World’s smallest radio receiver ... the size of 2 atoms

World’s smallest radio receiver has building blocks the size of 2 atoms
http://electroiq.com/blog/2016/12/w...iver-has-building-blocks-the-size-of-2-atoms/

Researchers from Harvard University's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have made the world’s smallest radio receiver – built out of an assembly of atomic-scale defects in pink diamonds.

This tiny radio — whose building blocks are the size of two atoms — can withstand extremely harsh environments and is biocompatible, meaning it could work anywhere from a probe on Venus to a pacemaker in a human heart.

 

Looks to me like the detector is the size of two atoms, but the entire radio is huge and power hungry needing electromagnets for tuning and a laser to power the detector. Would be much more interesting if the radio was not the size of a room!

 

I see potential if they can have it powered by human. Remember the movie inner space?

 

Wrong. Small(est?) detector, not receiver.

I don't see the point of this at all. It seems to suggest a huge waste of power to heterodyne a laser to get RF baseband mixed at red light...then demodulated. Looks like Harvard has discovered Fessenden.

Lasers, to begin with, are inherently inefficient.

Be honest: if this hadn't come from Harvard, but from the People's Laboratory for Radio Physics in the Crimea...would we even be reading this?

 

Does it have knobs and buttons and a tuning dial?
Diamonds? Must be a carbon defined radio.

 

How do repair if it breaks? Just replace the nitrogen atom? Nitrogen is easy to find and is cheap. They come in a two-pack.

But the tools needed are something else. You think surface mount is difficult, try working on atoms. You'd need a really really really tiny pair of tweezers.

 

This reminds me of a science fiction story from about 1960. People learn how to shrink their data storage until eventually it reaches the size of notched quanta within atoms (okay, never mind the Uncertainty Principle). Unfortunately it takes an immense hardware system to be able to actually read this encoded information. Eventually the entire world's knowledge is put inside a little file drawer...and lost in the shuffle. Civilization immediately collapses.

 

Click bait.

 

I once led a pack of cub scouts to build a radio in a ball point pen, they supplied the ball pens...
that was 1960 in Hartford Connecticut.

 

The real future will be creation of and ability to harness quantum paired particles such as that you say one thing here and irregardless of distance the output is heard on the other end of the quantum pair.

Since we have observed paired molecules they appear to function in subspace or alternate space that is free from the constrains of light speed constant. Our understanding of physics in my opinion is that of the first cavemen when they seen lightning. We just really know nothing in as much as we think it amounts to nothing.

 

Keep in mind that while this "receiver" isn't practical in itself, it can be the beginning of something really revolutionary!!

 

Many new technologies came to life although disparaged by egotistical self absorbed "scientists"

 

No, they have discovered the way to get huge government grants.

 

Ok Slim,

Tell us the 'new technology' that can, let alone will, emerge from this. Don't get "self absorbed"; tell us, based upon your experience, what new technology can emerge; how it will be realized; and the steps needed to take it to practical implementation. Don't quote some neo grad student or post-doc;Just think waaay---wayy back to your WANGer daze in Lowell(remember that exit on Rt 3?)....Ya know, back when W1JR kept ya honest and on yer toes

Speaking of toes, maybe you should "higher a tutor"?