January 10, 2012
A well known European agency transmitted the news the day before yesterday from Sydney, Australia. “A group of Australian investigators from the University of New South Wales announced the creation of a wire 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, with the same electrical current carrying capability of copper.”
“… Bent Weber, head of the project at the Australian university, in an article published by Science magazine, explained, “Interconnecting wiring of this scale will be vital for the development of future atomic-scale electronic circuits.”
“The wire was created by Australian and U.S. physicists by precisely placing chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal, just four atoms wide, one atom tall.
“This finding is essential to the international race to develop the first quantum computer, super-fast machines capable of processing enormous quantities of data in a few seconds, doing complex calculations which would take current computers years or even decades.
“In a traditional copper wire, electricity flows as copper electrons move along the conductor, but as the wire or conductor becomes smaller, resistance to the flow of electricity is greater.
“To overcome this problem Weber and his team used a process called scanning tunneling microscopy which allowed them to place atomically thin layers of phosphorus in silicon crystals.
“This allowed the nanowire to function like copper, with the electrons flowing easily, without resistance problems. Weber said that with this technique makes possible reducing the size of components to the atomic level.
“If the semi-conductor industry continues to miniaturise devices then eventually they will reach the atomic scale,” observed Michelle Simmons, director of the research project
These unabated technological advances which should serve humanity’s well-being reminded me of what I had just written four days ago about global warming and the increasing development of shale gas, in a world which in 200 years has consumed fossil energy produced over a period of four billion years.
I imagined Obama, very articulate with words, for whom, in his desperate attempt to be reelected, the dreams of [Martin] Luther King are more light years away than the closest inhabitable planet.
Even worse: any one of the Republican Congress members considering the Presidency or any man or woman leading the Tea Party are carrying more nuclear weapons on their shoulders than ideas about peace in their heads.
Imagine, readers, for one minute, this powerful quantum computer cable of processing an infinite number of times the data processed by modern computers.
Is it not, perhaps, obvious that worst of all is the absence in the White House of a robot capable of governing the United States and preventing a war which would put an end to human life?
I am sure that 90% of U.S. citizens registered, especially Latinos, Blacks and a growing number of those in the middle class, the impoverished, would vote for the robot.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 8, 2012