Powered by Blogger.

Spin Doctors, Existentialists, and Quantum Holes

on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 with 0 comments » | , ,

No...not them, though I hear they are back too after all many years with an album worthing listening to, called Nice talking to me. I used to hear their song,' Little Miss can't be wrong' (hear a snippet) from their debut album on the radio a lot in 1992-93 with Pocket Full of Kryptonite but never heard about them since; though just learnt that they apparently released a few albums in between - Can't Be Wrong and Here Comes the Bride, and a collection put together titled, Just Go Ahead Now: A Retrospective!

I'm talking here about these scientific geniuses who
made something from nothing. Even Seinfeld would be proud :) (Btw, had perused through a book, Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing some years back. To think that the show inspired a book on philosophy! Ofcourse, to the existentialist philosopher (also read the Existentialism Blog), nothingness is a very important concept and many tomes have been written on the subject, including the most famous of all - Sartre's Being & Nothingness (Exhaustive class notes on the book here. Also: A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness by Joseph S. Catalano). However, in my mind, nothingness in the context of Seinfeld is not really the same thing! As Isabella Adjnani has apparently said, ' Nothingness not being nothing, nothingness being emptiness'. However, just read the argument being made that Charlie Brown (from Peanuts) is an existentialist, and that I can agree with!

Anyways.. pardon the multiple digressions..! Here is the article I originally intended to link to..

Spin Doctors make something from nothing
Electronic devices are always shrinking in size but it's hard to imagine anything beating what researchers at the University of New South Wales have created: a tiny wire that doesn't even use electrons to carry a current.
Known as a hole quantum wire, it exploits gaps – or holes - between electrons. The relationship between electrons and holes is like that between electrons and anti-electrons, or matter and anti-matter.
The holes can be thought of as real quantum particles that have an electrical charge and a spin. They exhibit remarkable quantum properties and could lead to a new world of super-fast, low-powered transistors and powerful quantum computers.
P.S. Speaking of holes, scientists on a quest to find the esoteric black holes have found surprisingly few.
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. - Woody Allen
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. - Paul Valery


0 comments