Diamonds Levitated With Lasers

[Lauren Admire]

Diamonds Levitated With Lasers

Levitating diamonds could be used as a form of data storage and transmission.

Researchers at the University of Rochester sprayed an aerosol containing dissolved nanodiamonds into a chamber with two lasers. The diamonds are naturally attracted to lasers (aren't we all?) and drifted into the laser's path. "It takes a couple of squirts and in a few minutes we have a trapped nanodiamond," states graduate student Levi Neukirch. "Other times I can be here for half an hour before any diamond gets caught. Once a diamond wanders into the trap we can hold it for hours." Once trapped, a second laser causes the nanodiamonds to emit light at given frequencies.

The technique could be employed in optomechanical resonators, systems in which vibrations are controlled by light. Nick Vamivakas, assistant professor of optics, states: "We are yet to explore this, but in theory we could encode information in the vibrations of the diamonds and extract it using the light they emit." The technique could also be used in quantum information and computing, or, to pull off the world's tiniest heist.

Source: Rochester [http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=6902]

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[weirdee]

I suppose all of those shows and movies where the top secret information is stored in a crystalline cube/sphere/pyramid/geometric object with the number of vertices of your choosing could be vaguely plausible after all

 

[Frontastic]

Once again, old sci-fi shows it was weirdly ahead of it's time. Cool!

 

[Voulan]

Does this mean we can finally have real life PS1 save crystals?!

This reminds me a lot of when they first created microchips that could store data. It sounded crazy then too.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

This laser is now diamonds!

I look forward to seeing Danny Ocean concoct an overly elaborate plan involving a constantly increasing amount of outrageous characters in order to steal it.

 

[Lightknight]

Wow, sounds like the most expensive and least stable way you could possibly store data. Next they'll come up with some kind of graphite writing utensil that allows us to read data by the light reflected off the graphite markings in contrast with the way the light bounces off the paper.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

This is cool and all, but I have to ask...

Can we make a gun out of it?

 

[Evil Smurf]

This is cool and all, but I have to ask...

Can we make a gun out of it?

Do we have to make weapons out of everything?

Wow, sounds like the most expensive and least stable way you could possibly store data. Next they'll come up with some kind of graphite writing utensil that allows us to read data by the light reflected off the graphite markings in contrast with the way the light bounces off the paper.

It'll never catch on.

 

[moggett88]

"Once it wanders into the trap we can hold it for hours" - how long before we have the proton packs from Ghostbusters?

 

[Strazdas]

Nah, my chaos gun and resonance armor level 8 makes your photon wall shields obsolete, silly scientists. sorry, too much alpha centauri.

Do we have to make weapons out of everything?

IF you are in america the answer is yes.