Breaking the Laws of Physics for Technology.

This blog is in response to the New York Times Science article "After the Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm"

To sum up the article's overall point, transistor technology has nearly reached its limit in advancement. What this means is that scientists are having a hard time making more powerful transistors smaller because now they are facing the limits of molecular size.

The simplest example is to compare the I-pod of today against its ancestor of 2001. The idea is to make the transistors smaller so as to allow for a greater density of components. As a result, products become smaller, sleeker, and more affordable.

This article can astound its reader in both good and bad ways. The first thing that readers may notice is that the article is very wordy. You are bombarded by scientific jargon like "photolithographic" and "microcosm", which can be a bit confusing. The other confusing aspect can be found in the sheer depth of comparison. Before reading through this article I was unaware of the extent to which humans had managed to craft materials.

The current industry size standard for transistors within microprocessors is 90 nanometers. The article states that the average width of a human hair is 80,000 nanometers. One paragraph in particular stood out.

"A typical high-end Intel microprocessor is today based on roughly one billion transistors or more, each capable of switching on and off about 300 billion times a second and packed densely enough that two million transistors would fit comfortably in a period at the end of this sentence."

Silicon Nanowires like the one in the image are one of the many components which makes up a microprocessor and allow binary operations to be performed at blazing speeds.

Nanotechnology is still something of a science fiction concept to me. I mean, how do you shape items on a molecular level? Apparently you can grow them instead of build them. I'm sure that at some point humanity has to reach a technological plateau. But if you take into consideration the notion that the first basic computers were designed around the 1950s, then you might see that in just 60 years humans have managed to blast through advancement only to be stopped by the very laws of physics themselves.

Readers can rest assured that this article is of importance to the science communities. Nearly every form of research that I can think of relies upon computers for either the recording, monitering, or calculating of its data. It is even possible that some research can't be conducted until the next generation of technology is invented. But what should we do when we've reached the end of advancement? Do we press on and challenge the law which govern us, abandon our quest for new knowledge, or apply what we've achieved towards a planetary coexistence? Without trying to be overly preachy, I simply hadn't considered the notion that humans would get stuck and reach a potential end within my lifetime and truthfully I don't believe we have.