News One-atom-thick sheets could herald computing breakthrough

Scientists have developed a new method for turning materials into graphene-style sheets.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/02/04/single-atom-sheets-breakthrough/1

 

Whoa! I thought atomically flat was physically impossible????

 

I saw this on NOVA science, quite amazing.

 

Non-quantum flat ?

LOL

dunx

 

Commercialised or not, this is very impressive indeed!

 

Science is allways nice and dandy, but it's only the practical applications in commercial products that counts in the end.

If they can build something useful with this technology, then it might catch up some real interest and get more funds to improve the technology.
Money is not spend too much these days on science that has no practical value.

 

weird that picture is moving when not focussed on it :S

 

Someone needs to look up on Graphene.

Coincidentally that's also where the image from the article came from.

 

first thing i noticed bit spinny lol

 

A complete rewording of someone elses article lol. Why not 1) link us to that at the start and 2) link me to the journal entry so I can read about this process that doesn't get described.

 

Set the above picture as your desktop wallpaper and tile it, its mesmerizing.

 

The comment about it's only useful if you can make something with it ... is exactly the kind of thinking that that stifles the research, that allows invention and fosters new technology ... technology that your using right now can trace it's roots to seemingly nonsense research

 

here you go .. 1280 X 1024 ... http://core.materials.ac.uk/search/detail.php?id=3225

 

Somebody want to fill me in on the chemistry of this? I thought C had a valence of 4

 

You're right, c does have a valency of 4, but I'd assume it goes the same way as graphite - 3 bonds with a de-localised electron allowing the conduction of electricity. Feel free to correct me however, my Higher chemistry is a bit rusty these days...

 

You're right. Graphene is just a single sheet of Graphite... or, in other words, Graphite is just lots of sheets of Graphene layered on-top of one another.

 

100% invisible sheet!

 

That's fraking amazing! I can't wait to see what's done with this tech in the near future.

 

WHOA

 

Charles Babbage's designs were considered grand and complex at the time; he never actually managed to build the Difference Engine in his own lifetime. Mostly, this was due to the enormous cost associated with it - it's an extraordinarily complicated piece of mechanics. However, modern computers all use the same fundamental design concepts as the mechanical Difference Engine: separate storage for program memory and data, separate I/O unit, instruction-based operation, conditional "jumps", etc.

Nobody else continued Babbage's work after his death, including the more advanced Analytical Engine he designed, because it was too complicated and expensive (he was also considered to be somewhat eccentric). It took 170 years before a fully functioning Difference Engine was actually built (completed in around 1990) - built to Babbage's original designs and 19th Century manufacturing tolerances. You know what? The damn thing works and is 100% accurate. It can run computations with more digits than the average pocket calculator can handle.

If we'd had that kind of computational power readily available 170 years ago, just try to imagine how much more advanced our computing technology would be now. Bear in mind that computers have only really been in widespread use for around 50-70 years, and look how far they have come: from ENIAC to Sandy Bridge processors.

*That* is why we fund pure science research, even if it has no immediate practical uses.