The company hopes this new method will enable it to manufacture increasingly small computer chips.

While Moore's Law states that circuit density doubles each year, therefore enabling devices to increase their computing power even as they shrink in size, many industry watchers fear Moore's Law has reached its end, and that there are finite limits to hose small a circuit may be. In an attempt to keep our computers shrinking, companies like IBM have been trying to build a better nanowire, something that can effectively transmit data, but can only be viewed through an electron microscope.

Much of the research into nanowire manufacture involves advanced photolithographic techniques: making the incredibly small wires through photo etching. But Frances Ross, a researcher at IBM, takes a very different approach. Rather than cutting silicon into microscopic slices, she's developing a process for growing the wires in a lab, bit by bit. She sprinkles gold nanoparticles on the ends of the wires, then suffuses the particles with a superheated silicon gas. The particles become saturated with the silicon gas, and solid silicon begins to form at the end of the wire, producing the gradually growing wires you see above.

The effect is pretty, but the technology is still a ways off from usability. In order for her nanowires to be useful for chip makers, Ross will need to find a way to keep the surfaces of each wire perfectly regular and uniform.

After the Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm [NY Times]

The research team, working at IBM, have modified an older microscopy technique know as atomic force microscopy. The stunning image above of a pentacene molecule is the result of their modified process. It might look familiar to students of organic chemistry: you can clearly see the multiple benzene rings, and even the hydrogen atoms hanging off of the carbon intersection points.

The modification to the atomic force microscopy process is what made measuring this delicate molecule possible. Atomic force microscopy detects very small attractive forces between a detector atom and the molecule being imaged. But this comes with an obvious problem: using attractive forces to measure a molecule also yanks on parts of the molecule itself.

It's similar to using a big magnet to examine a table covered in metal ball bearings. Paying close attention to how the magnet interacts with the ball bearings will tell you where the ball bearings are, but you're also likely to get some ball bearings stuck to the magnet, messing up their arrangement. When this happens on a molecular scale, it means jostling or even ripping apart delicate molecules when imaging them.

The solution that the team came up with involves using a relatively unreactive molecule as a tip to their scanner. The scientists affixed a carbon monoxide molecule to the probe, with the mostly unreactive oxygen as the only contact point with the subject molecule.

The carbon monoxide capper also takes advantage of a quantum effect called the Pauli exclusion principle. This principle says that electrons of the same quantum state can't occupy the same space. The electrons associated with the oxygen on the carbon monoxide are in the same state as those in the pentacene, providing an additional repulsive cushion between the tip of their scanner and the molecule being measured.

For their hard work, the IBM team has these really impressive images to show. These are the highest resolution pictures yet taken of a molecule like this one. You can even see the bonds between the individual atoms. It's nice to get further proof that our organic chemistry professors weren't lying to us, that things actually look like that when you get really close to them.

Microscopes zoom in on molecules at last [via NewScientist]

It's 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future [Square America]

When the full system of 27 SAGE computers was deployed in 1963 (each site actually consisted of two of the behemoths, one running and the other serving as a backup), long-distance telephone lines connected them with over 100 radar defense sites across the country. Perhaps not surprisingly, J.C.R. Licklider, the man who initiated research that ultimately led to the ARPANET (the granddaddy of the internet), worked on SAGE. According to another former worker, today "a seven dollar throw-away hand calculator will easily out perform the SAGE computer; and use watch batteries to do it."