Physicists Improve Spin Information Storage

schliz writes "Researchers have made headway into developing spintronic RAM by successfully transferring spin information from an electron to a more robust atomic nucleus and accessing the information 2,000 times in 100 seconds before it decayed (abstract). The demonstration was conducted using phosphorus-doped silicon in a highly magnetized, low-temperature environment (8.59 Tesla, -269.5 degrees Celsius). Other researchers have achieved spin lifetimes of 30 hours in a weaker magnetic field (0.3 Tesla)."

Re:Requires insanely cold temps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Subatomic things tend to move around when they get warm. Cooling them keeps them where they're put, it's easier to find them that way.

Re:Requires insanely cold temps?

[grimJester]

At least some of those are because quantum decoherence [wikipedia.org] happens faster when temperature rises. The time before quantum behavior turns into normal classical behavior is inversely proportional to temperature in Kelvin. (I tried to find something sane on Wikipedia, but all relevant articles seem to be written for experts...)

A more general explanation could be that new stuff happens at very low energies and very high energies compared to what we're used to. Cold is just low energy.

Re:Why not use Kelvin here?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is NEVER appropriate to use Rankine.