth of a second (10^-18 s). The reported pulses, lasting
>approximately 650 attoseconds (as) and residing in the soft x-ray
>part of the electromagnetic spectrum, subsequently provided
>attosecond-scale measurements of a physical phenomenon
>(specifically, the detachment of an electron from an atom by an
>x-ray photon).
>[etc etc]
>=================
>Damien Broderick
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and
crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures
to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."
-Q, Star Trek:TNG episode 'Q Who'
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