Penning Trap

[Hanuman]

Penning traps are devices for the storage of charged particles using a homogeneous static magnetic field and a spatially inhomogeneous static electric field. This kind of trap is particularly well suited to precision measurements of properties of ions and stable subatomic particles which have electric charge. Recently this trap has been used in the physical realization of quantum computation and quantum information processing as well. The Penning trap has also been used in the realization of what is known as a geonium atom. Currently Penning traps are used in many laboratories worldwide. For example at CERN it is used to store antiprotons.

A Geonium atom is a false "atom" created in a magnetic Penning trap.[1] A Penning trap is a combination of a homogeneous magnetic field and an electrostatic quadrupole potential. A single charged particle can be trapped indefinitely in a Penning trap. A small cloud of charged particles in such a trap is like a many-electron atom, with the difference that the role of the atomic nucleus is played by an adjustable external field in the trap.

In the simplest case, the system consists of only one electron or only one ion in the trap. This is analogous to the hydrogen atom. The properties of this single bound particle, such as the energy levels, g-factor and radius of the electron can be measured and calculated with a very high precision.[2]

Ok smarties, translate to english please? I'm super excited already but I'd be even more excited if I knew how this effects my future.

[Thadius]

asdfgh

Fake atoms? We're fabricating our own atoms now?

I mean, I knew this day would eventually come to be, but not while I was living.

[Flarecobra]

We've been doing that for a long time now...

Pretty much everything after this was made by man. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptunium)

Though I think that one is the first one I've seen pretty much built from the ground up. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

[Loyal]

I'm curious as to the energy and resource cost of this. Sounds expensive.

[Hanuman]

Well, until a smarty comes in and says something, I think this is more like we are just making atoms out of electron swarms that are only haxxor'd temporarily into atoms, which is basically like electricity right? So... basically like matter made from electricity alone? Will we have Wireless Matter in the future?

[Doc ock rokc]

Well, until a smarty comes in and says something, I think this is more like we are just making atoms out of electron swarms that are only haxxor'd temporarily into atoms, which is basically like electricity right? So... basically like matter made from electricity alone? Will we have Wireless Matter in the future?
actually your close. It seems to me. (my interpretation please correct me if I am wrong) that Ionic Sub-particles and Ions are attracted to the mass amounts of Static electricity and Trapped in the magnetic field Forced to interact till the Magnetic field dissipates with it's interaction it creates a Hierarchy much like Normal atoms...but they dissipate if the Magnetic field ends.

so basically It's a Atom that forms from sub par parts in a certain spot but is destroyed outside of that spot.
Or to put into even more layman's terms It's a house built by contractors that where put in there by a scam so they make a house that would fall apart when they leave.

[Geminex]

I was under the impression that they're saying that, while in a normal atom, the force holding the electrons "in orbit" would be provided by the force between the electron's negative and the nucleus' positive charge. Here, they're just putting electrons in and keeping them in orbit by surrounding them with magnetic and electric fields.

Apologies for my inexpert terminology, I haven't done physics in a while.

[Sithdarth]

Here read this. (http://www.wilmccarthy.com/hm.htm) Basically what a Penning trap does is produce a spot where charged particles want to stay because it takes to much energy to get away from that spot. (Nature is lazy like that.) But once you confine a particle to a section of space it starts behaving in a quantum way with energy levels and all that good stuff. Basically the Penning Trap replaces the physical quantum dots described in that book.

[tacticslion]

We've been doing that for a long time now...

Pretty much everything after this was made by man. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptunium)

Though I think that one is the first one I've seen pretty much built from the ground up. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

As my chemistry teacher often said, "God stopped at 92". So yeah, 93+ (and a fair number lower than that, so far as I recall) are all man-made.

Also: I'm not what you would call a "Smarty", but I did study physics before switching to Bible. From what I can tell in reading it, it seems that what this enables us to do is create a computational system (a 'map') that says X=Y, where X is the state of a fake atom and Y is a piece of information. That's the basics.

We have been making our own atoms from 'scratch' for some time now as well, but that's not really what's happening here. It's a "false" atom - in simple terms, basically it's a proton (the core 'body' of the atom) shoved into a cloud of electrons (the 'limbs' of the atom) all forced together because of an overpowering magnetic field. To make a (poor) analogy, it would be like taking a vehicle chasis (say, a pickup truck), dropping it in the middle of a in-ground swimmingpool full of unattached wheels (all stuck there because of gravity and the walls of the pool), and calling the conglomeration a "car".

First, this is still some ways off. Yes, practical research has been done in quantum computing, but the problems are numerous, and nearly overwhelming. For example, by tying our data to the physical state of quanta, if something physically changed the quanta (like, say, it moved a billionth of an inch because it was bumped) we'd suddenly have different data. We're working on correcting this and other issues. And by "we", I mean not myself, certainly, as I'm neither an expert, nor someone who will be holding a degree in that field.

So... no we're not going to have 'wireless' computing any time too soon, unless some genius comes up with a solution to the issues. Other problems come into play when we consider that currently (from what I can tell) two quantum computers with different sizes of storage space can't communicated with each other (I'm sorry, I have one byte more space than you, so I can't email you that important document!)

Further, quantum computing won't Revolutionize-All-Computing-Forever, as it seems most people think. Certainly they won't suddenly gain sentience they don't currently have. Rather it's just a faster form of performing the same jobs. Kind of like having a rocket car instead of a typical sedan - yeah the rocket car will get you there faster (much faster, in fact) but just try to steer the thing, especially on the road! And that's the part we're working on - making the device so we can steer it easily and create roads long enough and straight enough for us to actually turn the corner when we need to instead of ramming straight into the building. That'll require a different infrastructure altogether.

However, with that infrastructure in place we may very well be able to enact 'wireless computing' - teleporting information across space. Even then, however, don't expect to actually teleport anything physical.

Now again, I remind: I'm neither Smart nor an Expert. This is all amatuer hour on the radio show. I've taken several classes (and enjoyed them, except for Chemistry II) and left a major after I was 3/4 done with it that was partially related to this.

Addendum: it seems the doc and I agree on what we're reading. He posted sometime after I started this.